With heightened tensions on the Korean Peninsula and ahead of U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry’s first official visit to Asia, Douglas Paal and James Schoff discussed the North Korea threat and shifting regional dynamics.
TOM CARVER: Good morning everyone. My name is Tom Carver. I’m vice president of communications at Carnegie and this is a media call on Secretary of State Kerry’s trip next week in which he goes to the G8 meeting in London, South Korea, China, Japan and we’re just hearing this morning possibly Turkey too. This call will be on the record and the transcript will be available for anyone if you want to check quotes and so forth afterwards. We’ll put it up on the website as soon as possible.
So I’m pleased that we have with us today Doug Paal, who runs the Asia program here at Carnegie, long time Asia veteran, was U.S. representative to Taiwan, served in the NSC and for two presidents as the director of Asian Affairs and also served in the embassies in Singapore and Beijing.
And Jim Schoff, Japan scholar and South Korea, was senior adviser on East Asia for our Secretary of Defense and worked for the DoD on the strategic planning for Japan and South Korea. So why don't we just kick off with you Doug and Jim, make a few comments and then we’ll try to answer any questions.
DOUGLAS PAAL: Thanks very much. Good morning everybody. Doug Paal here. I think this trip should be properly saying as kind of introductory house calls by the new secretary of state to his colleagues in the region. There’s a little bit of work to do that’s unique to this period of time because new President Park in Korea will be visiting in early May to the United States and there’s quite a bit of symbolism built around that visit.
In fact the Korean foreign minister is today in town and met with Kerry yesterday, as you would know, and so a lot of the work is already being done. This is just a chance for Kerry to pass through to say hello to President Park get familiar and make a couple of statements, identify himself with the administration’s policy on East Asia generally properly known as the rebalancing the pivot. He has already had his meeting with his counterpart, Foreign Minister Kishida Prime Minister Abe has already been here, so this is again, filling in his need to be seen in the region to show the Americans. So this is – it’s a rather thin visit. It’s very quick, three days three countries.
The one place where he has not met before a minister properly is China. He’s going to meet the new Minister Wang Yi, who in my experience is a more traditionally diplomatic, firm but nonetheless softer in manner kind of diplomat than we’ve had with Foreign Minister Yang Jiechi over the last 10 years.
Wang, I think, is extremely effective and will want to show, one, he can handle the Americans; and two, that he can get along with the Americans. I think that will be the more interesting corner of this triangular visit over the next few – over those few days. Jim?
JAMES SCHOFF: Thank you very much. This is Jim Schoff and to follow on Doug’s comments, I agree in many ways this trip should be about the rebalance under Secretary Kerry and there’s been some concern in Japan and Korea to some extent that maybe Secretary Kerry is not as committed to the rebalances as Secretary Clinton was especially with all the budget challenges we face in Washington, will we be able to sustain it and follow through on a variety of our commitments and also to some extent there’d been a lot of speeches about the rebalance recently primarily from leaders that the Defense Department or National Security Adviser but not so much on the non-security or non-military aspects (to) rebalance and this would be a good opportunity to really talk about that.
And I think that will be part of Secretary Kerry’s objective and part of his message that he is committed and that we have a plan to stay in our presence in the region but it will be overshadowed to some extent by North Korea and all of its rhetoric and steps that it’s been taking to bolster its nuclear program and just this morning or yesterday hearing the story about keeping South Korean workers out of the Kaesong industrial complex. So that’s going to be an important factor.
Certainly on the Korea side, they’re beginning to restart discussions on the so-called 123 agreement or the US-South Korea civilian nuclear energy sharing – equipment sharing program. That will be – (have seen) also in kind of a deterrence context to some extent now in the North Korea issue of there’s work to do on burden sharing, the treaty on South Korean support for US forces in Korea is up for negotiation this year so there’ll be some discussions on that.
