Trump and Kim’s Third Rendezvous
Kim meets Trump; Japan-Korea ties nosedive; missiles in the South China Sea
The Big One.
A Trump-Kim summit once more.
U.S. President Donald J. Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un have met for a third time. It all happened rather quickly, but the indicators of a possible last-minute summit encounter at the inter-Korean Demilitarized Zone were there, as I told my colleague Prashanth Parameswaran on the most recent Asia Geopolitics podcast episode. This wasn’t a sudden turn of fate, prompted by a Trump tweet that made it seem like the whole spectacle was impromptu.
The main outcome of the summit was to restore working-level talks between North Korea and the United States. This is a positive, if not new, development. In the lead-up to the Singapore summit last June, the two sides were unable to have a substantive working-level discussion. Most of the conversation then focused on logistics for the historic first U.S.-North Korea summit. Since Singapore, the working-level track has produced disappointing outcomes. First, U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo was called “gangster-like” in Pyongyang for his insistence on North Korea’s unilateral disarmament. Second, Pompeo and his then-interlocutor Kim Yong Chol each canceled trips, setting the process back. Steve Biegun, the U.S. special representative, was hardly able to interact with his counterpart in the lead-up to the failed Hanoi summit.
Unfortunately, there’s little to suggest that this third Trump-Kim encounter will reverse the trend at the working-level. An excerpt from my initial reaction to the meeting, written in the hours after the summit took place, goes deeper:
Where the DMZ summit contributes little is on the denuclearization front. The fundamental negotiating positions between the United States and North Korea remain as divergent as they were after the collapse of the Hanoi summit. North Korea remains unwilling to unilaterally disarm and the United States remains committed to its maximum pressure campaign, unwilling to agree to support the easing of United Nations Security Council resolutions sanctioning Pyongyang. A curious New York Times report published after the DMZ encounter suggests that Washington might be changing its position, but that very story quotes Biegun rebuffing its central thesis as “speculation.” If there’s a pending shift, it doesn’t have the support of senior decision-makers or certainly Trump, who appears to remain interested only the positive optics of that summitry with North Korea yields.
This is the problem with the pageantry between the two leaders: while it smooths over the relationship and keeps the two sides away from a return to the sort of crisis we lived through in 2017, it does little to address the underlying difficult fundamentals that make productive diplomacy so difficult.
It was these troublesome and mismatched fundamentals – expressed in each sides’ negotiating position – that caused the collapse of the summit in Hanoi. In short, North Korea is not ready to give up its nuclear weapons and the United States is not ready to offer Pyongyang sanctions relief for anything short of total disarmament.
Bottom Line: The third Trump-Kim summit was good TV, but denuclearization remains distant.
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South Asia.
The Modi government in India has announced its first budget in its second term. Over at The Wire, Devirupa Mitra takes a look at the allocation given to the Ministry of External Affairs for foreign aid. A look at the numbers suggests that India is increasing spending within its neighborhood amid growing concerns about China’s forays into its backyard. The bottom line? “This is the biggest jump in foreign aid since the NDA government took over in May 2014.”
End of a Dynasty? Krzysztof Iwanek looks at the implication of Rahul Gandhi’s resignation and the future of the Congress Party: “Even if Rahul remains adamant on leaving the post, the dynasty may continue to lead the party, as the control panel may be handed over to his sister: Priyanka Gandhi-Vadra.”
East Asia.
Relations between Japan and South Korea continue their nosedive, which took on a sharp inflection late last year after the apex South Korean court ordered Japan’s Mitsubishi Heavy Industries to pay reparations for its use of forced Korean labor during the Second World War. Separately, a radar lock-on incident involving a Japanese military surveillance aircraft and a South Korean warship last year also rattled bilateral ties. The two countries—each a U.S. ally—are now entering a new bout of escalation, brought about by Japan.
In the first week of July, Japan imposed export controls on certain technology exports to South Korea, ending preferential treatment for Korean tech giants that could cause Seoul economic pain in the short-term. The move by Japan’s right-wing prime minister, Shinzo Abe, comes just weeks before a scheduled House of Councillors election in Tokyo.
As The Diplomat’s Robert Farley noted, Japan’s motives may be deeper than retaliation over the wartime forced labor issue. (Tokyo’s position is that these historical issues were settled at the time of diplomatic normalization with Seoul.) “Just as the United States has lashed out at China over intellectual property protection concerns, South Korean IP behavior has long been viewed with suspicion by trading partners,” Farley writes. “South Korea was once viewed as a major IP offender, although it cleaned up much of its act in the 1990s and 2000s. Allegations of IP violations have persisted into the last decade, however, and may have affected Japanese thinking on how to protect its technology sector.”
