Sentosa Goat Rodeo

Jeffrey Lewis 0:01

He was not going to sign that f***ing agreement with Donald Trump's pen. You are listening to the Arms Control Wonk podcast, the leading podcast on arms control, disarmament, and nonproliferation. I'm Jeffrey Lewis. I'm the founding publisher of the Arms Control Wonk blog and a scholar at the Middlebury Institute of International Studies at Monterey.

Aaron Stein 0:26

And I'm Aaron Stein, a senior fellow at the Atlantic Council's Rafiq Hariri Center for the Middle East.

Jeffrey 0:32

Hey, Aaron.

Aaron 0:33

Yes. Yee-haw! It's a go rodeo! You know, it was on last night, primetime. I couldn't even turn on the cable news networks, A, because I'm a millennial, sadly, last year. And I don't have cable in my house, and two, I just couldn't stand the theatrics of it. So I watched the Food Network.

Jeffrey 0:56

I yeah i mostly followed it on twitter some of our research associates got pizza and they they convened down in our conference room no alcohol allowed by the middle i saw that i was looking i think you had like like like old people like club sody flavored club soda i forgot the name of that Yeah, they were banned, so I went home and made myself my third Singapore sling in three days, desperately trying to dull my senses.

It didn't work. It didn't work. I'm trying to get to a happy place with this whole process, but I can't quite get there. I think I'm going to have to hit myself in the face with a ball-peen hammer and scream MAGA a couple times. Maybe that'll help.

Aaron 1:43

Go full Dennis Rodman on us.

Jeffrey 1:45

Hmm. Tears of joy. Tears of joy. Yeah. So so there was a summit and they signed a thing and I, I gotta tell you, I was disgusted with the media coverage.

Aaron 2:02

Yeah, I was too. And like, like, I don't want to again, come off. We've talked about this in some of our other DPRK pods. It's just being too cynical about all this. But I have to say it, the media coverage of this was god-awful. It was atrocious. And it just needs to be said.

Jeffrey 2:23

Well, you know, a colleague of mine, it was Melissa Hanham, what Melissa was pointing out was, in many ways, it was like the coverage of the debates, where the bar for Trump was set so low You know, that the fact that he managed to sit through a few hours of meetings without, you know, physically vomiting on himself gets blown up into this historic event, even though...

There's no deal. There's nothing. And it's nearly impossible to get people to do the simple task of take the statement that they signed, look at the paragraph on denuclearization, and compare it to the, I don't know, six or eight other statements that the DPRK has made over the last 30 years that are identical to it.

Aaron 3:22

Actually, this one's weaker. It's much weaker than the previous one, I think, from 2008. I think Josh Pollack has them all up on the Arms Control Blog. It's weaker. The DPRK managed to get an extra word.

Jeffrey 3:34

Well, I mean, what I think I would say is that, you know, we are still at the spot we were at the beginning of this process where the DPRK is not offering to disarm. You know, they're using the word denuclearization, which is their word. And a word that means we fix all the problems in the relationship, and then, you know, then they don't need nuclear weapons.

So it's a thing that happens, you know. What did Barack Obama say? Not in my lifetime?

Aaron 4:03

Yeah.

Jeffrey 4:03

You know, I mean, Kim Jong-un says it was his father's dying wish. Kim Jong-il used to say it was Kim Il-sung's dying wish. The hint there is it's going to be Kim Jong-un's dying wish, too. And the administration just... Changes the meaning of that word. I mean, Trump now says denuking. Did you hear that? He's going to start denuking right away.

Aaron 4:23

Yeah, I did.

Jeffrey 4:26

But, you know, it's this kind of madness that takes over because, you know, people are like, well, isn't that so great? They agreed to denuclearize, you know, and it's like, that's not what those words mean. And you can't seem to get people To engage with the idea that the North Koreans are not offering to disarm and the administration is just fudging it.

You know, and I mean, I know I was complaining to a reporter about this, you know, because it's basically like. If Donald Trump said, the sky is orange, the headline would be, Trump says sky is orange, and then in little itty-bitty teeny type, you know, it would be like, some experts question claim.

Aaron 5:19

Yeah, and you know, and I have to say, I'm... I mean, the positive spin out of this, which I'm not necessarily opposed to, but it goes back to what you raised earlier about the bar being set at like six feet underground in terms of if you can fog the mirror, then Trump did a good job, is that, well, at least the two sides are talking.

And therefore, the summit is better than where we were six months ago or whenever the Rocket Man speech was. And I think that's... Absolutely true, but that still doesn't mean that as outside experts that we should dismiss sloppiness, unpreparedness. Really weird commentary and questions and answers that go back to this idea, to this fact that we know that the administration is unprepared, and then judge them by the communique, or at least the statement that comes out at the end, which is more or less verbatim what the other communiques say, but didn't have a presidential meeting to accompany it.

