The failure of high-level discussions may force Washington and Pyongyang to start more effective working-level talks.

President Trump caught the world by surprise once again yesterday with a decision not to sign a deal with his North Korean counterpart, Chairman Kim Jong-un, in Hanoi, Vietnam. While walking away is a common tactic in working-level negotiation, what happened in Hanoi was a rare case and the least expected outcome.

Read the full article on Axios.

Trump and Kim share a common desire for development.

At first glance U.S. President Donald Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un seem like an unlikely pair. A few years back they were calling each other “Rocket Man” and a “dotard,” and tension between the United States and North Korea was escalating rapidly in 2017. But in a few days they are slated to meet for the second time, and according to Trump they had “fallen in love” not long after their first encounter. What could have created such intimate bond between the two? The common interest that brings the two together is the desire for development — economic development in the case of Kim and property development in the case of Trump.

Read the full article on The Diplomat.

This piece originally appeared at Brookings.

The Trump administration has finished off the 1987 Intermediate-range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty, a treaty mortally wounded by Russia’s deployment of a banned intermediate-range missile. That leaves the 2010 New Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (New START) as the sole agreement limiting U.S. and Russian nuclear forces.

New START has less than two years to run. At the February 15-16 Munich Security Conference, a senior Russian official reiterated Moscow’s readiness to extend the treaty. The administration, however, continues its odd reluctance to take up that offer. House Democrats should use their power of the purse on the issue.

WHY EXTENSION MAKES SENSE

Signed in 2010, New START limits the United States and Russia each to no more than 700 strategic ballistic missiles and bombers, and no more than 1,550 deployed strategic warheads. Those limits took full effect in February 2018. Both sides have complied, although technical questions have arisen. Russian officials question the way in which the U.S. military converted some launchers so that they would not count.

By its terms, New START runs until February 5, 2021. It can be extended for up to five years by simple agreement between the U.S. and Russian presidents.

When asked about extension in 2017, administration officials said they would wait to complete the nuclear posture review and to see if the Russians met the New START limits. Both of those boxes were checked more than a year ago. Administration officials now say they are studying extension but see no need to rush.

New START extension is in the U.S. interest.

First, extension would constrain Russian strategic nuclear forces until 2026. It makes little sense to let the treaty lapse in 2021, when Russia has hot production lines churning out new missiles, submarines, and bombers.

Second, New START extension would not impact U.S. strategic modernization plans. They are sized to fit within New START’s limits. Moreover, the United States will not start producing significant numbers of replacement missiles, submarines, and bombers until the second half of the 2020s.

Third, extension would continue the flow of information that the sides share with each other about their strategic forces. That comes from data exchanges, notifications, on-site inspections and other verification measures, all of which end if New START lapses. Making up for that loss of information would require a costly investment in new national technical means such as reconnaissance satellites.

WHY WE SHOULD WORRY

Extension should be a no-brainer. However, in a White House that operates on its own facts and at times with an indecipherable logic, extension is not a given.

President Trump does not seem to understand much about nuclear arms control. During his first telephone conversation with President Putin, Trump reportedly dismissed New START as a bad deal done by his predecessor. He has taken delight in undoing the accomplishments of President Obama (witness the Iran nuclear accord).

National Security Advisor Bolton shows disdain for arms control and has criticized New START. One of its faults, according to Mr. Bolton: It provides for equal limits on the United States and Russia. He felt the treaty should allow the U.S. military to have more. (U.S. diplomats would have had an interesting time trying to negotiate that.) Asked about New START extension, Mr. Bolton notes two alternatives: renegotiation and a new treaty modeled on the 2002 Strategic Offensive Reductions Treaty (SORT).

Renegotiation would allow U.S. officials to try to improve New START, perhaps with more intrusive verification measures, or even broadening the agreement to cover non-strategic nuclear weapons. Moscow, however, would seek changes as well, such as constraints on missile defenses—anathema to Washington.

Renegotiation would prove difficult, take considerable time, and have at best uncertain prospects for success. A wiser course would extend New START and then seek a renegotiation or a new follow-on treaty.

As for SORT, negotiated by Mr. Bolton, it limited deployed warheads only. Mr. Putin accepted that in 2002, but Russian officials have long since made clear that limits should apply to warheads and delivery vehicles, as they do in New START.

SORT, moreover, was “sort of” arms control. Lacking agreed definitions, counting rules or monitoring measures, it was unverifiable. In doing their own counts on the honor system, the U.S. and Russian militaries may not have even counted the same things.

Neither Secretary of State Pompeo nor Acting Secretary of Defense Patrick Shanahan has shown interest in championing New START. The uniformed military leadership argued the treaty’s value in the past, but Chairman of the Joint Chiefs Joseph Dunford recently has hedged.

While ratification of a treaty requires consent from two-thirds of the Senate, the president alone can decide to leave a treaty. The Trump administration did not consult with either Congress or allies on withdrawal before Trump announced his intention to pull out of the treaty last October.

HOUSE DEMOCRATS TO THE RESCUE?

While the Trump administration shows little interest in arms control, it does want funding to modernize U.S. strategic forces. Democrats should recognize that and force the White House’s hand.

The U.S. strategic triad is aging. Ballistic missile submarines are the leg of the triad most in need of urgent replacement. They should be funded. Replacing intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs) or building the B-21 bomber, however, are less urgent needs. As they work on the appropriations for the 2020 defense budget, House Democrats should make clear to the White House and the Pentagon that money for ICBM modernization or the B-21 would need to be paired with extension of New START. That will get attention.

