The Daily - Why the North Korea Deal Fell Apart (Again)

Episode Date: March 1, 2019

President Trump was so confident thahe would reach a nuclear pact with North Korea that he scheduled a signing ceremony before an agreement had even been struck. Here’s how it all unraveled. Guest: David E. Sanger, a national security correspondent for The New York Times and the author of “The Perfect Weapon: War, Sabotage, and Fear in the Cyber Age.” For more information on today’s episode, visit nytimes.com/thedaily.

From The New York Times, I'm Michael Barbaro. This is The Daily. Today, President Trump was so confident he would reach a nuclear deal with North Korea that he scheduled a signing ceremony before an agreement had even been struck. How it all fell apart. It's Friday, March 1st.

David Sanger, where are you right now? Well, Michael, I'm in Hanoi. I've been staying in my favorite hotel in Southeast Asia. It's the Metropole. There are pictures of famous guests like Charlie Chaplin and others that are hanging on the wall, big sweeping old staircases, and the best bar in Southeast Asia, the Bamboo Bar,

known for all kinds of exotic drinks and intrigue. But if you walk out a little past the bar, you can go down into a bomb shelter that's left over from the Vietnam War. As soon as I heard that the meeting between President Trump and Kim Jong-un was going to be held in Hanoi, I reserved at the Metropole because I figured,

this has got to be where they're going to meet. And indeed, this is the place where on Wednesday night and then most of the day on Thursday, they came over to hold their conference. And what is the significance of having this summit at this location? Well, Michael, I think picking Vietnam was full of symbolism for the North Koreans. I mean, here's an adversary of the United States, fought a terrible war with us. More than half a million Americans went to go fight at that war. Tens of thousands died. And today, it's fundamentally a partner of the U.S. and a really fast-growing economy, one of the most successful stories in Southeast Asia. And I think the message to Kim Jong-un was, all this can be yours.

David, heading into this meeting in Hanoi, where did things stand between the U.S. and North Korea. You know, Michael, for a quarter century, American presidents have been trying to solve the intractable problem of the North Korean nuclear program. This is a good deal for the United States. North Korea will freeze and then dismantle its nuclear program. Bill Clinton negotiated a big deal in 1994 after the two countries came pretty close to war over the North's nuclear ambitions. South Korea and our other allies will be better protected. The entire world will be safer as we slow the spread of nuclear weapons. And that deal held for a while until the North cheated on it in a few years and started buying a different way to make a bomb. Last night, the government of North Korea proclaimed to the world that it had conducted a nuclear test.

We're working to confirm North Korea's claim. George W. Bush threatened the North Koreans at various moments, but ended up signing a deal with them, and the North Koreans actually blew up part of a reactor at Yongbyon. To demonstrate his commitment, North Korea has said it will destroy the cooling tower of the Yongbyon reactor in front of international television cameras tomorrow.

They rebuilt it later. Say a few words about North Korea's announcement that it has conducted a nuclear test. And President Obama. As well as its decision to attempt a short-range missile launch, who was pretty angered when the North Koreans greeted his first months in office with a nuclear test, ultimately ended up trying a small offer with the North Koreans, and it fell apart, too. We do believe that if there are any signs at any point that North Korea is serious about dialogue around denuclearization

in the Korean Peninsula that we'll be ready to have those conversations. And then came President Trump. The United States has great strength and patience. But if it is forced to defend itself or its allies, we will have no choice but to totally destroy North Korea. Who at first threatened fire and fury and suggested he might go to war with North Korea before he became the first president to actually meet with one of its leaders. And how did that meeting play out? Well, that meeting was last June in Singapore. It was really great. We had a great discussion.

And I think tremendous success. It was tremendously successful. And you'll remember that it was just a day. And we would go back and forth. And then we fell in love. No, really. He wrote me beautiful letters. And they're great letters.

But President Trump, who has always had an affection for authoritarian leaders and dictators, suddenly declared that Kim Jong-un, a man who has sent thousands of people to the gulags, murdered family members who challenged him, was actually a really progressive and interesting leader. I think that he really wants to do a great job for North Korea. I think he wants to denuke.

It's very important. Without that, there's nothing to discuss. That was on the table at the beginning. And you see a total denuclearization of North Korea, so important. And they put together a communique back in June that had a lot of vague promises about denuclearization, about steps the United States would take to normalize its relationship with the North. But almost as soon as they left Singapore... Well, I think the most reasonable assessment you can make of it is that we don't know if it's going to work out or not.