And so if you judge it by just simple metrics... Rational and verifiable, to use that term. It's where we've been at in the last previous Thaws, without all the circumstance and pomp and the big meeting in Singapore.

Jeffrey 6:44

Right. I mean, you did not need to send the president to Singapore and give the North Koreans the photo op they wanted in order to get this statement from them.

Aaron 6:56

No, there should have. And I think this goes back to this idea that we were talking about, about who needed the summit more. I think it was in your foreign policy piece, which was quite good, about setting expectations really low before this began. And it was like that unnamed senior Trump administration official that may or may not actually exist was talking about the inability to get an agenda agreed to beforehand.

And that is because the North Koreans didn't want an agenda. They wanted the meeting. And so when you go into the meeting without an agenda, you're actually allowing the North Koreans to dictate the terms. And like, I don't oppose a presidential summit with the North Koreans. In fact, I actually encourage it. But with a hard and fast agenda that you're getting something out of this, that this isn't just something where you get the same warmed over communique that we've gotten so many times before.

Jeffrey 7:47

Yeah, you know, I mean, I struggle. I mean, this is going to be worse than it. This is going to sound worse than I mean it. But that statement could have been written in Pyongyang. You know, and I don't, I don't mean it like, I mean, I just mean that like the North Koreans didn't have to give anything up.

Like, it looks like it's the North Koreans opening offer. You know, like, how about we reaffirm our denuclearization pledge? Like, okay, great. You know, the POWMIA remains stuff is sort of nice, but like Trump seems to think that that's not a thing that we did in the past.

Aaron 8:24

Explain that, because that goes around, is like this idea that maybe the hostage releases and this were their concessions, and that was their deliverable.

Jeffrey 8:37

Yeah, I mean, we should separate these two questions. I mean, I actually hadn't heard people trying to turn this into a North Korean concession. You know, one of the confidence-building measures that we did during the Clinton administration was to arrange... And I think it got picked back up for a while in the Bush administration. I actually don't remember.

For the remains of those killed during the Korean War. I mean, I guess technically they're POW MIAs, and so it's an effort to account. And, you know, that's a thing that we used to do as a confidence-building measure. And it's a good thing to do. And it's a good thing to do. It's not a partisan thing. And I'm glad that they restarted it.

But, like, you know, I mean... From the way Trump talked about it, you got the sense that it was the first time he'd ever heard of it, and he thought it was a new thing.

Aaron 9:30

Yeah, he's not prepared. He's never looked into this stuff. He's never listened to the podcast. That's a joke. He's not prepared. He doesn't realize how their positions are informed by their previous positions, how this is a clear and consistent message across the Kim family. What makes this Kim different, obviously, is their recent advances with nuclear weapons and ICBMs.

And how the concessions made were on our side, which isn't necessarily a bad thing. But when you give a concession, it's supposed to be mutual in negotiations. And I don't see a concession that they made. And I actually really, really just want to drive that home because I find that so disconcerting, is that if you convince yourself they've made concessions, then you can convince yourself that you've made a deal, a quote-unquote deal.

And there isn't a deal here. There was a nice photo op. The two men, Kim got to look in the beast. Trump made a fat joke, and then we signed something, and then he teased it out as if this was a primetime television show.

Jeffrey 10:37

By the way, I think Kim's English is fine. Did you see the look on his face when Trump made the fat joke? Yeah, I think Kim speaks English.

Aaron 10:43

Didn't he go to school in Geneva?

Jeffrey 10:45

Yeah. They went to an international school. In fact, the guy who is the CEO of the company that runs the schools... Was like tweeting, like, of course he speaks English. He's one of our graduates. I thought the proud, the Kim Jong-un proud alumni. I think he speaks English.

Aaron 11:00

I mean, I always assumed he did. But yeah, I thought the whole thing just, the whole thing is just driving me insane because people are treating this as something really, really big where I think we got hosed.

Jeffrey 11:19

Yeah, I think we should talk about a few of the things. I mean, one thing I want to address really directly is, in the lead up to this process, every single time an administration official spoke about the status of the agenda, it was clear that North Korea had not yet agreed to disarm. You know, when Matt Pottinger gave those two press conferences, right, one off the record briefing to surrogates and then the, I guess it was a background briefing to reporters.

Aaron 11:58

The famous background briefing.

Jeffrey 11:59

Yeah, right. Matt Pottinger, who does not exist. When he gave those briefings, you know, the point of them at the time was to explain why they were canceling the summit. And he said it was all but impossible to meet the June 12th deadline. And, you know, that was what triggered Trump. What people did not explain, and I think this is so important, is Pottinger wasn't saying they couldn't do the logistics by June 12th.

