In comments made ahead of the Singapore summit, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said that the US was willing to offer substantial security guarantees in return for North Korea’s denuclearization. He said this would assure that giving up arms is “not something that ends badly for them.”
Pompeo went on to say that offers would be “different and unique” from any security guarantees the US has offered in the past. This is important because of North Korea’s concerns about the “Libya model,” which saw a nation disarm only to get attacked by the US a few years later.
It’s not clear exactly how the administration can assure North Korea this isn’t going to happen to them, but Pompeo said it would be something unprecedented, and that he was “very optimistic” that it would lead to a successful outcome.
Kim Jong Un has repeatedly expressed a willingness to denuclearize, and it’s long been North Korea’s stance that they only had the arsenal in the first place to deter the US from attacking. It is a positive sign that everyone is going into the talks with a clear grasp on what they need to resolve for a deal to happen.
Kim to do away with all his WMD on the basis of an offer of a secret and very unique ‘promise’?
Structurally, all promises are lies. But not all promises [implied, tacit also] cause or should ever cause harm, hurt, edginess if one thinks of promises as lies. Political and religious do cause more harm and hurt and more often than by those made by parents, other people…
Hope some people tell this to Kim!!!!
“Unprecedented” assurances to North Korea? The best I can think of would be a formal treaty with terms guaranteed by Russia and China, but I doubt that would pass ratification by the War Party in the Senate. The best practical guarantee Kim has is that China doesn’t want U.S. troops on the Yalu River.
(No sock-puppetry intended here … so for disclosure, that’s me, “chercheur,” Somehow I got signed in by an old Discus name when it should have been by my Google account.)
Anyway, one other observation. Mike Pompeo has been all over this thing. I don’t care whether folks on Antiwar.com like Pompeo or not, but whatever success we get here will owe a lot to him — which should fully justify Rand Paul’s confirmation vote. I suspect that the “secret” Trump shared with Rand was Pompeo’s centrality to any thaw with North Korea.
Too vague- a real peace treaty is needed, as the USA has NOT done that since the “end of the Korean War”, and it needs to be genuine, so that North Korea is no threatened or sanctioned. Can the USA be relied on???
Yeah…Jong Un surely saw how vacuously and needlessly Trump ripped up the Iran deal for political reasons…a deal with real timelines, schedules, enforcement mechanisms, oversight and benchmarks.
This is the same reason why Iran has never really trusted the US. You can’t look at the sacking of the Iran deal as a country acting in “good faith”…or being as good as its signature on a document signed by five or six other countries.