Closing nuclear facility on table as US-NKorea summit nears, BY ERIC TALMADGE News and Observer, ASSOCIATED PRESS, FEBRUARY 22, 2019 TOKYO
The future of a key North Korean nuclear facility is on the table as leader Kim Jong Un and President Donald Trump prepare to meet in Vietnam next week.
The Yongbyon Nuclear Scientific Research Center, the heart of the North’s nuclear development and research, is Kim’s biggest carrot as he tries to win security guarantees and free his country from the U.S.-backed trade sanctions that are hobbling its economy.
The North Korean leader has suggested he’s ready to talk about closing the facility, capping the amount of fissile material it produces or possibly allowing international inspections. Trump, meanwhile, says he is going into the summit in no hurry to push the North to denuclearize, as long as Kim isn’t conducting nuclear or missile tests.
But time may be of the essence.
As talks drag on, North Korea is believed to have produced enough weapons-grade nuclear fuel to make an estimated half a dozen or so more bombs in 2018 alone.
Here’s the latest on what’s going on at Yongbyon and why it’s so important:
HEDGED BETS
The North has taken steps to disable or dismantle some nuclear and missile facilities since the first Trump-Kim summit last June in Singapore but it has also been hedging its bets.
Using open-source satellite imagery of the Yongbyon complex, a team of experts led by Siegfried Hecker, a former director of the Los Alamos National Laboratory who has visited the Yongbyon facility several times, estimate the North made enough weapons-grade material to boost its stockpile from an estimated 30 nuclear weapons at the end of 2017 to 35-37 by the end of last year.
“North Korea unsurprisingly continued to operate and, in some cases, expand the nuclear weapons complex infrastructure,” they wrote in a report published this month by the Stanford Center for International Security and Cooperation.
The authors note that Kim isn’t violating any agreements with Trump or shocking any military strategists by building up the North’s stockpile — that’s to be expected in an arms negotiation process. But the stepped up activity underscores how important it is for Washington to push for a deal on Yongbyon……..https://www.newsobserver.com/news/business/article226619924.html
February 23, 2019
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North Korea won’t give up nuclear weapons, former diplomat says, Thomas Maresca, USA TODAY Feb. 19, 2019 SEOUL – North Korea has no intention of giving up its nuclear weapons, a former North Korean diplomat warned ahead of next week’s summit between President Donald Trump and Kim Jong Un.
“No money in the world will convince North Korea to give up its nuclear weapons,” said Thae Yong Ho, Pyongyang’s former deputy ambassador to the United Kingdom, at a news briefing here Tuesday.
Thae fled his post in 2016 and is the highest-ranking North Korean diplomat to defect to South Korea.
The former diplomat said North Korea has been following a long-term strategy to pressure the United States to offer a peace agreement and begin lifting sanctions while not requiring that Pyongyang fully denuclearize.
He said Kim has followed the path of Pakistan, a de facto nuclear state which argued the military threat posed by nuclear-armed India justified the need for its own weapons.
“North Korea’s policy was to escalate the crisis of war to justify its nuclear weapons,” Thae said.
He said that Trump unwittingly played into the hands of Kim, by threatening to “totally destroy” North Korea at a 2017 speech to the U.N. General Assembly speech.
Raising the real possibility of war was “a real strategic mistake,” Thae said, claiming there was never a genuine threat of conflict between the U.S. and North Korea. “I believe, unfortunately President Trump fell into this trap.”…….https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/world/2019/02/19/north-korea-wont-give-up-nuclear-weapons-ahead-trump-kim-summit/2913031002/
February 21, 2019
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 Kim Ready to Accept Nuclear-Plant Inspections, South Korea Says, Bloomberg, By Youkyung Lee, February 16, 2019,
· South Korea presidential adviser sees Trump path to compromise
· Trump says ‘I’m in no rush for speed’ in talks with Kim regime
North Korean leader Kim Jong Un was ready to accept the dismantlement and inspection of a high-profile nuclear plant, a South Korean presidential adviser said, suggesting a possible point of compromise in upcoming talks with President Donald Trump.
Moon Chung-in, a special adviser for foreign affairs and national security, said in an interview Friday that the verified destruction of the regime’s Yongbyon nuclear complex was an achievable goal during Trump’s planned Feb. 27-28 summit with Kim. Moon said it was his “understanding” that South Korean President Moon Jae-in got Kim’s personal assurance on that when they met in Pyongyang in September.