His point was that there was no substantive agreement on the agenda, which is why they then sent Sung Kim to Pyongyang. Which didn't work, why they had the other Kim to New York to meet with Pompeo and then to deliver the letter, which didn't work, and why they had Sung Kim back in Singapore, and it apparently didn't work.

It's because the North Koreans are still not offering to disarm. And, you know, we actually, I think we finally got the best and clearest answer, where I don't know if you saw the bit where Kim Jong-un was walking and the reporters were yelling, you know, Mr. Kim, will you give up your nuclear weapons? And he turned around and laughed.

Aaron 13:15

Verifies that he speaks English and probably about this idea.

Jeffrey 13:20

Yeah, so, you know, I just, it's so frustrating to me because I do think we have Stockholm Syndrome. You know, like we are so traumatized by the terror of 2017 where the president's talking about nuclear war all the time that he's literally succeeded in changing the terms of our conversation so that as long as he doesn't start a nuclear war, we're all willing to pretend the summit was a success.

Well, f*** that. The summit was not a success. I am not willing to pretend. Like, yeah, I don't want to die in a nuclear war either, but we can talk about it particularly at the end. But I just, I don't see this as a viable path to reducing nuclear dangers on the Korean Peninsula.

Aaron 14:09

Yeah, that's exactly what I was trying to get at earlier, is that in the absence of, I guess, specific asks, and then integrating them into a more comprehensive summit agenda, is that you get this sense that the summit was a success because the summit happened, rather than looking at the outcome of the summit. And then... Judging it against whether or not it's meeting the rhetorical goal set forth by the president, which is to denuclearize.

I think we should talk about what that means.

Jeffrey 14:46

Yeah, I guess I gave this comment to several reporters, but I think it's constantly worth going over and over and over again. The original word in the denuclearization declaration That arose in the early 1990s when the U.S. had nuclear weapons in South Korea and North Korea did not have nuclear weapons. And so denuclearization was a broad term that talked about U.S. nuclear weapons.

It talked about North Korea's nuclear ambitions. It talked about extended deterrence. It sort of covered everything. It was a shapeless, ill-fitting term that allowed everything to be on the table. But as a result, it was meaningless, right? Because what it in practice meant was we will work to improve relations and maybe we'll accept a freeze. You know, the North Koreans won't do new things.

But in terms of the North Koreans giving up what they had, we would defer that to the far future. Right. And which, by the way, is is an approach which, you know, some Democrats are trying to run to Trump's right. And they're now sort of condemning this. And I think that that's craven and stupid and partisan. And, you know, Chuck Schumer is just an idiot.

Aaron 16:09

No disagreement on this side. Yes, Democrats shouldn't do this.

Jeffrey 16:12

I think that's the right approach. You want to try to freeze the North Koreans wherever they are and keep the situation from getting worse. And then you want to try to improve the fundamentals so that then you can go back and deal with these nuclear dangers. Like that's fine. That was the agreed framework. Like that was the deal that the Clinton people had struck.

And the Bush people criticized that, right? And that's where CVID comes from, Complete Verifiable and Irreversible Dismantlement, which is the Bush people said the agreed framework stunk because it was just a freeze. We want them to dismantle. And so the CV and I were insults. You know, they were saying that the agreed framework wasn't complete, right? Because it didn't require them to deal with enrichment.

It was only plutonium. That it wasn't irreversible and and they were saying it wasn't verifiable, right? So CVID and the word was dismantle was this Bush era criticism of of of denuclearization, but it was and you could see that it was because the Bush people figured out that it was a waste of time. Like, it was, I think, it was a.

And when Condi Rice lets Chris Hill cut a deal with Kim Jong-il in 2007-2008, they have to get rid of CVID because they can't get that. All they got was a freeze, but they can't call it a freeze because then you're doing the partisan sin of admitting that the other guys were not idiots. And so they made up a word.

They called it disablement. Fun footnote Sung Kim was the you know was one of the you know youngish State Department employees working on that so you know you kind of get to the situation now which is driving me crazy where the North Koreans are saying they support denuclearization which they have said for 30 years and Pompeo's solution is to call it complete verifiable and irreversible denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula which is like an oxymoron

Aaron 18:26

I'm just sighing. I mean, if you could see my face, like, we're on opposite coasts. I'm just sort of, like, slumped in my chair, like, looking at my wall, being like, how does this happen? Like, how does this happen?

Jeffrey 18:37

People have pointed out that I think the Obama administration slipped up once in a joint statement and used, you know, like, verifiable denuclearization or something, which was stupid, and they shouldn't have done that, and they should have got their hands slapped for it, but, you know, whatever. Words don't mean anything. Nobody cares. That... A brief change of subjects is the most interesting thing about this whole process is to see how many pundits are full of ****.

