Today, Explained - We'll never have Singapore

Episode Date: May 24, 2018

President Trump cancelled his historic Singapore summit with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un today. The announcement comes after a North Korean official called Vice President Pence “ignorant and stupid” for likening their country to Libya, which crumbled after it gave up its nuclear program. Vox’s Alex Ward explains what went wrong and why war is back on the table. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Johnny here is Vox reporter in Hong Kong presently with your Quip electric toothbrush, which which I've heard travels nicely I know you've hardly been sleeping and hardly been brushing, but it's been a few days of traveling now Yeah, and I've been yes brushing my teeth I have been brushing my teeth in the morning and in the evening as it's now I think becoming a habit finally and Yeah, they're right. This this toothbrush is pretty darn good for travel, I have to say. The White House has a gift shop online, and earlier this week it started selling commemorative coins to mark the upcoming summit between the United States and North Korea. The coins feature the faces of President Donald Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong-un.

They're staring each other down in front of their respective flags under the words, Peace Talks. Today, the item was discounted and updated. It says, the ornament will be made whether or not the summit occurs as scheduled, which is for the best because President Trump just released a letter with his signature and everything telling Chairman Kim Jong-un from North Korea this time it's off. Alex Ward is a defense reporter at Vox. It's by far like the worst breakup letter I've ever seen. It says, You talk about your nuclear capabilities, but ours are so massive and powerful

that I pray to God they will never have to be used. I felt a wonderful dialogue was building up between you and me, and ultimately it is only that dialogue that matters. Someday I look very much forward to meeting you. In the meantime, I want to thank you for the release of hostages who are now home with their families. That was a beautiful gesture and was very much appreciated.

If you change your mind having to do with this most important summit, please do not hesitate to call me or write. He's basically reverting back to the, I have a bigger button, so be very careful. I have a bigger arsenal than you do, but I still kind of want to talk. I'd still like to meet. So, you know, like I have nukes, so call me maybe. Well, I feel like there's a lot of news here to unpack. Maybe we can do it sort of step by step. As far as I know, North Korea just dismantled what was reportedly its only nuclear site, which felt like progress. So how did things fall apart?

So in March, Trump agreed to a summit based on the invitation by North Korea, which was relayed by South Korean officials. President Trump appreciated the briefing and said he would meet Kim Jong-un. And since then, there's been this scurry to make a summit happen, finding a date, finding a location, and then most importantly, what they will talk about. So how did that fall apart? That started when you had John Bolton, President Donald Trump's mustachioed national security advisor, go on different news shows, Sunday news shows. Will President Trump insist that Kim give up, ship out all of his nuclear weapons,

all of his nuclear fuel, all of his ballistic missiles before the U.S. makes any concessions. Yeah, I think that's what denuclearization means. And we have very much in mind the Libya model from 2003, 2004. What's the Libya model? When Libya gave up its middling nuclear program in 2003, they did it fairly quickly and had no programs. The reason this was a bad thing to say is because in 2011, with American help, Western air power deposed the Libyan dictator Muammar

Gaddafi. And there were videos of him being tortured publicly. It's pretty bad, right? So Kim Jong-un very likely internalized that. The lesson that North Korea has learned is we need to have nuclear weapons. Otherwise, there could be an American led invasion of North Korea deposing me. Were other people in the Trump administration banding about this message sort of, you know, we're going to do the Olivia model or was it just Bolton? So Vice President Mike Pence said the same thing. On top of that, kind of went even further. You know, as the president made clear, you know, this will only end like the Libyan model ended if Kim Jong-un doesn't make a deal. It effectively boiled down to make a deal or we will kill you.

So how did North Korea react to Bolton's statements and Pence's statements? So that's when things started to go really bad. Then you had high-level North Korean officials start to put out statements saying, like, you know, we might reconsider the U.S. summit now. You know, this is irresponsible. And that kind of cycle started to keep coming. Like, every time a U.S. official went on, you had Pompeo, Pence, Bolton,

they would talk about, again, the Libya model. North Korea would keep coming out with statements saying, like, you know, we might, we're reconsidering the summit. This may not happen. And you guys are actually threatening us. And on top of that, we have never said we're going to give up our nuclear weapons. You guys keep insisting that we will. That's an imposition.

We're not going to do that. And now we're here. So now President Trump has canceled the summit. He's canceled the summit. We're not going to be in Singapore on June 12th. And what's his reasoning exactly? Based on the tremendous anger and open hostility displayed in your recent statement, I feel it is inappropriate at this time to have this long planned meeting. So it seems like he's reacting to the angry statements from North Korea based on their animus towards Bolton and Pence right now. So John Bolton canceled the North Korea summit.