………..Moon Chung-in said the U.S. should agree to allow economic projects between the two Koreas to proceed in exchange for inspections of Yongbyon — something the U.S. has so far been reluctant to do. Kim has railed against the international sanctions regime choking his moribund economy and called for resuming the projects, including a industrial park and a mountain resort.
“Those will be doable,” Moon Chung-in said. Such an exchange would advance talks, “without undermining the overall sanctions regime by the UN Security Council, yet giving some kind of incentives to North Korea in a way the U.S. can come up with some sort of compromise,” he said.
Moon Chung-in, a strong advocate of South Korea rapprochement with North Korea, said the success of the Hanoi summit hinges on how North Korea proceeds with its nuclear arms program. Satellite-imagery analysis and leaked American intelligence suggest that North Korea has been churning out rockets and warheads as quickly as ever.
If North Korea continues to produce nuclear materials even after the Hanoi summit, I would say that’s the most important indicator that the Hanoi summit failed,” Moon Chung-in said. https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-02-15/kim-ready-to-accept-inspection-of-nuclear-plant-adviser-says
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February 16, 2019
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Central to the meeting in Vietnam is what the U.S. might offer Kim in return for concrete steps to relinquish his nuclear arsenal, WSJ, By Andrew Jeong andTimothy W. Martin, Feb. 8, 2019 SEOUL—The U.S. special envoy for North Korea concluded three days of nuclear-disarmament talks in Pyongyang ahead of the second summit between President Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, scheduled for this month in Vietnam, expressing confidence that “real progress” was possible if both sides remain committed…….
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https://www.wsj.com/articles/u-s-envoy-voices-optimism-ahead-of-north-korea-nuclear-summit-11549684347
February 11, 2019
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North Korea trying to keep its nuclear missiles safe from US strikes, says UN report, Guardian, Justin McCurry and agencies,5 Feb 2019
Measures said to include using civilian facilities to make and test missiles North Korea is trying to ensure its nuclear and ballistic missile capabilities are safe from US military strikes, a UN report has said, as officials from both countries prepared to meet to discuss a second summit between
Donald Trump and Kim Jong-un.Trump is expected to meet the
North Korean leader, possibly in Vietnam, at the end of the month to discuss measures that would lead to Pyongyang giving up its nuclear weapons in return for US security guarantees and other assurances.
But the report, seen by Reuters on Monday, suggested the regime was doing everything possible to protect its nuclear and missile programmes.
In the confidential report, recently submitted to UN security council members, sanctions monitors said they had “found evidence of a consistent trend on the part of [North Korea] to disperse its assembly, storage and testing locations”…….. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/feb/05/north-korea-trying-to-keep-its-nuclear-missiles-safe-from-us-strikes-says-un-report
February 7, 2019
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Does Russia Have a Plan to Solve the North Korea Nuclear Crisis? https://nationalinterest.org/blog/buzz/does-russia-have-plan-solve-north-korea-nuclear-crisis-43022 2 Feb 19, Some think so. by Stratfor Worldview
What Happened: The Russian government reportedly made a secret proposal to North Korea in the fall of 2018 to construct a nuclear power plant in the country in exchange for North Korea dismantling its nuclear weapons and ballistic missiles, The Washington Post reported Jan. 29, citing unnamed U.S. officials. The Russian envoy to North Korea, meanwhile, denied the report.
Why It Matters: Russia’s alleged offer would imply attempts to insert itself into the negotiation process over North Korea’s nuclear program. U.S. President Donald Trump is slated to hold a second summit with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un in late February.
Background: Kim placed a significant emphasis on rectifying North Korea’s electricity problems during his New Year’s speech. Meanwhile, Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Igor Morgulov received a delegation from North Korea’s Foreign Ministry in Moscow on Jan. 29.
February 4, 2019
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SMH, By John Hudson and Ellen Nakashima, 30 January 2019 Washington: Russian officials made a secret proposal to North Korea last northern fall aimed at resolving deadlocked negotiations with the Trump administration over its nuclear weapons program, said US officials familiar with the discussions.
In exchange for dismantling its nuclear weapons and ballistic missiles, Moscow offered the country a nuclear power plant.