To see people who have criticized agreements on one ground now embracing this agreement or vice versa. You really can tell who has no integrity. It's so true. I mean, you know, you just like look at like their statements and it's like, Oh my God, the, the only consistent thing is your partisan affiliation. That's incredible. So a pox on Chuck Schumer for trying to run to Donald Trump's right and a pox on the people making excuses for Donald Trump.

It's absurd.

Aaron 19:43

That's right. I think that's in a nutshell what I was trying to say in my long-winded way. Oh, that was long-winded.

Jeffrey 19:50

I think that was a rant.

Aaron 19:52

That's okay. Before we started this podcast, all three of us agreed that we're salty. I've been on edge all day because I'm just upset about what happened last night, our East Coast dive, I guess, during the day, Singapore time. I'm just upset about it. I just don't like what happened. Oh. But I think we should talk about how sustainable this is.

I mean, as we pivot out of this thing. And maybe if we wanted to, like, be helpful, you know, like... Oh, that's a good idea. To make it more sustainable. Because I guess the worry we've always had, and I think this is the worry that's shared by a lot of people, is, like, when you strip down... If you strip out the pomp and circumstance...

The heavily scripted nature of the summit, the fact that the meeting took place at 9 p.m. Eastern time, East Coast time, for primetime television, you got a statement that reaffirmed something, as you just said, that the DPRK has been talking about for 30 years. Now, what happens when you actually have to deal with substantive work, where the other stuff has broken down in the past, and then when you have such high-level buy-in from the leadership?

And honestly, on our side, a leadership that is not... It's so clear he hasn't been briefed, he doesn't do any background, he doesn't understand what he's talking about, so he reverts to talking in platitude about condos on the beach. You know, stuff he knows. It's so clear. And so that's not sustainable, if you ask me, because nuclear weapons are technical things, and you have to be able to deal in technical substance, and you have to be able to understand how we got to this point.

Jeffrey 21:36

Yeah, I mean, I'm calling this the Justin Trudeau problem, because I think in the catastrophe of the G7 summit...

Aaron 21:45

It was only three days ago, by the way, if you can believe that. Yeah.

Jeffrey 21:49

Well, it feels like it's 100 years ago. And you know what feels like a century before that is February 2017 when Trudeau did his visit to the White House and they got on famously.

Aaron 22:03

Yeah. Yeah, of course. How about Macron?

Jeffrey 22:06

And Trump talked about how much he liked Trudeau. And to me, it's the perfect metaphor because it is easy to do the cheery, bonhomie in a meeting. It's easy to be like, oh, I love the guy. Oh, he's so great. He has such a great handshake. Whatever it is, And I will say, although I found the manner in which Trump cavorted with Kim distasteful, the defense I would offer is that's how Trump cavorts.

He has no other mode.

Aaron 22:41

That's just what he does. That's who he is. We just got to see him naked and what he's really made of.

Jeffrey 22:48

I wouldn't behave that way around a senior North Korean official, but whatever. Trump is who he is. But The point is that the platitudes, the expressions of love, those are easy to do in a news conference, but they don't address the fundamental underlying challenges, right? And so what we saw was Trump believed that Canada was taking advantage of the United States in trade, which was crazy.

And Trump invented a statistic to prove that, which was crazy. But there came this point where Trump expected that friendship to result in Justin Trudeau changing Canada's trade policies in a way that benefited Donald Trump.

Aaron 23:36

That's right. That's exactly right.

Jeffrey 23:39

All the back slappy, handshake, ass grabby doesn't change the fundamental interest of the two countries. And when Trump's ran up against those fundamental interests, Trudeau said no. And Trump responded by freaking out. And I just worry that we're headed toward a similar thing where, you know, they can make all the film, all the movie trailers they want for Kim Jong-un.

Aaron 24:12

We have to talk about that. I believe in it first.

Jeffrey 24:15

Yeah, they could do all that. But at the end of the day, Kim is not giving up his weapons. And, you know, it may be that, you know, whatever, Trump invents a new statistic, just Trump says he did give up his new weapons and all the MAGA heads are like, yeah, and, you know, whatever, it works. Or maybe he gets distracted and he moves on to something else.

But if Trump comes to believe that Kim really has to change his policy in the way he came to believe that Trudeau needed to give him this win... Then we're f***ed because Kim is not giving up the weapons and Trump is going to feel betrayed. And, you know, I don't care if he sat there politely and behaving himself.

You know, John Bolton is waiting for that moment.

Aaron 25:08

The Prince of Darkness himself. Yeah, I think so. And the Trudeau thing is actually a really good way to frame it because of invented reality. Again, sort of a similar thing where he divorces himself from reality and then you have a backstop of people rather than saying, you know, Donald, this isn't what's really going on. They simply enable him.