Retaining a strategic triad makes sense (though the need for 400 deployed ICBMs is debatable). Retaining New START makes sense as well. House Democrats should simply insist on a trade.

In May 2018, Stanford Center for International Security and Cooperation (CISAC) scholars Siegfried Hecker, Robert Carlin, and Elliot Serbin released an in-depth report analyzing the nuclear history of North Korea between 1992 and 2017 alongside a historical research-based “roadmap” for denuclearization.

Since then, tensions between North Korea and South Korea have thawed. United States President Trump met with Kim Jong-un in Singapore in June, and another U.S.-North Korea summit is planned for later this month.

Today, the CISAC researchers release a 2018 update to their report, chronicling and analyzing historic developments in North Korea over the past year. In this Q&A with Katy Gabel Chui, CISAC Senior Fellow and former Director of the Los Alamos National Laboratory Siegfried Hecker shares what the team learned:

Your research demonstrates that South Korean, North Korean, and U.S. efforts in 2018 were able to lower tensions and the threat of war on the Korean Peninsula. How? What actions were most effective toward this end?

At the end of 2017, the Moon Jae-in administration in South Korea made secret overtures to the Kim Jong-un regime. Kim Jong-un responded positively in his 2018 New Year Speech, proposing to send North Korean athletes to the South as part of a joint delegation for the 2018 Winter Olympics in Seoul.  He also initiated serious diplomatic overtures to Washington. These efforts led to the North/South Summit in April and the historic Singapore Summit in June.

Yet, in spite of these positive initiatives, you did not rate U.S. and North Korean diplomacy at your highest level, why is that?

We stopped one level short for both (a G2 instead of a G3) because progress in talks that followed the summit quickly hit a wall when the US side called for the North to produce a full declaration of its nuclear weapons program, to which Pyongyang responded angrily. The rest of the year was up and down. Nevertheless, the Singapore Summit took the critical step away from the brink of war. The North and South also continued to make remarkable progress toward reconciliation with two more presidential summits.

Most of the focus in the U.S. has been on an apparent failure of North Korea to denuclearize. But you note in your research that the Singapore summit pledged normalization and denuclearization. Why has progress stalled?

First, denuclearization is a poorly defined concept. We should focus on the elimination of the North’s nuclear weapons, the means of production and means of delivery. Second, Washington has so far not taken steps toward normalization. It has insisted on maintaining maximum pressure and sanctions, which Pyongyang considers incompatible with normalization.

Nevertheless, you claim that the threat posed by North Korea was substantially reduced. What about the North’s nuclear capabilities – were these reduced in 2018?

The diplomatic initiatives have greatly reduced the threat. Our study, which looks at the details of how the capabilities have changed in 2018, concludes that the rapid escalation of overall capabilities in 2017 and prior years was halted and in some cases rolled back.

But your research also shows North Korea continued to operate its nuclear weapons complex in 2018, and that it is still producing plutonium and highly enriched uranium.

We are not surprised that North Korea has not halted its fissile materials production in absence of formal negotiations. Our analysis of open-source satellite imagery of the Yongbyon complex led us to estimate they may have added sufficient plutonium and highly enriched uranium for an additional 5 to 7 nuclear weapons on top of our 2017 estimate of approximately 30 weapons.

There have also been reports that it has continued to maintain, produce, and deploy its land-based ballistic missiles. These activities don’t look like the North is denuclearizing.

In our study, we look at the three requisites for a nuclear arsenal – fissile materials, weaponization (that is design, build, and test), and delivery. The North did continue to produce fissile materials. But it took the remarkable step to end nuclear testing and long-range missile testing at a time during which North Korea had been rapidly increasing the sophistication of its nuclear weapons and missiles and their destructive power and reach. Therefore, we conclude that the North not only halted that rapid advance but also rolled back the threat we judged the North’s nuclear and missile programs to pose in 2017.

It sounds like there is a long way to go to denuclearize. In May of last year, you released a framework for denuclearization of North Korea based around a “halt, roll back and eliminate” process. Where does North Korea stand, if anywhere, in that process today?

Our color charts track the progress. Contrary to what we have heard in the media, North Korea has actually halted and rolled back some nuclear activities, with the most important being the end of nuclear and missile testing, which in turn, has significant consequences. In fact, in 2018 it did not flight test missiles of any range. However, the road to final elimination will be long and difficult, especially because of the serious trust deficit between Washington and Pyongyang. We suggested a 10-year time frame last year.

Haven’t you also suggested a way to speed up that process?

Yes, we propose that North Korea, South Korea, and the U.S. explore cooperative efforts to demilitarize North Korea’s nuclear and missile programs and convert them to civilian nuclear and space programs. Such cooperation has the potential of accelerating the elimination of nuclear weapons and nuclear weapons program. It will, in the long term, also greatly improve the prospects of adequate verification.

How do you get North Korea to go along with any of these ideas?

That’s the job of our negotiators. When Special Representative Stephen Biegun was here at Stanford recently, he showed a lot of flexibility to have the U.S. phase denuclearization with normalization. I think that’s what it will take. But a lot of hard work lies ahead.

Full Report: A Comprehensive History of North Korea's Nuclear Program: 2018 Update