<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
President Trump on Tuesday credited his campaign of maximum pressure \u2014 coupled with \u201cgreat help\u201d from China \u2014 for driving North Korean leader Kim Jong-un\u2019s sudden decision to raise the prospect of talks with Washington about his nation\u2019s nuclear arsenal and to halt nuclear and missile tests while such negotiations play out.<\/p>\n
In stunningly swift thawing of tensions on the Korean Peninsula, Mr. Kim told a visiting South Korean delegation Tuesday that he was ready to hold a \u201ccandid discussion\u201d with the Trump administration on denuclearization, that Pyongyang would freeze its nuclear and missile programs as the talks began, and that he was willing to join South Korean President Moon Jae-in next month for the first face-to-face meeting between the nations\u2019 leaders in more than a decade.<\/p>\n
With critical details of the North\u2019s offer still to be nailed down, Mr. Trump expressed cautious optimism. He said he believed Mr. Kim\u2019s overture during a meeting with South Korean officials was sincere, but he stressed that it \u201cmay be a false hope\u201d to think Pyongyang would truly agree to give up its nuclear security blanket.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe have come certainly a long way, at least rhetorically, with North Korea,\u201d a cautious Mr. Trump said at a joint White House press conference with visiting Swedish Prime Minister Stefan Lofven. \u201cIt\u2019d be a great thing for the world, would be a thing great for North Korea, it would be a great thing for the peninsula. But we\u2019ll see what happens.\u201d<\/p>\n
National security insiders said it\u2019s too early to know whether Mr. Kim is just trying to buy time to complete Pyongyang\u2019s covert nuclear program or whether Mr. Trump\u2019s bare-knuckle policy approach \u2014 coupled with a U.S.-organized set of international sanctions that show signs of truly hurting the North\u2019s economy \u2014 has produced unexpected progress.<\/p>\n
One caveat evident in the text of the six-point accord brought back by the South Korean envoys: North Korea said it would have no need for nuclear weapons \u201cas long as military threats to the North are eliminated and the regime\u2019s security is guaranteed,\u201d which could call into question the U.S.-South Korean military alliance and the huge U.S. troop presence in the South.<\/p>\n
\u201cDoes the Trump administration deserve credit for sticking to a policy of maximum pressure while remaining open to engagement? Yes,\u201d said Patrick Cronin, who heads the Asia-Pacific Security Program at the Center for a New American Security in Washington. \u201cBut the cause and effect here is not necessarily something you want to take credit for until you see how it turns out.\u201d<\/p>\n
The White House last month announced the sharpest U.S. sanctions to date against Pyongyang. While the increased pressure may have inspired Mr. Kim\u2019s growing eagerness for talks, some point to other important factors at play.<\/p>\n
\u201cOne is the progress that North Korea has made on its nuclear program \u2026,\u201d said Suzanne DiMaggio, a senior fellow with the New America think tank in Washington. \u201cKim Jong-un has declared the completion of his nuclear force and believes he now has the capacity to deter an attack by the U.S.<\/p>\n
\u201cSo in terms of timing,\u201d she said, \u201cit makes great sense that the North Koreans are now ready to return to talks with Washington.\u201d<\/p>\n
The shift in Pyongyang<\/strong><\/p>\n The South Korean president\u2019s office said in a statement Tuesday that the Kim regime had expressed a willingness to denuclearization and to halt nuclear tests in order to get talks underway with Washington.<\/p>\n Chung Eui-yong, South Korea\u2019s presidential national security director and head of the delegation that met with Mr. Kim, said the late-April summit will be held in Panmunjom, the tense border village where the two hostile Koreas have faced off since the inconclusive end of the Korean War in the 1950s.<\/p>\n The developments, which follow a flurry of North-South diplomacy that surrounded last month\u2019s Winter Olympics in the South, appeared to mark a major shift from Pyongyang, which long refused to discuss its nuclear arsenal or missile programs.<\/p>\n The Trump administration had vacillated on whether it would be willing to engage in direct talks with North Korea if the Kim regime did not first commit to abandoning the programs. As recently as this past weekend, the North Korean Foreign Ministry had criticized Washington for clinging to the idea of denuclearization as a precondition for direct talks.<\/p>\n Efforts to rein in the isolated North\u2019s military programs have repeatedly ended in failure.<\/p>\n Negotiations with Pyongyang broke down in 2009 amid a flurry of North Korean missile tests in violation of U.N. Security Council resolutions. At the height of the talks in 2005, Pyongyang signed an agreement with the U.S., Japan, China, Russia and South Korea stating that it was \u201ccommitted to abandoning all nuclear weapons and existing nuclear programs.\u201d<\/p>\n The White House offered a sober message on the denuclearization issue Tuesday, asserting that it is in no hurry to ease its campaign of maximum pressure and sanctions.<\/p>\n \u201cWhichever direction talks with North Korea go, we will be firm in our resolve,\u201d said Vice President Mike Pence. \u201cAll options are on the table, and our posture toward the regime will not change until we see credible, verifiable and concrete steps toward denuclearization.\u201d<\/p>\n The comments coincided cautious but optimistic posturing from Mr. Trump. \u201cWe will see what happens!