Tokyo’s use of economic sanctions against Seoul additionally comes at a time where the United States’ normally reticent approach toward promoting cooperation between its two most important Asian allies is more restrained than usual. The Trump administration, where it has pursued trilateralism, has focused on the North Korean threat. There’s a sliver of good news in the appointment, after more than two years, of a Senate-confirmed assistant secretary of state for East Asia and the Pacific in the form of David Stillwell, but the issues at play here are deeper than they appear.
I’d expect ties between Seoul and Tokyo to worsen from here. It’s unlikely that Abe will pull back after the Diet elections, even if the move to impose export controls was motivated by political considerations to appease the right flank of the Liberal Democratic Party in Tokyo. Meanwhile, South Korean President Moon Jae-in has said that Seoul would take “necessary” steps if the Japanese measures begin to result in “actual damages” to South Korean firms. Keep a close eye on this one going forward.
Bottom Line: Japan’s imposition of export controls on Seoul marks the continuing deterioration of bilateral ties.
Big Deal: The Trump administration has approved the largest single arms sale package to Taiwan since the Obama administration’s 2011 move to retrofit Taiwanese F-16s with AESA radars. A new package, valued at an estimated $2.2 billion, includes Stinger missiles and M1A2T Abrams tanks for Taipei. Details:
Specifically, DSCA approved the sale of 108 M1A2T Abrams tanks, along with a range of support equipment and arms, including M2 Chrysler Mount machine guns, M240 machine guns, M88A2 HERCULES vehicles, and M1070A1 Heavy Equipment Transporters. This first package is valued at an estimated $2 billion.
In a separate package, DSCA also approved the sale of 250 Block I -92F MANPAD Stinger missiles and four I-92F MANPAD Stinger Fly-to-Buy missiles. This second package is valued at an estimated $223.56 million.
If concluded, the sales would represent the first major U.S. arms deals with Taiwan since the celebration of 40 years of the Taiwan Relations Act in April this year.
Southeast Asia.
Don’t Miss It: Was Cambodia ever really a “democracy”? Andrew Nachemson investigates that question, looking at the history of the country’s July 1997 coup and its aftermath.
Podcast: On the most recent Asia Geopolitics podcast, Prashanth Parameswaran speaks with me about what ASEAN’s new Indo-Pacific outlook really means and whether the grouping will continue to evolve its perspective on the United States’ Indo-Pacific strategy. Listen here.
5G Race: Cambodian telco Smart Axiata has started testing out a 5G network in the country in partnership with Chinese tech giant Huawei. Reuters has the scoop here.
Asia Defense.
I’ve been scrutinizing recent reports that China, for the first known time, conducted tests of an unspecified anti-ship ballistic missile in the South China Sea. The tests are a significant demonstration of capability and the first known time that the People’s Liberation Army Rocket Force’s ASBMs have splashed down at sea. (China is known to have carried out similar tests using land-based mockups of American ships and bases.)
There are still a couple of questions surrounding the tests, but I suspect the answers are already rather apparent. The first question is where the launch took place from. I strongly suspect China did not use its Spratly-based artificial islands, despite a few confusing statements from the Pentagon on the matter.
To date, U.S. officials have not publicized the deployment of any Chinese anti-ship ballistic missiles, like the DF-21D, to the South China Sea. All of these missiles are designed to be road-mobile and could be deployed to China’s islands in the Paracels or its seven artificial islands in the Spratly group.
A possible candidate for the launch site is the PLARF’s new base on Hainan Island, which sits astride the disputed waters of the South China Sea—the Danzhou air base. This, however, remains inconclusive. Singapore-based analyst Collin Koh makes a case here that the PLARF likely would have used a mainland base, given basing concerns on Hainan and the signalling value of a strike into the South China Sea from the mainland.
A U.S. official tells Japan’s NHK news agency that analysis is ongoing of what missiles were fired. Additionally, the report notes that the United States observed six missiles launched from two separate launch sites.
S-400 and F-35: My colleague Franz-Stefan Gady speaks with military technology scholar Mauro Gilli on the risks involved when a country might simultaneously operate American F-35 Panthers alongside the Russian S-400 Triumf air defense system: “India and Turkey are buying the very radar system the F-35 is intended to defeat.” (Separately: Franz reports that India has submitted a request for 18 more Su-30MKI multirole fighters to Russia.)
Bottom Line: China takes one step forward in its continued bid to exercise absolute control over the South China Sea.
Extras.
Alek Sigley, an Australian masters student at North Korea’s Kim Il Sung University, was briefly detained and then released. Sigley was accused of espionage by North Korean state media, but has since made a statement on the matter:
Over at SupChina, Darren Blyer has a long reflection of the events of July 5, 2009, in Xinjiang—a major turning point in Han-Uyghur relations in the province. “Maybe no other incident since 1949 changed the course of Xinjiang history and the fate of Uyghur people like 7/5.”
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