I mean, I guess this goes back to something that has been left unsaid. And I think all the parties know it, probably except for Donald, is what exactly denuclearization means. And we've talked a lot about this on the podcast. In the way that they... They conceptualize it. I mean, I think Donald Trump conceptualizes it basically as the weapons being flown out, destroyed somewhere, and then they just accept or at least declare facilities and then they say, that's it, we're done.

Would you say that that's an accurate statement about how the president views it? Or do you just don't think he gets down that level of detail?

Jeffrey 26:08

I mean, I do think he gets down to that level of detail. I just think that he's So incompetent that it's a word salad. I mean, you got a little hint of that where Trump announced that the North Koreans were going to disable a missile engine test site.

Aaron 26:33

Yeah, yeah. Scott and I were talking about that earlier.

Jeffrey 26:37

And it's extremely unclear to me What Trump is talking about, but did you actually see his comments the way he said it? let me read them to you. They're actually, Scott will have to cut this. Well, you, you should, you should hear this because it's, it's, it's something. I've got the exact quote. Are you ready? I said he's talking about after the agreement, right? I said, do me a favor.

You've got this missile engine testing site. We know where it is because of the heat. It's incredible the equipment we have, to be honest with you. I said, can you close it up? He's going to close it up. So, first of all, Thank God he is an idiot because he is talking about national technical means.

Aaron 27:33

I know. When I actually saw the comment on Twitter, this was before I fell asleep watching the Food Network.

Jeffrey 27:37

You know, right? An engine test would be hot. And, you know, okay, it's no secret that we would use satellites and other means to detect the flash and the heat. Sure. ... But, you know, like, what the does it mean? Because, you know, there are multiple static engine test sites, right? There's Tonghe, which is the old rocket and space launch center that's been basically out of commission since 2009.

It has an engine test stand. Sohe, the new space launch center, has an engine test stand. The Chongjin Missile Factory outside of Pyongyang has an engine test stand. Those are all for liquid-fueled engines. There's a horizontal engine test stand near Hamhung. And really weirdly, people are adding that there's one near Kusong, but it's not an engine test stand.

It's a canister tester. It tests the canister's ability to pop a dummy missile up. But like... It's not clear to me. I mean, if Trump said that to Kim, it isn't clear to me that Kim would have any idea what facility he was talking about. Yeah, that's true. And, you know, I don't know what close it up means.

And it's, you know, it's an engine test stand, like they have four of them. It would not be complicated to build a replacement if things went poorly. Particularly the horizontal stand for the solid fuel testing is just a concrete block with a roof. You know what I was about to say.

Aaron 29:18

It's just concrete.

Jeffrey 29:20

You know, and we actually think it got damaged in a test last fall. Oh. It's a little hard to tell what happened. It looks like it got messed up and then it was messy for a while and then cleaned back up. But, like, that to me is the perfect example of, you know, it's just all nonsense. Like, you don't look at the world leader and be like, you know, you got the missile site with the heat?

And he goes, yeah. Like, can you close that up? Sure. Like, that's not, you know, like, it's not a significant commitment from the North Koreans. And it doesn't really achieve you anything. Other than to maybe make the news cycle a little bit more favorable because losers like us don't go use near-infrared imagery and find the burn marks from the test.

But, you know, it's not... Like, it's kind of worthless.

Aaron 30:21

Yeah, and it was a throwaway. I mean, it was a throwaway in a news conference. I mean, I think we should talk about that news conference.

Jeffrey 30:28

Oh, you mean the one where he decided to cancel all U.S. military exercises?

Aaron 30:32

Yeah, and the video was played. I mean, this just goes back to, like, this is farcical. Can we talk about the video first? Oh, my God, the video. Destiny Pictures?

Jeffrey 30:43

Yes, Destiny Pictures.

Aaron 30:46

When I first saw that thing, I thought I was being duped by fake news. Go ahead. I really did. I had to check with people. I was like, this can't be real.

Jeffrey 30:54

I thought it was a parody.

Aaron 30:56

I thought The Onion did it, or I thought some clever Twitter user put it together, and I was being duped, and I was like, this can't actually be real. But no, apparently Trump commissioned it himself.

Jeffrey 31:10

The thing I find so charming is that Kim Jong-un is a man who had his half-brother brutally murdered in a Malaysian airport.

Aaron 31:18

There was some really interesting stuff they did, like the pen. Yes, the pen.

Jeffrey 31:22

I was uniquely fascinated with the pen. He was not going to sign that f***ing agreement with Donald Trump's pen.

Aaron 31:30

Somebody went and handled it, then they wiped it, then they replaced it. That was really interesting to me.

Jeffrey 31:35

Yeah.

Aaron 31:36

Well, I mean...

Jeffrey 31:38

So... The reason that I think the movie is such a joke is related to the issue of the pen. Because this is about how it's going. The North Korean goal here was to have one hell of a news cycle in the coming day on Rodong Sinmun. And so for the North Koreans, famously, when they signed the Agreed Framework in 1994...