But again, the approach to North Korea and how to both remain firm and deter further North Korean action potentially to step up sanctions in some regards and increase pressure but at the same time try to deescalate and set back from this brink that we’re on. And China will be important on that front and our desire to have China be a part of our solution there will make Japan potentially a little bit more uncomfortable because Japan would certainly like to talk about the Senkaku Islands and making sure that the United States is strong behind Japan’s defense of those islands in the face of encroachment by China, so there’s a bit of a delicate diplomacy that Secretary Kerry will have to conduct there.
TOM CARVER: I just wanted to ask both of you, how deep are Kerry’s relationships in the region from his time in the Senate?
DOUGLAS PAAL: This is really quite interesting. You would think that someone who has Air Force planes and ample time on some schedule to travel the regions would know the people well and Kerry on one level does know faces and (put people) in offices at a very widely spread basis, but he hasn’t been to Asia for quite a long time. His interest has not been there. When he’s had an interest it’s been towards Southeast Asia where he had personal experience 40 years ago. He has not been an activist on China, Korea or Japanese policy issues at his time in the Senate.
And so he’s written occasionally on the North Korean problem and a year ago he co-authored a piece calling for more dialogue and confrontation with North Korea but it didn’t take long for North Korean behavior to get him to back away from that position during the course of last year.
TOM CARVER: I mean, you mentioned that he is – there’s a perception in the region that he’s less enthusiastic about the rebalance than Clinton was. I mean, how warmly will he be received do you think?
JAMES SCHOFF: Well, I think he’ll be very warmly received. And those concerns are primarily concerns I hear from many of my Japanese friends on that regard. They really feel a little bit isolated in the region. They’ve had troubles with South Korea, in their relationship with South Korea. They’re trying to repair that and rebuild that – difficulties with China, in particular the territorial issues, some historical issues that the legacies have remained. Japan really wants US support and wants to be feel that it is a central part of America’s Asia strategy and the fact that we have not named an assistant secretary for East Asia is concerning to some in Japan, so there’ll be – when I met – was there a couple of weeks ago and this trip was being put together, you could see the relief on their faces, Kerry’s coming and it’s we need to get him out here as often as possible so that he understands what’s going on here in the region.
And so I think – I think to some extent you heard it from the press conference yesterday with Foreign Minister Yun and Secretary Kerry that Kerry will try to engage and bring Japan and South Korea, in particular get them involved in other global issues – Syria, Iran, Afghanistan and rebuilding and sustaining that transition there. So there’ll be this theme of America’s engaged in Asia but we also want our Asian allies to be a partner in dealing with global challenges.
TOM CARVER: And do you have any sense that there’s any difference of opinion between him and the White House on how to approach issues like North Korea?
DOUGLAS PAAL: It’s clear that the White House prefers to take the lead on every policy and personnel issue and so we’ve seen the State Department which feels that it’s got – its hands are not tied with rough rope, they’re tied with some kind of silk cloth and they have to wait for White House go ahead but the actual differences are not so apparent. You could – I mean, what I’m hearing from analysts from Asia, you know, Kerry has been prompted to speak on the rebalance but he hasn’t volunteered anything in his extensive statements such as with Foreign Minister Yun yesterday at the department.
He did not choose to bring up the rebalance segment. I don’t know whether he thinks it’s been oversold or it’s really Hillary’s issue not his or – we’d have to put him on a couch to find the answer to that. But Asians look and they see that Tom Donilon from the NSC or Ash Carter from Defense have been the ones speaking about rebalance, not the State Department and so that’s leading them to speculate there might be differences. I think this trip will be an opportunity for Kerry either to feed that concern or to put it to rest.
TOM CARVER: OK. Great. Any questions at all to either Jim or Doug?
Q: I have a question on North Korea and I’d like both of you to give me an answer or the one who feels more qualified or wants to answer that question. It’s always basically the obvious $1 million question – how serious are North Korea threats that we have been hearing in the past days? Are they a bluff or are they real?