That's what they say. What I want to be very careful of here, though, is North Korea has a long, long, long history of saying they're going to do the extraordinary thing and then pulling out or finding some way to scuttle it. North Korea clearly didn't like what Bolton and Pence and the administration was saying. That's clear. But it's also possible that North Korea used that opportunity to find a way to scuttle the deal

or at least pressure Trump to give North Korea what it wanted. It's hard to know exactly how sincere North Korea was about this, right? Trump canceled it, clearly, based on this letter. And now we don't know what happens. What does North Korea do next? That's in a minute on Today Explained.

Johnny, you started at getquip.com slash explain. The brushes start at 25 bucks. You upgraded to a Chrome one. You're going to get a free refill soon. But more important than any of that, you became a twice a day brusher, right? So, yeah, I think this has become a habit, this twice a day thing. I mean, maybe everyone needs to be called out on a podcast ad to really push them to brush twice a day. But it worked for me.

I think I need to as well because I'm eating a lot of like meat and stuff, you know, like dim sum. And it's just brushing is becoming more imperative with the cuisine here. Right. And you're in Hong Kong. And last we heard, you were going to go check out some houses that are the size of coffins? So the thing is with Hong Kong, it's actually the most expensive housing market in the world. And so basically people every year have to squeeze into smaller and smaller spaces because they can't afford any more space.

And what I'm here doing is basically telling the story of why that is. It's a really interesting macroeconomic policy story that contributes to these insane prices. And yeah, that's kind of what I'm trying to chase down here. Can't wait to see what you come up with. And, you know, thank God quip toothbrushes are reasonably priced. Was this always too good to be true? It was always really unlikely that they would come to some sort of agreement on nuclear weapons based on the two positions that they had laid out. Yeah. The U.S. said, dismantle your nuclear program very quickly. And what we'll do is we will give you some economic inducements in order to help your infrastructure and electricity and basically bring American companies in or at least just financial assistance.

Yeah. And the North Korean side, they said, well, we might give some concessions away. And that could mean giving up its intercontinental ballistic missiles in exchange for some concessions on the American side. But the big issue there is North Korea wanted to do that slowly. So you kind of had this big bang approach on the U.S. side and really just give us everything. And North Korea is saying, we can give you some slowly. Those were two irreconcilable differences. And what usually happens, right, in regular diplomacy

is you have lower level staffers work out the differences behind the scenes, come to some sort of framework, and then the big guys, in this case, Trump and Kim, come into the meeting and they finalize the deal. But Trump and Kim couldn't meet. They just had nothing to talk about. They were on completely different sides of this issue.

Is this ultimately a lesson that like flipping diplomacy on its head and just saying like, fuck it, let's just go for it, doesn't work? There's a reason we do things through certain channels? You could learn that lesson. I mean, there's also an argument to say that, you know, this is the furthest we've ever gone diplomacy-wise really with North Korea. I mean, we've had now Secretary of State Mike Pompeo. He's met with Kim twice.

Yeah. We've never had anything like that. And you can make an argument that Trump has had the most success diplomatically with North Korea ever. Yeah. And let's be clear, Trump was able to rescue three American hostages from North Korea. And maybe he got one of their nuclear sites completely destroyed, shut down. Right.

There are issues about whether it was usable or not, but still, that's kind of nice. It's a thing. It's a thing. If it's a thing. Right. But there are clearly points on the board for us. But then ultimately, where does this leave us? The United States got some hostages back, got a nuclear site destroyed, but any progress

towards a summit was just a race. Right. But now we have to wonder what happens next, right? And based on experts I've talked to, and I should give credit especially to MIT's Vipin Narang, who walked me through four possible scenarios of what may happen now that the summit is canceled. Give them to me. Scenario one? Scenario one, they just delay the summit. North Korea and the U.S. go, we're not going to meet now. They will find a different day, but they will have this conversation in the future.

Okay. The lower level staffers will work out some sort of middle ground possibly. Then Trump and Kim come in and finalize the deal. By the way, these scenarios are ranked from like best case to worst case. Okay. So that's the best case scenario, right? That's the good one. That's the good one. Scenario two?

Scenario two, the summit is delayed, but they make no progress. Nothing ever happens. Big picture, we've never really been this calm with North Korea in a really long time. So they might not make progress towards the new summit, but the status quo holds. Scenario three? Scenario three is when it starts to get bad. As Vipin put it, the temperature rises just as quickly as it falls and we go back to 2017.