They were honked off that they were pissed that it was going to be signed by an assistant secretary. And so they insisted on a personal assurance from Bill Clinton. And they ran that assurance from Bill Clinton on the front page with the agreed framework. And when the Americans gave them the letter from Bill Clinton, the North Koreans looked at it and they were bothered by the signature block because I guess it didn't say President of the United States.

And they wanted to make sure that Clinton wasn't giving them the letter in his personal capacity. You know, like, it seems so ridiculous to us, but it is a totalitarian state, and a central facet of life there is propaganda. And it's not, like, propaganda is false, but it's not, like, it's not a joke. Like, that's how totalitarian states function.

Like, they don't... Engage in propaganda because it's an amusing, you know, it's a fun side benefit of running a totalitarian police state, right? It's an integral part of social control. And so they cared about stuff like that. And my guess is they just, that it was emasculating to have him use Donald Trump's pen, that he was going to use his own pen.

Aaron 33:30

Oh, you think so? So you don't think that there was some sort of weird, like, Worried that the pen would be used for an assassination attempt or anything like that. So you just think they didn't want to... I don't think so. Okay, so...

Jeffrey 33:44

I think it was a purely... It was an issue of equality, you know, because the pen had Trump's signature on it.

Other voice 33:50

True. Good point. And I just think that the symbolism of using Trump's pen, like, you know...

Jeffrey 33:56

I mean, you know, it's always hard to tell. I mean, maybe they were paranoid, but I just... Like, they cared about that event. And I get, you know, there are definitely people who I think point out that like we overdo it when we talk about like, well, we can't give them any legitimacy. Like, yeah, if you want to get along with the North Koreans, especially now that they have nuclear weapons, you have to accept that this government has a kind of legitimacy.

So I don't I don't again, I don't want to do the Chuck Schumer thing where I try to get to the right of the president on this. But at the same time, we gave the North Koreans something of value. We basically said we don't care about human rights, we don't give a shit about the abductees, we're willing to wait forever on nuclear weapons, and so we're willing to take you as you are today in the hopes that there will be some better future.

That's a big thing to give to the North Koreans, and you would expect that we would ask something in exchange for that. And the problem is, Donald Trump isn't operating with any sense of what the public good is. The thing Donald Trump got in exchange for this is the same thing Kim got. It's the photo op. It's the chance to get out of Washington.

It's a chance to put the G7 behind him. It's a chance to burnish his own domestic record in advance of the midterms. And so what you have is a person... Who basically abandoned any conception of U.S. interest in favor of, I think, a pretty vain and selfish goal of making himself look better in the political environment.

Aaron 35:33

I think this is a point worth teasing out, even if we slightly go on a tangent, just to put our marker down, is that presidential summits are usually substantial, is that they deal with big issues. And if you are at least familiar with the history of arms control, they're rarely just photo ops, if that makes sense.

Jeffrey 35:56

Yeah, you know, I wrote a little piece for the Daily Beast about this where I tried to make the point that, I think it was the Daily Beast. It well could have been foreign policy. I'm so tired. I teach this in my class. Like, the value of a summit is often that it's a public event. And so it creates a deadline.

And so all the parties feel compelled to make their final and best offer so that you have the deal, so that the summit doesn't have to get canceled. So they're a forcing event. But, you know, Trump blew that. I mean, in a way, Bolton tried to do that, right? He tried to use the summit as a forcing event to get the North Koreans to make the offer of disarmament.

It's just that the North Koreans ghosted them. That's right.

Aaron 36:45

Yes. They set the tone of the summit.

Jeffrey 36:48

They called our bluff. Bolton was trying to, you know, in... You know, Pompeo is a sycophant. Bolton is an ideologue. I'm rooting for the sycophants because it's better than a war. But, you know, at least the ideologue has some principles. I mean, he was doing it the traditional way. And he was insisting that they get that commitment before the summit.

And, you know, like the North Koreans were just like, no. And in the end, Donald Trump made it clear that he wanted the summit no matter what, which is why you get the summit with no deal. So it's not like the summits are jokes. They're real. They're an opportunity to set a deadline. And I think in rare instances, you can let the senior leaders close that last little gap.

You know, I think I think we saw particularly on the New START treaty. I mean, I'm not wild about doing it because political leaders, even ones I like, should should not should not be doing this because it's too complicated. But, you know, there was that joke that Dmitry Medvedev, when he was president of Russia, told about how he was talking to Obama so much and telemetry was his new favorite word.

You know, like I get it that there are limited cases where you want to bring in the big guns to work out the last deal. But that's not I mean, that's not what was happening here. Right. That's why I keep saying this is a joke is like when you understand like what the role of a summit is.

I mean, this looked like a summit. Like it because there were flags and world leaders, but it wasn't like actually a summit.