I'm deeply skeptical of the summit because nothing was actually achieved. Will he accept inspectors inside his country to verify the destruction of nuclear weapons? People were wondering, what does this add up to? Is this going to turn into real action? And what was the answer? Well, the answer was there wasn't much action. Koreans kept saying, no, you have to relieve sanctions on us and improve the atmosphere of our relationship before we'll feel secure enough to even begin to dismantle any part of our nuclear program. And the administration's position for a number of months was, no, you don't understand. You have to give up all of your weapons. And as you're getting close to the end of that process, then we'll start lifting sanctions. But you have to trust us that we'll

do that. And they got stuck in that for a while. Mike Pompeo, the Secretary of State, went over to North Korea to try to turn that communique that had been signed in Singapore into something real. And Kim Jong-un wouldn't even really see him. So it's been very slow, and in part it's been slow because the North Koreans have said, this is an issue so big that it can only be settled by the two top leaders, only by President Trump and Kim. So David, just to be clear,

after round one of these negotiations last June between Trump and Kim. So David, just to be clear, after round one of these negotiations last June between Trump and Kim, the issue is around basically who acts first, the U.S. lifting these economic sanctions designed to discourage North Korea from developing or keeping nuclear weapons, or North Korea giving up those nuclear weapons or stopping its nuclear development? That's absolutely right, because as in any such negotiation, Michael, no one wants to lose their leverage. The only leverage the North Koreans have

is that they've got the nuclear weapons. If North Korea didn't have nuclear weapons, we'd probably only think about them on World Food Day, and they know it. And for the United States, the only real leverage we have are these international sanctions approved by the United Nations. And as soon as they're lifted, the incentive for North Korea to do anything, especially destroy the weapons that it has invested in for 40 years, would disappear. David, given how the first meeting went, which is that an agreement was reached that was vague

and not all that meaningful, and it quickly began to unravel right afterwards, was there an indication that the negotiations would be approached differently this time with the idea of greater success? Absolutely, Michael. This time they wanted to go into it better prepared. There was a sense that you would have the agreement pretty well wrapped up and put on paper before the two leaders met. And that's pretty traditional in diplomatic meetings.

But on that very sensitive issue of who moves first, the answer was a sort of highly choreographed set of steps in which the North Koreans would take certain steps toward denuclearization and the Americans would slowly lift some peripheral sanctions and allow South Korea and North Korea to resume trade. So both sides were sort of moving in baby steps. So what would be different this time, according to these preparations, is that instead of there being confusion or a deadlock

over who would act first, the U.S. or North Korea, both countries would agree to take small, simultaneous steps to create progress on denuclearization and sanction lifting and that that would create a better outcome. That's absolutely right. And in fact, President Trump seemed so eager to make that deal and so confident that it would come together that there was some suggestion that maybe he was too eager, that the signaling to the North Koreans would be that he wanted a deal at

any cost. In fact, they were so eager, Michael, that they set up a signing ceremony for a communique that the two leaders hadn't really approved yet, and then a big elaborate lunch to celebrate it all that they were planning to hold inside the hotel. On Thursday afternoon, the table had already been set with fine china and the water already poured into the glasses. Okay, so what actually happens? Well, the first thing that happened was that Kim Jong-un arrived in his armored train. He doesn't like to fly, so he took it from North Korea up through China and then to the Vietnam border

and then switched to a car and drove down to Hanoi. President Trump was more traditional. He came in Air Force One, and they met on Wednesday night at the Metropole. So we're going to have a very busy day tomorrow, and we'll probably have a pretty quick dinner. And a lot of things are going to be solved, I hope, and I think it'll lead to wonderful, it'll lead to really a wonderful situation along the way. They've had dinner at the Metropole, everything seemed warm, and it seemed like everything went exactly as planned.

And what happens next? went exactly as planned. And what happens next? Well, on Thursday morning, I was sitting in the breakfast room at the Metropole, enjoying a good bowl of pho, when all of a sudden I looked up in the window and the president's motorcade shows up. I see him walk into the building and he begins to meet with Kim. And then we started getting these funny little indications from the reporters who were in the pool, the small group that follows the president around. They reported that the lunch had been canceled. Well, that seemed strange since they'd already set the table. Then they reported there would be no signing of the communique.