DOUGLAS PAAL: This is Doug Paal. I’ll give you my first impression. The answer of course is not available to us, we’re only speculating. But there are things that have been done under this new leader that come right out of the classic playbook of the grandfather and the father of Kim Jong-un and so we tend to think these are tactical – they’re meant for domestic consumption. When the US exercises with South Korea end in a couple of weeks, he’ll declare victory and say, I really stood on the ramparts and scared those bastards away and therefore, you know, give me praise and support the system. That’s one side of it.
But there’s another side that really kind of makes me nervous and that is, he looks like he’s in need of adult supervision. He needs someone to tell him, you don’t personally go on camera and sign an attack order on the United States because you then put yourself in a position where to back down is hard. Now I think we’re all pretty aware that we don’t expect them to have the capability to attack us anytime soon, so that should be a hollow gesture.
But why is he doing that? Why is he going to the ramparts down in the south standing next to the artillery, wreaked havoc on Yeonpyeongdo Island back in 2010? So there’s – again, there’s a mixture here of something new and the regular old and it makes it a little more volatile and concerning.
JAMES SCHOFF: Jim Schoff here. I would agree with Doug. I even tended really to discount much of the recent rhetoric up until this morning and the stopping of South Korean workers from going to Kaesong and we’ll see how many days that last. That happened before once in 2009 I think for a few days, but that really is, in some ways, a canary in a coal mine for how serious they are about responding to what they perceived as pressure following the rocket test, following the nuclear test.
Are they just trying to make a point domestically and attract attention or they really won’t stop until they get attention? And then the longer we continue to show deterrence and be patient and rally the countries in the region to apply pressure, does that make the situation worse or not? And I think part of this trip is really about for the United States, for Secretary Kerry, to get a personal feel for where the other key countries in the region are on this so that we’re as much on the same page as possible.
Q: Related – how – you know, the Obama administration has been quite disciplined it would seem in not showering North Korea with attention in not moving forward toward negotiations given the two nuclear tests that have occurred on their watch and so on and I wonder one, if you have any – and privately American officials are saying that they’re not going to be sort of buffaloed into this.
So my question would be, one, do you think that the current administration will be able to sort of (cue) to that stance of not resuming talks in an environment of sort of serial North Korean acting out? Two, could you give us your best sense of where China, South Korea and Japan are on that issue but particularly China and South Korea? Is it your sense that the South Koreans may be getting more antsy and therefore may be more inclined to try to get back into some kind of a dialogue with the North or do you think that they will sort of think tough on this?
DOUGLAS PAAL: This is Doug Paal. This administration really has been – you can fault it through lots of things but for not reaching out to North Korea, you cannot fault them. They reached out immediately after the first inauguration and they got the bomb explosion. They reached out a couple more times in 2010 giving visas to North Korean leaders to come to the US to meet in New York and see if we can find a basis for talks and both of these visa issuances to senior North Korean officials were met by first, the sinking of the Cheonan corvette and the loss of 46 lives, South Korea, and then the shelling of Yeonpyeongdo.
And then despite that, the administration reached out yet again for the leap year agreement – Leap Day Agreement last year which was in the midst of all kinds of threats of launching missiles and the like and nonetheless they signed an agreement which was immediately caput because of North Korean behavior, so if there’s reluctance to go ahead, that’s fine.
I think the path they’re taking – this goes to the second part of your question, which is we’re seeing a level of debate in China, that is unlike previous debates over the quality of their relationship with North Korea. Normally that debate is conducted by people who are themselves liberals and want to bring down their own regime and therefore they don’t get much of an audience from the leaders of China’s Communist Party because they’re seen as the enemy camp.
But in the last couple of months we’ve seen Mao Zedong’s grandson stand up and say, these guys are out of line. We’ve seen generals in the People’s Liberation Army stand up and say – so there’s real – there’s more debate going on. That’s the first part. The second part is Kerry is going to be sitting down with Wang Yi. Wang is, as I said earlier, a new kind of diplomat in this job, very competent. He also is the guy who had the most success guiding the six-party talks back in 2005, 2006, ’07 when he was the Chinese ambassador for the six-party talks.