Aaron 38:26

Can I jump in here and give you some breaking news on the podcast? AFP news agency breaking. Kim accepts Trump's invitation to visit U.S., says KCNA. Of course they do. When I saw that at the press conference, I was like, of course he's coming to the U.S. Who doesn't want a trip to Mar-a-Lago or the White House if you're trying to – Build that propaganda case that you're on equal footing and that you feel like you have a pretty good negotiating hand.

Yep.

Jeffrey 39:01

I mean, that's the thing I don't, I mean, one of the things that's very frustrating is that Trump seems to, and his defenders all say, you know, well, no other president has been able to do this, as though that was the problem. Right? Like, as though this isn't a long-term goal of the North Koreans and that other presidents didn't do it because they were trying, you know, they were trying to, like, only do the summit if they were going to get an important concession.

And so he just gives it away. Like, he's just do it. And people are like, see, he could do what nobody else did. It's like... I mean, sure. I guess. Like, yes. He was able to succeed where others failed because he wasn't concerned with the national interest of the United States.

Aaron 39:49

Well, I mean, I think we should also talk about how he made policy on the fly, or at least what I expect to be on the fly, is how he canceled exercises with the South Koreans. It's the way he canceled exercises. The way he framed it was so Trumpian. And it's actually interlinked with how he's talked about alliances since he was candidate Trump, which is they don't pay us.

Basically, he treats alliances like a protection racket. And so he's using it to be traded away now because these alliances, these joint exercises with the South Koreans are fundamentally not in our national interest because of alliance management. They are a burden on us because we have to pay for other people's protection.

Jeffrey 40:28

Yeah, I, you know...

Aaron 40:31

I think it works out, by the way.

Jeffrey 40:32

Yeah, I mean, I have a lot of responses, I mean, or a lot of feelings about that. I mean, one is, you know, he made that comment about, well, I'd like to bring all the troops home, but that's not on the table right now. But, you know, we are going to scale back the exercises. I mean, USFK almost immediately released a statement saying that no one had told them that, and the South Koreans were totally blindsided by that.

Like... I don't know whether he'll actually go through with that, but I just think it is clear that Donald Trump does not believe in the alliance system. Like, he does not care. No, he doesn't care at all. He is like Jimmy Carter, who wanted to remove all U.S. troops from South Korea. And so I think that it, you know, I think it's not...

The nice thing I would say about it is it's not a concession to Kim Jong-un. The bad thing I would say about it is he just wants to destroy the alliance, period. He doesn't care.

Aaron 41:29

So, I mean, if we had to pivot to wrap this thing up, I mean, we're pretty negative. I think we share a lot of the same thoughts on this. But I guess Kim, according to Agence France-Presse, citing KCNA, is coming to D.C. So if they had another deadline set up here... What would we want to see? I mean, if we wanted to put a positive spin, what should Pompeo really be focusing on moving forward?

Jeffrey 41:57

Well, let me say, I don't believe Kim Jong-un is going to give up his nuclear weapons. I don't see a reason that he would do this. There's no U.S. security assurance that is more reliable than the weapons themselves. So, The scenario I worry about is that the president will come to think that Kim has taken advantage of him.

So from my perspective, I would like to see this administration be more direct about the fact that That they are not, as a near-term measure, seeking North Korea's disarmament. I am worried about misaligned expectations, and I think if they did the opposite of Chuck Schumer and they went to the left, which I actually think in practice this is what Trump wants to do, it's just that he's not willing to take the embarrassment of admitting it.

I think if they were willing to say, look, We have a lot of problems with North Korea. The human rights situation is horrible. The inability to address the historical issue of abductees is hard to swallow. The nuclear program is difficult. We're prepared... To not make nuclear weapons the first thing that needs to be fixed. That can come later.

That can come in Sig Hecker's 15 years. If they were honest about that and they were like, look, we're going to try a fundamentally different strategy. We're going to try to address the security situation and see, basically go full sunshine policy. You know, address North Korea's security issues and see if that leads to changes in North Korean behavior, not necessarily on the nuclear weapons side, but like maybe treating their citizens better.

Then I would feel better about this process. You know, it's probably not the way I would have gone about it, but at least it would be coherent. And we don't run this risk that, you know, it all goes bad like the G7.

Aaron 44:15

I agree with that. I think what I find the most surreal about this administration is the disconnect between, I guess I would say, beneath the president and how they say... And try and execute things that any American government, if you were to just sort of pretend that the president doesn't exist, would say. So Pompeo's rhetoric about CVID is more or less in line with what you've heard before.

The oddity within this current administration is the man at the top. And I've always found that juxtaposition within our own government so odd and so hard to swallow, because it almost seems like Trump's own appointees, Don't agree with the president himself, but rather than simply say he's the president, I'm going to work for him and try and do it.