The Russian offer, which intelligence officials became aware of in late 2018, marks a new attempt by Moscow to intervene in the high-stakes nuclear talks as it reasserts itself into a string of geopolitical flash points from the Middle East to South Asia to Latin America. Its latest bid is expected to unsettle Chinese and US officials wary of granting Moscow an economic foothold on the Korean Peninsula.
As a part of the deal, the Russian government would operate the plant and transfer all byproducts and waste back to Russia, reducing the risk that North Korea uses the power plant to build nuclear weapons while providing the impoverished country a new energy source……. https://www.smh.com.au/world/north-america/russia-secretly-offered-north-korea-a-nuclear-power-plant-officials-20190130-p50ufz.html
January 31, 2019
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Hampton Sides, author of a new book about a turning point in the Korea war, explores the state of the Koreas and Trump’s forthcoming visit. Interview, Bloomberg, By Tobin Harshaw, January 28, 2019,
“……It is a cliche that the so-called police action in Korea from 1950 to 1952 is America’s “forgotten war.” But, like most cliches, there is a lot of truth to it. American ignorance about the Korean War is a shame, and not only because it devalues the sacrifices of those who fought in it. With North Korea’s nuclear arsenal now threatening the U.S. mainland (not to mention Hawaii, Japan and the folks on the southern end of the peninsula), and President Donald Trump and Kim Jong Un set to meet again next month, a little historical perspective might be helpful.
………. HS: Be mindful of the fact that North Korea’s fear and loathing of the U.S., however warped it seems, does have legitimate historical roots. During the Korean War, the U.S. bombed that country back to the Stone Age: Every building, every bridge, every village. The stated goal was to not leave a single brick standing upon another brick. That air campaign was gratuitous and cruel. We killed hundreds of thousands of civilians. We’re a country that has a habit of bombing people and then wondering why those people hate us. As we parse the madness that is the Kim regime, we should always keep in mind that this underlying history of “terror from above” figures into that madness.
Kim strikes many as a lunatic, but his nuclear strategy has actually been quite rational and effective in achieving his goals. So coaxing him to give up his nukes will take some extremely creative and forceful negotiating. The Hermit Kingdom desperately needs many, many things from the outside world — food, medicines, capital, technology, expertise and so on, and Kim knows this. A big question is whether he would really allow his own people to benefit in any meaningful way from the flow of goods and amenities that a removal of sanctions would usher in. Another question is whether he’d actually allow outside experts to come in and closely monitor his regime’s nuclear compliance. Caveats aside, we can only hope the talks continue. I’m highly skeptical of Trump’s much-avowed skills as a deal-maker, but a deal is certainly in the interest of the whole wide world.
……….. HS: It was repeatedly said during the 2016 campaign that Douglas MacArthur is Trump’s “favorite general.” I don’t get the sense that Trump reads history — or anything else, for that matter — but it’s a telling detail. Because with Douglas MacArthur you had a grandiose and vainglorious autocrat who had surrounded himself with sycophants and yes-men. He was a colorful and interesting character — in narrative terms, a gift that keeps on giving. But he was a thoroughgoing narcissist. It was said that he didn’t have a staff; he had a court. He didn’t want to hear inconvenient information. He didn’t like experts — he was the expert. He was in love with the vertical pronoun. It was all about him.This sounds extremely familiar to me.
………. Of course, Korea should never have been divided in the first place — drawing that line created one of the great geopolitical tragedies of modern times. Many thousands of families were torn apart and never allowed to see each other again. Historically speaking, there’s no difference between northern and southern Korea. It’s one country, one language, one culture, one people.
Or at least it was. After more than 70 years of living apart, a reunification, if by some miracle it ever happened, would be a wrenching and doubtless violent process. It’s not clear how a brainwashed and traumatized people from an impoverished police state integrates into the dynamic capitalist society that is modern South Korea. Still, I believe it’s destined to happen one day.https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2019-01-27/korean-war-in-current-events-from-the-1950s-to-a-nuclear-north
January 29, 2019
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While Kim plays to Trump’s ego, he builds his nuclear arsenal, CNN, By Samantha Vinograd, January 20, 2019 “……..When President Donald Trump met Kim Jong Un in June 2018, they came to a vague agreement that North Korea would work toward the denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula. But, as Vice President Mike Pence stated last week, North Korea has failed to take concrete steps toward giving up its nuclear weapons, and it still represents a serious nuclear threat.
