Time for Jimmy Carter to Go Back to North Korea

[Rhiannon12866]

The United States should remember how it solved the last major North Korea crisis: with face-to-face diplomacy.

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Former President Jimmy Carter, an experienced negotiator and mediator, having successfully crafted the Camp David Accords 15 years earlier, offered his services to the Clinton administration. Although Clinton was uncomfortable with Carter’s mission to Pyongyang, he approved it. Carter’s interlocutor was the father of the DPRK, Kim Il-sung. Marion Creekmore, Jr., who accompanied Carter on his mission, wrote in his 2006 book, A Moment of Crisis, that Kim told Carter, “The central problem is that we lack trust, and creating trust is our most important task. The distrust comes from the lack of contacts between us.”

Carter was able, through two face-to-face meetings, to both understand Kim’s intentions and develop interpersonal trust with a leader who was ideologically the antithesis of everything Carter stood for. As a result, Carter secured Kim’s agreement that there would be no reprocessing of plutonium at the Yongbyon facility and a freeze on the major elements of the nuclear program whilst a new round of talks proceeded. The North Koreans also agreed that the IAEA inspections could continue. In return, Carter secured Clinton’s agreement to Kim’s request that the United States support the sale of two light water proliferation-resistant reactors. Kim had told Carter, according to Creekmore’s account, that “if a commitment is made to furnish us a light water reactor, then we will immediately freeze all our nuclear activities.”

The Carter mission to Pyongyang was successful because he and Kim were able to better understand one another by sitting down face-to-face. They developed, during these personal meetings, a bond of trust that helped to bridge the distrust between their two nations. As we argue in our new books, this is not a one-off example. Face-to-face diplomacy has long allowed leaders and policymakers to both better understand each other’s intentions and develop trust in one another that they will live up to commitments. Crucially, by meeting for face-to-face negotiations, leaders, or their representatives in the case of Carter, can often find ways to meet the interests of both sides without resorting to military action.

In short, it may be time to send Carter, or a similar surrogate more amenable to the president, back to Pyongyang. A crisis that threatened to engulf the region over two decades ago was defused by face-to-face diplomacy and it is time to explore whether the current crisis can similarly be de-escalated.

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http://thediplomat.com/2017/05/time-for-jimmy-carter-to-go-back-to-north-korea/

[Not Ruth]

1. Different Kim

[Rhiannon12866]

2. Kim Il-sung died soon after his meeting with Carter

But his son, Kim Jong-il, respected his father's agreement and had a productive working relationship with SoS Madeline Albright for the rest of Clinton's presidency. When George W Bush* became president, he asked if he couldn't continue working with Albright. The agreement stood until Bush*'s "Axis of Evil" announcement in 2002. Things have gone downhill ever since. Jimmy Carter understood what they wanted - respect - and that was a cheap price to pay for such an important agreement. The "Kims" carry on agreements made by their fathers.