\u201d the president tweeted.<\/p>\n The U.S. government, Mr. Trump added in an early morning tweet, \u201cis ready to go hard in either direction!\u201d<\/p>\n \u2018Me\u2019<\/strong><\/p>\n The president said there was little doubt that his combination of tough, even bellicose rhetoric and coordinated economic pressure had helped change the dynamic of the Korean Peninsula stalemate.<\/p>\n Asked at the White House briefing who was responsible for the North\u2019s apparent turnaround, he responded: \u201cMe.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cI think [the North Koreans] are sincere also because the sanctions and what we are doing to North Korea, including the great help we\u2019ve gotten from China,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n Mr. Cronin said in an interview that Mr. Trump would be \u201cright to dampen expectations and take it step by step in order to assess what North Korea\u2019s real intentions are here.\u201d<\/p>\n The North\u2019s offer also put pressure on Washington to calibrate its own response, he said.<\/p>\n \u201cThe ball is in the president\u2019s court at this point,\u201d Mr. Cronin said.<\/p>\n Bruce Klingner, a former CIA division chief for the Koreas and a fellow at the conservative Heritage Foundation, was among those who urged extreme caution on North Korea\u2019s sudden willingness to talk about the future of its nuclear weapons.<\/p>\n \u201cWhat we do know about North Korea,\u201d Mr. Klingner wrote in an analysis Tuesday, \u201cis that past offers of dialogue frequently prove to be a fig leaf for ulterior purposes.<\/p>\n \u201cThe real question: Is this a diplomatic breakthrough, or the setup of a Red Wedding?\u201d said Mr. Klingner, referring to the famous massacre episode of the TV drama \u201cGame of Thrones.\u201d<\/p>\n The road ahead<\/strong><\/p>\n The challenge for the Trump administration, said Mr. Cronin, is to keep the pressure on the Kim regime \u201cwhile engagement takes a bigger step in this process.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cCan we walk and chew gum at the same time? By all means, we have to,\u201d he said. \u201cWe have to show agility because Kim has become more agile diplomatically.\u201d<\/p>\n Director of National Intelligence Daniel Coats told a congressional hearing Tuesday that U.S. intelligence officials are still trying to determine the sincerity of the North\u2019s offer and Mr. Kim\u2019s willingness to consider giving up his nuclear arsenal.<\/p>\n \u201cWe have seen nothing to indicate \u2026 that he would be willing to give up those weapons,\u201d Mr. Coats told the Senate Armed Services Committee. He said he could not adequately assess the South\u2019s account of the Pyongyang talks until the South Koreans have provided a full briefing, The Associated Press reported.<\/p>\n Ms. DiMaggio said Mr. Trump is hampered by a \u201cvery thin diplomatic bench\u201d in any coming talks. There is no permanent ambassador in Seoul, the State Department point man on the North Korean crisis retired last week, and there\u2019s been a \u201chollowing out\u201d of State Department specialists on the region.<\/p>\n \u201cIf we head down this road of talks with North Koreans,\u201d she said, \u201cit\u2019s going to be very challenging because we don\u2019t have seasoned diplomats in place to carry it out.\u201d<\/p>\n While the denuclearization issue could take years to fully resolve, Ms. DiMaggio said, the administration should seize on the opening for talks on a range of other issues, such as getting assurances from the Kim regime that it won\u2019t sell chemical, biological or nuclear weapons material to U.S. enemies or terrorist groups.<\/p>\n \u201cNorth Korea is the only nuclear-armed country with which the U.S. doesn\u2019t have direct discussions,\u201d she said. \u201cCan we have talks on avoiding an accidental military conflict? That should top the agenda.\u201d<\/p>\n \u2022 Dave Boyer contributed to this article.<\/p><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" President Trump on Tuesday credited his campaign of maximum pressure — coupled with “great help” from China — for driving North Korean leader Kim Jong-un’s sudden decision to raise the prospect of t President Trump on Tuesday credited his campaign of maximum pressure \u2014 coupled with \u201cgreat help\u201d from China \u2014 for driving North Korean […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":2613,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[264,34,325,351,352],"class_list":["post-2612","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-worlds","tag-donald-trump","tag-politics","tag-pyongyang","tag-suzanne-dimaggio","tag-trump-administration"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/pornvas.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2612","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/pornvas.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/pornvas.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pornvas.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pornvas.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2612"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/pornvas.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2612\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/pornvas.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2612"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pornvas.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2612"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pornvas.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2612"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}