January 21, 2019
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Straits Times, WASHINGTON (REUTERS) 18 Jan 19, – A top North Korean nuclear envoy met President Donald Trump at the White House after holding talks with Secretary of State Mike Pompeo on Friday (Jan 18) in a diplomatic flurry aimed at laying the groundwork for a second US-North Korea summit.
The visit of Kim Yong Chol, Pyongyang’s lead negotiator with the United States and a hardline former spy chief, marked a rare sign of potential movement in a denuclearisation effort that has stalled since a landmark meeting between Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un in Singapore last year.
Kim Yong Chol and Pompeo, with tight smiles, posed together for photographs at a Washington hotel before holding about 45 minutes of talks that could help determine whether the two sides can make headway.
After that meeting, the White House said Trump hosted Kim Yong Chol in the Oval Office to “discuss relations between the two countries and continued progress on North Korea’s final, fully verified denuclearisation.”
There has been no indication of any narrowing of differences over US demands that North Korea abandon a nuclear weapons programme that threatens the United States or over Pyongyang’s demand for a lifting of punishing sanctions.
Hours before Kim Yong Chol’s arrival on Thursday, Trump – who declared after the Singapore summit in June that the nuclear threat posed by North Korea was over – unveiled a revamped US missile defence strategy that singled out the country as an ongoing and “extraordinary threat.”
The State Department said after Friday’s meeting that Pompeo had a “good discussion” with Kim Yong Chol “on efforts to make progress on commitments President Trump and Chairman Kim Jong Un made at their summit in Singapore.”
But it provided no specifics.
The high-level visit could yield an announcement of plans for a second summit. Both Trump and Kim have expressed an interest in arranging but some US-based analysts say it would be premature due to the lack of obvious progress so far………. https://www.straitstimes.com/world/united-states/north-korea-envoy-in-us-for-talks-with-secretary-of-states-mike-pompeo-possibly
January 19, 2019
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Can America Live with a Nuclear North Korea? National Interest, January 11, 2019 MilitaryTechnologyWorldICBM
Question: Can America live with an atomic North Korea, and could any presidential administration openly admit it can? The answer: Yes it can, and no it couldn’t.
Forcibly disarming Pyongyang could and probably would involve sacrificing thousands of American and Korean lives. Here’s a crude yardstick. The Korean War, a conventional conflict to preserve an independent South Korea, cost the United States some 37,000 military lives. Many more service folk suffered wounds. Thirty-seven thousand. That’s more than fivefold the combined American military death toll from the Afghanistan and Iraq wars since 9/11. And that leaves aside countless more Korean military and civilian lives expended fighting to the current standstill along the inter-Korean border.
It’s hard to see how war could be waged more cheaply than it was in 1950-1953 when the principal combatants, not to mention North Korea’s ally China and neighbor Russia, all boast nuclear weapons to accompany formidable conventional forces. And Washington must not delude itself into thinking air and sea power can do the job alone, any more than aviators and mariners repulsed the North Korean invasion in 1950. It took land forces back then—and today, in all likelihood, ground combat would be required to destroy the dug-in North Korean nuclear complex.
Any military strategy worth the name would demand that U.S. Army and Marine forces again seize and control ground—allowing them the leisure to ferret out underground facilities and armaments.
In short, a new Korean War would not be a come-and-go affair. Such a forecast is solidly grounded in the classics of strategy. For instance, Admiral J. C. Wylie points out that the proper goal of military strategy is to impose control on the foe. Aircraft and missiles flit by overhead while ships remain offshore. Though formidable, their presence is too intermittent to qualify as control. That being the case, he pronounces the soldier slogging through mud the “ultimate determinant” of who emerges the victor. The soldier goes and stays. “He is control,” proclaims Wylie. No control, no strategic success.
Or as the historian T. R. Fehrenbach
puts it regarding the Korean War: “you may fly over a land forever; you may bomb it, atomize it, pulverize it and wipe it clean of life—but if you desire to defend it, protect it and keep it for civilization, you must do this on the ground, the way the Roman legions did, by putting your young men in the mud.” Wylie says much the same thing when he observes that— aviators’ and rocketeers’ assumptions notwithstanding—the ability to destroy something from aloft does not equate to controlling it.