Because I agree with you. I think Trump would like to cut a deal fast and get a win and would worry about the verification and would accept a long-range timeline in the way of Sig Hecker's study for Stanford. But his administration almost couches him in Into positions that make him uncomfortable, which leads you to these sort of odd positions, like the Trudeau effect.

You know, he clearly doesn't care about Canada. He clearly doesn't care about NAFTA, but we still have to pretend like we do because the government just isn't equipped to deal with somebody as disruptive as Trump. Does that make sense? And so, like, if I had to be as honest about how I would judge success, it's that as much as I loathe the man, he was elected president of the United States, and you can't really manage up with him.

You have to try and take his wishes to the best of your ability and shape them into something. And CVID is just not something that he wants. At least I don't think he wants. And so that is the fundamental disconnect. In fact, that becomes the risk, is those mismatched expectations on our own side, far less than what the North Koreans are doing, if that makes sense.

Jeffrey 46:16

Aaron, I have our happy note.

Aaron 46:18

What is that?

Jeffrey 46:22

So KCNA has released the pictures.

Aaron 46:27

Oh, they have. I always look at his ears now because of your stupid team. I'm always looking at Kim's ears. It's the first thing I'm like, why did they Photoshop those things? But yeah, what do they look like?

Jeffrey 46:41

It is the single greatest trolling image I have ever seen.

Aaron 46:49

I guess we'll have to put it down in the show notes.

Jeffrey 46:51

No, I'm just warming up to it. I'm savoring this.

Aaron 46:55

Do you have a link you could just put the shout-outs into the Skype?

Jeffrey 46:59

No, we're going to talk about it because I want to hear your reaction. Okay. So the North Koreans, they released all of the pictures from the summit, including the picture of Bolton shaking Kim Jong-un's hand.

Aaron 47:14

Oh, I saw that on Twitter right before we started. It's fantastic. Kim is like smiling at him and they're, oh man, it's great. It's so good. And like the Prince of Darkness clearly, oh man, it's a great picture. It's a great picture. That's like one worth framing and putting on your wall.

Jeffrey 47:32

I mean, that goes right with the picture of Rumsfeld shaking Saddam's hand.

Aaron 47:39

Oh, it's great. Oh, it's absolutely great. And he can't live that one down. You know, when he's on Fox News and hopefully two and a half years sort of ranting away or pining away about whoever's brown suit pissed him off that day, we can just push that one up there.

Jeffrey 47:55

How do you think KCNA framed it? I don't know what they said. Well, I've got the Yonhap head because we're still waiting for the translation. But Kim demands suspension of U.S.-South Korea military drills. Trump understands.

Aaron 48:11

Oh, I saw that too. I saw that too flash across my Twitter.

Jeffrey 48:14

I had it open. Oh, my God. I'm in my happy place.

Aaron 48:22

Goat rodeo reaffirmed again. This is our world now, man. This is our world.

Jeffrey 48:35

They're really good at trolling.

Aaron 48:37

This is our world. This is our world. It's 2018.

Jeffrey 48:41

Published the picture of Bolt and Kim's got an eating grin on his face. Oh.

Aaron 48:52

Pompeo's pretty smiley too behind him. Oh, my God. We're going off the rails here. Oh, my God. I was calling this the bad suit summit on our Slack channel last night.

Jeffrey 49:01

Yeah. Yeah. Are those off the rack that he wears, that Trump wears? They look terrible. They look terrible. I mean, if I had that much money, I, you know.

Aaron 49:12

You could hire a tailor. I mean, you have the North Koreans, you have Kim, the sort of odd garb, and then you have the U.S. side, sort of bureaucraties with Trump and his tie down to his c**k. I swear to God, all of these are farce.

Jeffrey 49:27

Oh, God. Well, you know, At least we'll have something to laugh about in the Fallout shelter.

Other voice 49:35

Check that Twitter link I just dropped in there.

Jeffrey 49:37

Kim says denuclearization dependent on ceasing antagonism. Oh, I missed that.

Aaron 49:44

Oh, my God.

Other voice 49:45

Oh, my God. No. Oh. I'm just going to go ahead and rewind the pod and we're just going to redo it, I guess. If you would like to vent your frustration with a group of people who have been venting their frustration and discussing this issue for the last, I don't know, couple months, I was going to say day.

It hasn't been a day. It's been forever, like a year. You can head over to patreon.com slash arms control wonk and kick us $5 a month or $3 a month if you are a student with a .edu email or email me and I can get it worked out if you don't have a .edu email and you're a student.

And we'll send you an invite to our Slack channel where you can hang out and it'll be a lot of fun. Aaron.

Aaron 50:35

Yes.

Jeffrey 50:36

Thank you for joining me.

Aaron 50:38

Thank you for putting up with my snarky mood. It's always a pleasure.

Jeffrey 50:42

Thank you for listening.