So we began to wonder, has something here gone truly wrong? So we began to wonder, has something here gone truly wrong? And then a statement arrived from Sarah Sanders, the press secretary, who said there would be no communique, that the talks had ended early, that President Trump wanted to leave earlier, so he was going to hold the press conference a bit earlier. And it became pretty clear pretty fast that whatever they were trying to accomplish had really fallen apart. Ladies and gentlemen, the President of the United States and the Secretary of State of the United

States. And then we all show up at this news conference in a big ballroom at the JW Marriott Hanoi and hope that President Trump will explain to us what happened. Well, thank you very much. I want to begin by thanking the prime minister and president of Vietnam. And at this news conference, what do you learn has actually happened? Why these negotiations seem to have fallen apart? happened, why these negotiations seem to have fallen apart. So what was interesting, Michael, was what didn't happen. On North Korea, we just left Chairman Kim. We had a really, I think, a very productive time. We thought and I thought and Secretary Pompeo felt that it wasn't a good thing to be signing anything. It became clear from listening to President Trump

that the United States was not comfortable with the small number of concessions that the North Koreans wanted to give in return for a big lifting of sanctions. Basically, they wanted the sanctions lifted in their entirety, and we couldn't do that. And President Trump said outright that he was afraid we would all criticize him for giving away too much

and not getting enough, so he didn't sign. I could have signed an agreement today, and then you people would have said, oh, what a terrible deal, what a terrible thing he did. No, you'll have to be prepared to walk. And then, true dealmaker that he likes to say he is, he declared to all of us, you know, sometimes you have to walk away. So we continue to work and we'll see, but we had to walk away from that particular suggestion. We had to walk away from that.

It became pretty clear as the negotiations went on that all that preparation work was really for naught, that Chairman Kim still wanted almost all the sanctions on his country lifted, even though he wasn't prepared to give up, at least at that time, all of his nuclear facilities. So just as last time, the problem is timing. The North Koreans want the U.S. to act first, lift those sanctions, but they are unwilling to simultaneously give up their nuclear arsenal as the U.S. wants. Yeah, they're stuck in the classic who goes first conundrum. And despite the fact that President Trump had said over the summer to some of his supporters that he and Kim Jong-un had fallen in love and that they had deepest respect for each other, they clearly could not move off of this

point. David, did you get a sense during this news conference or even afterwards about why Kim would agree to something ahead of time, that both countries would give up something at the same time in this negotiation, and then would backtrack during the actual summit? I think the interesting question is, in the end, did Kim ever really intend to agree to give away, even over time, all of the nuclear infrastructure that his father and his grandfather had invested in so heavily for the past 40 years? Or did he think that he could get all the economic benefits and still hold on to at least enough of his nuclear arsenal that he had the ultimate protection if things went bad with the United States? that he had the ultimate protection if things went bad with the United States. He may have never intended to negotiate in good faith the way the U.S. had hoped he would.

Yeah, I think that's right. And meanwhile, the Americans had their own delusions out here, which was that a foreign leader like Kim Jong-un would ultimately decide that it was better to open up their economy and get the benefits of trade and become rich because Donald Trump had told them they could build beautiful hotels along their beaches and that they would make that trade for their nuclear weapons. And I think anybody who's watched the North Koreans over the years have realized they might give up some of their nuclear weapons, but it's almost unimaginable they would give up all of them. So it seems pretty clear that no progress was made at this summit. But I wonder if the fact

that the U.S. president and the North Korean leader are even talking, talking this frequently, dining together, exchanging these pleasantries, that that means that the thing that we most feared from the beginning, which is a nuclear conflict with North Korea, that that seems inherently lower as a possibility, as a result of these discussions, and that that is a kind of progress, even if there's no deal. Yes, I think that's right, Michael, because if you think that the threat is a combination of what the mood is between the two countries

and what the North Korean capability is, then certainly the mood had improved. The problem is that the North's capabilities kept growing, that even after the meeting in Singapore, the North Koreans kept producing nuclear material. We think they kept making some more bombs. We think that they improved their missiles. Now, at the news conference, President David Sanger from the New York Times. I know, David. Six months ago when you spoke, or eight months ago in Singapore, I asked him whether or not he believed that the North Koreans not only would be willing

to give up the weapons that we knew about, but also some that are outside the main nuclear complex at Yongbyon, where the United States has found some secret facilities. Continue to produce more nuclear material. And that's been a pressure point on you because he's showing that the arsenal is getting larger while this is going on.