January 14, 2019
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Kim Jong Un’s New Year’s Speech: On the Domestic Front, 38 North, BY: GLYN FORD, JANUARY 9, 2019 “……
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The speech was framed within the successes of last year. The 2013 Line of promoting two fronts—economy and a nuclear deterrent—simultaneously had finally been delivered. The country lives under the protective umbrella of its nuclear deterrent and can turn its focus to the “higher goal” of economic construction.
Kim acknowledged that challenges to this domestic agenda certainly exist, noting especially the misallocation of labor, lack of expertise and poor productivity. In his speech, he instructed a reallocation of labor and resources, both for the military and the Party, to start to address these barriers to success. He also indicated that contingency plans were being explored in case a second summit with Trump fails to set US-DPRK relations back on track.
………Focus on Energy Generation
The country’s principal economic bottleneck is the desperate need for a massive increase in electricity production. A first step is the renovation and modernization of the supply industry. By singling out the Pukchang Thermal Power Complex for praise all the others inevitably lie in its shadow. Yet the most aggravating problem is fuel shortages. Under the current sanctions regime, the short-term solution—and by no means good news for the climate-change lobby—to the electricity shortage is massive increases in productivity in the coal sector. ………..
While hydroelectric plants merit a passing mention, in reality, the North is close to maximizing the use of the water resources available with both floods and droughts sharply reducing output. In the longer term, Kim argued that the country needs to “create a capacity for generating tidal, wind and atomic power under a far-reaching plan.” The last underlines Pyongyang’s perception that denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula does not preclude ambitions to be a civil nuclear power. The ongoing construction of their indigenous Experimental Light Water Reactor (ELWR) at North Korea’s Yongbyon Nuclear Scientific Research Center suggests that light water reactors will form the backbone of the industry, harking back perhaps to the Korean Peninsula Energy Development Organization (KEDO) from the 1990s. ………..
There is no question the Party is now on top as well as on tap with constant references to its primacy. Kim emphasized in his speech that the KPA is to “defend the Party and revolution and the security of the country and the people and continuously perform miraculous feats at all sites of socialist construction.” Echoing that sentiment, the People’s Internal Security Forces are there to protect Party, system and people, in that order.
Delivering peace and prosperity to the Korean Peninsula is the stated goal for both Pyongyang and Seoul. Kim underscored this mandate with:
“When north and south join hands firmly and rely on the united strength of the fellow countrymen, no external sanctions and pressure, challenges and trials will be able to hinder us….We will never tolerate the interference and intervention of outside forces who stand in the way of national reconciliation, unity and reunification with the design to subordinate inter-Korean relations to their tastes and interests.”
The “dog that didn’t bark” is the “end-of-war” declaration. Last summer, Pyongyang complained long and hard that Washington had not delivered on its promise to sign a political declaration ending the Korean War. In Kim’s New Year’s speech, this declaration failed to get even a mention. Pyongyang seems to have moved on, from Washington at least. Kim stated, “it is also needed to actively promote multi-party negotiations for replacing the current ceasefire on the Korean peninsula with a peace mechanism in close contact with the signatories to the armistice agreement so as to lay a lasting and substantial peace-keeping foundation.” The concept of a bilateral US-DPRK declaration signed by Seoul and Beijing has now become a multilateral proposition and negotiation. Which parties would be involved is unclear, but this may have been one of many topics discussed between Kim and Chinese President Xi Jinping during Kim’s birthday visit to Beijing
……….Until now Pyongyang has rigidly adhered publicly to parallel bilateral negotiations, one with Washington looking for a peace settlement accompanied by sanctions relief and a second with Seoul on economic cooperation. Now with the potential for the first set of negotiations to go multilateral, the second set may follow suit, increasing pressure on Moon to put clear blue water between Seoul and Washington with respect to “maximum pressure.”https://www.38north.org/2019/01/gford010919/
January 12, 2019
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North Korea may be willing to begin denuclearization, and Donald Trump should make a deal. https://www.usatoday.com/story/opinion/2019/01/04/kim-jong-un-north-korea-donald-trump-denuclearization-offer-column/2473360002/ Michael O’Hanlon, Jan. 4, 2019
Kim Jon-Un indicated he would put nuclear production capability on the table as a bargaining chip, and Donald Trump should make that deal.