In 2017, the U.S. and North Korea spent an inordinate amount of time threatening to bomb each other. They will be met with fire and fury like the world has never seen. And you had North Korea basically, you know, as Kim Jong-un

said, vowing to make President Trump, quote, pay dearly, calling him a mentally deranged dotard or senile old man. And there was a real feeling that the U.S. and North Korea were going to war. So what's scenario number four? Scenario number four is they do the unfathomable and they go to war. The U.S. and North Korea realize diplomacy has not worked and now America cannot stand a nuclear North Korea. And so in order to forcibly disarm it, we have to go to war. So those are all the hypotheticals. But what about right now? Was this some kind of a win for North Korea? They wanted the U.S. to cancel this meeting. They wanted to look like they were the reasonable ones and that the U.S. was extorting them to give up its nuclear weapons.

And then when the U.S. would not change its position and in fact threatened Kim directly, right, with this Libya model talk, that looks bad on the U.S. Right, because the whole point of saying we'll talk is to talk. So you're sort of in this moment where North Korea lost what it really wanted, which was recognition on the world stage, but it did make the U.S. look bad in this moment. Just a few weeks ago, when the United States pulled out of the Iran nuclear deal, the thinking was, how does this make the country look for its upcoming negotiations with North Korea? Now the United States has pulled out of those negotiations. So how does the country look on a global stage? I think what we've learned from this month, right, we pulled out of the Iran deal in May and we pulled out of a possible summit with Kim in May.

So this month has taught us that Trump may not be the most trustworthy when it comes to keeping America's word on past deals. And he may not be that trustworthy when he's trying to make future deals. Now, it's hard to trustworthy when he's trying to make future deals. Now, it's hard to know what will happen when Trump leaves. But at least in this moment in time, as long as he's the Oval Office occupant, it's going to be very, very hard for other countries to trust his word. Even our own Pentagon says that North Korea views nuclear weapons as a safeguard against a U.S.-led invasion. So if our own Pentagon is telling our own leadership that, then it's really hard to ask North Korea to give up that thing.

So I don't understand, deal-making-wise, why you're asking for the one thing our own intelligence community and our own Pentagon are saying they will not give. And maybe it doesn't matter anymore, right? I mean, based on what President Trump said today, it seems like the United States is already heading down a different path. I've spoken to General Mattis and the Joint Chiefs of Staff and our military, which is by far the most powerful anywhere in the world that has been greatly enhanced recently, as you all know, is ready if necessary. You have to give Trump some sort of credit in the sense that he has been truthful in what he has said.

Right. In the sense of like, I'm going to pull out of the Paris agreement. I'm going to pull out of the Iran deal. But on North Korea, he said, I will promise that North Korea will never get an ICBM. It has it. It also has a hydrogen bomb. And now he's vowing that a nuclear North Korea will not exist on his watch. So that scares me. Now that there's no diplomacy to be had, does now the president decide that he has to make the toughest choice,

which is go to war in order to ensure that his promise is kept, that there will be no nuclear North Korea on his watch. Alex Ward writes about defense at Vox. You can hear a lot more about today's North Korean news on another Vox podcast. It's called Worldly, and it's available wherever podcasts are downloaded. It's produced by Bird Pinkerton, who helped us today with our show. Thanks, Bird. I'm Sean Ramos from This Is Today Explained. Irene Noguchi is our executive producer. Bridget McCarthy is our editor. Noam Hassenfeld and Luke Vanderplug produce. Afim Shapiro is our engineer and the ambiguous Breakmaster Cylinder makes music for us. Julie Bogan runs our social media. We're on Twitter at today underscore explained.

And today explained is produced in association with Stitcher. And we're part of the Vox Media Podcast Network. Johnny, I know your schedule must be slammed now that you're brushing twice a day with your Quip electric toothbrush. But what else is on the agenda for your trip to Hong Kong? So, yeah, tomorrow I am going to go interview a guy who makes neon signs, which should be pretty cool. Nice. I look forward to hearing about it. Also, you sound very tired. Are you cramming in too much? I'm, like, I walked 15 miles yesterday and another, like, 10 today and today and all in like four hours of sleep.

All right, bud. Brush your teeth and get some rest. All right, Sean. See you later. Bye. Here's another thing. One of the best all-time politics podcasts around is the Political Gab Fest. The people over there at that show practically invented the political podcast, to be honest.

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