And what did he say in response to your question? Well, some people, David, are saying that and some people are denying that. They have shots from above, way above, and some people are saying that and some people aren't. You know, in his answer, he's had a hemmed and hawed for a bit and tried to go question the intelligence that they were adding to their nuclear stockpile

even while he was negotiating with them. But I could have taken that out today, but I think you and others would have said we didn't get enough for what we'd be giving up. So, and I, you know... And what did Trump say during the news conference about where the relationship between he and Kim Jong-un stands?

This wasn't a walk away like you get up and walk out. No, this was very friendly. We shook hands. We, you know, there's a warmth that we have. Now, I hope that stays. I think it will. You know, know, there's a warmth that we have. And I hope that stays. I think it will. You know, Michael, he was putting the best spin possible on it.

He was making the argument that this wasn't the end of things, that he was willing to meet again. But I think the relationship was very warm. And when we walked away, it was a very friendly walk. That the teams would go out and meet again. But let's face it, Michael, the President of the United States just flew 8,000 miles, halfway around the world, at a time that he's under tremendous pressure in the United States from the Cohn testimony,

the Mueller investigation, and the deal fell apart in his hands. So, David, where did the past 48 hours leave the U.S. and North Korea? You know, Michael, in the best case scenario, this is just a temporary blip. You know, all negotiations hit snags and they'll get past this. In the worst case, the North Koreans will decide to escalate, to put more pressure on the United States. And they would put that pressure on the U.S. by ramping up their production of nuclear

material, building better missiles, maybe even resuming testing of those missiles or nuclear devices, even though Kim Jong-un apparently promised to President Trump that he wouldn't do that. And, you know, it comes at a really bad moment, Michael, because this is a time when people are once again worried that we are heading backwards in the nuclear world. The U.S. is pulling out of the INF Treaty, the Intermediate Nuclear Forces Treaty with Russia. And some people fear that could lead to an arms race, not only with Russia, but perhaps with China, which builds that kind of missile. The Iranians are wondering whether or not they ought to pull out of the nuclear accord

that got negotiated with President Obama in 2015, because, of course, President Trump has taken the U.S. out of that agreement. And you're beginning to see the Chinese build more and more capable weapons. And now we've got a renewed conflict between two nuclear-capable states, India and Pakistan. So suddenly, for people who thought that the Cold War was something their grandparents went through, they may have the opportunity to go through it again themselves. And that's not a good place to be in an era when we've got more distrust in the international system than any of us remember in many years. David, thank you very much. Thank you, Michael. Great to be with you.

On Thursday afternoon, after we spoke with David, North Korean officials held a news conference of their own in Hanoi and offered a different explanation for why the negotiations broke down. The U.N. is part of the U.N. During the news conference, the North Korean officials said that the country had sought to lift some, but not all, economic sanctions, as Trump had stated, and warned that the U.S. had missed a, quote, once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to strike a deal. The officials said that there are no plans for future meetings between Trump and Kim. We'll be right back.

Here's what else you need to know today. On Thursday, the Attorney General of Israel recommended indicting the country's Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, on charges of fraud, bribery, and breach of trust in a major embarrassment for Netanyahu just weeks before he faces re-election. The indictments revolve around three cases in which Netanyahu is accused of performing political favors for wealthy allies in return for expensive gifts or flattering media coverage. Don't believe all the spinners. I intend to serve you as the Prime Minister for many years. expensive GIFs or flattering media coverage. During a news conference on Thursday night, Netanyahu defended his conduct and dismissed the impending indictments.

But the charges could complicate his path to a new term as prime minister, since they raised the prospect that he will be under indictment by the time of the April 9th election. And the Times reports that the Trump administration has developed a peace plan for Afghanistan that envisions withdrawing all U.S. troops over three to five years and creating a new Afghan government that shares power with the Taliban. The plan is designed to fill in the details of a framework agreed to last month in which the U.S. would end its military presence in Afghanistan in return for assurances from the Taliban, once a sworn enemy of the U.S., that it would prohibit terror groups from operating in the country.

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Special thanks to Sam Dolmack, Michaela Bouchard, and Stella Tan. That's it for The Daily. I'm Michael Barbaro. See you on Monday.