In his traditional New Year’s Day speech earlier this week, North Korean strongman leader Kim Jong-Un has just made an offer that, if serious, could present an opportunity for President Donald Trump to reach a historic breakthrough in the nuclear crisis on the Korean peninsula and record his greatest foreign-policy accomplishment as president.
Kim’s speech was not all sweetness and light. He warned that his patience is not infinite, and that in the absence of diplomatic progress, his country may resort to more confrontational tactics. Little has happened since the famous Singapore summit back in June between Kim and Trump; we seem no closer to a deal on North Korea’s threatening military capabilities now than we did six months ago. Meanwhile, Kim clearly resents and suffers from the tough international sanctions that the Trump administration has convinced the United Nations to impose these last two years, after North Korea’s big missile and nuclear tests of 2017. The latest statistics show that, despite sanctions evasion in multiple quarters, North Korean trade was down as much as half in 2018 compared to the year before.
But Kim held out an olive branch nonetheless. He seems to want a deal, and seems interested in another summit. He was much more specific than ever before about what he might offer in the course of such a tete-a-tete with Trump. So far, North Korea has only offered to place a moratorium on future nuclear and long-range missile tests, which has been a welcome development, but has only talked vaguely about “denuclearization” and has not stopped making more bombs. Now, apparently, Kim would put nuclear production capability on the table as a bargaining chip.
North Korea experts like Jonathan Pollack and Jung Pak have documented how unlikely Kim would be to give up all his nuclear bombs (U.S. intelligence estimates he has as many as 60 by now). They represent the collective accomplishments of a program that Kim’s grandfather and father prioritized when they led North Korea, so giving up all those bombs quickly would almost seem to dishonor the memory and legacy of his forefathers. And perhaps even more importantly, Kim as well as his generals remember the one cardinal mistake Saddam Hussein, Mohammar Quadhafi, and the Taliban all committed — leaving themselves vulnerable in war against the United States because of the lack of a nuclear deterrent. For Kim to give up the bomb, he would need a great deal of confidence that relations will remain peaceful.
There is an opportunity to compromise, relax
Yet there is still a big opportunity for compromise, if Kim is serious about ending production of more bombs. North Korea could stop expanding its nuclear arsenal, and we could relax, then lift some of the sanctions imposed on North Korea over the years, especially the U.N. sanctions that have really cut into North Korean trade with China and South Korea in the last couple years. The goal of complete denuclearization could await another day.
With this approach, the United States would keep enough sanctions in place to stay true to its principle that North Korea cannot be accepted as a nuclear-weapons state; before being fully welcomed into the community of nations, it will in fact have to honor its obligations under the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty and give up all its bombs. Yet as a practical matter, that second stage of nuclear talks can wait for a number of months or years. That is ok. The world will be much safer if North Korea stops enlarging and improving its nuclear and long-range missile arsenals that could threaten not only South Korea and Japan (and the almost 300,000 Americans living in those two countries combined), but also eventually North America.
Trump should take what he can get for now
The real challenge is likely to be verification. We know where some, but not all, of North Korea’s nuclear infrastructure is located. As such, international inspectors would have to be allowed to return not only to the Yongbyon location where they have been before, and where North Korea has operated a nuclear reactor to make plutonium as well as centrifuges to enrich uranium. They would also need some degree of free reign to explore other suspicious sites around the country. On the one hand, this would not be an arrangement unique to North Korea; similar provisions are part of the Iran nuclear deal, for example. On the other hand, North Korea has shown extreme nervousness about such inspections in the past.
Another possible problem: John Bolton, Trump’s national security advisor, and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo may consider a deal that only freezes, rather than eliminates, North Korea’s nuclear arsenal inadequate for purposes of American and allied security. But they should reassess, or Trump should overrule them.
This compromise deal would go further than the Iran deal, in fact, if North Korea were willing to see its nuclear production facilities dismantled permanently. Yes, Kim would keep his nukes for a while. But he would have powerful economic and military reasons to behave himself. In this case, taking half a loaf is far more realistic than hoping for a complete denuclearization accord that just isn’t in the cards anytime soon. We should immediately engage in serious talks to see just how serious Kim really is about this intriguing and promising offer.
Michael O’Hanlon is director of research for the foreign policy program at the Brookings Institution. Follow him on Twitter: @MichaelEOHanlon
January 6, 2019
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