He’s the one who went back and forth between the camps and produced the September 17, 2005 statement which is the high watermark of negotiations. So we got a competent, knowledgeable guy who, I can tell you in private, is prepared to say some tough things about North Korea that others in the Chinese government don’t like to say.
So I think we’ve got – this is the avenue to explore. This is the street we have not been down with China, that we ought to see if it leads anywhere in the course of the next few weeks. Sometime down the read, especially after the exercises ceased on the Peninsula, perhaps we’ll have a colder atmosphere in which the administration can listen to, once again to the many calls for them to talk not provoke, but I think the administration has a strong position to say we really tried our best – they want to see what this new leader in North Korea is going to be like before they put the good faith (and credit) the United States on the line by offering talks with him.
JAMES SCHOFF: Jim Schoff here and I completely agree with Doug that I think the US has been engaging with North Korea or offering engagement throughout and if they – they can – they can definitely keep up their current so-called strategic patience policy. There’s no pressure from the Hill necessarily to run out there and talk with North Korea. So the one place that they really wanted to try to demonstrate even further, they could together – South Korea’s interested and willing offer general officer talks to try to reinstate the armistice that North Korea has said now is null and void.
And there is a procedural legitimate avenue for discussion there that could demonstrate, you know, that we’re continuing to try to think a path of de-escalation and we’ll see what North Korea does. But I do think there is some – there is a good chance the United States and South Korea are on the same page. This will be an important follow up and especially when President Park comes to Washington because Seoul is trying to improve its relationship with China as well.
You know, some of the regions have been concerned that “Oh South Korea’s going to turn away from the United States and Japan and turn toward China.” Well, that’s not such a bad thing if that relationship improves for many of the reasons that Doug was saying. And the alliance is still strong. They’ve signed their counter-provocation plan recently and we feel, I think, more comfortable in terms of how the allies will handle low level provocations and support each other and share burden on that front.
This 123 agreement, the nuclear civilian nuclear energy agreement will be a bone of contention and it could get tied up in the North Korea piece if it’s viewed as somehow a way of South Korea justifiably pursuing their own nuclear ends now that the camouflage has come off and all pretenses come off of North Korea’s nuclear program, but we’ll see. That negotiation will probably carry on for many more months.
DOUGLAS PAAL: Mr. Mohammed, one additional point you asked in your question was about South Korea’s willingness to talk to the North and as you probably are aware the President Park campaign theme of (trust politic) – try to build trust through reciprocal actions between the north and South that would allow a basis for talks to be reestablished after a very cold five years under President Lee Myung-bak between the South and the North.
She has been effectively boxed in by North Korea’s behavior. Now she can’t go down that path and retain public support, at least for the short term. She did manage in her early days in office to send some humanitarian – an intention to send some humanitarian relief to North Korea to feed the poor kids and suffering population up there, but she has – I don’t – she’s really, for the near term at least, no room to begin to offer talks.
One interesting idea that Jim just touched on is this question of the armistice. North Korea has walked out of it. China for more than a decade has not participated in it. It wouldn’t be a bad idea for Kerry to say to Wang Yi, how about your guy and my guy meet, the South will be there, the North will be there, but they’ll see that the adults are meeting. And it’s worth a thought anyway.
Q: Guys, one follow up on the armistice. Is it – and if you don’t know, that’s fine but is it – can the armistice agreement in effect be abrogated by one party simply asserting that it is null and void or is there some kind of a more quantified process for kind of ending it?
JAMES SCHOFF: My understanding is that any party can change their mind at any time, they’d be breaking the armistice. There’s no mechanism for, you know, I give you 30 days’ notice and then I’m out. But the armistice is really tattered and frayed on the edges.
I mean, many of the mechanisms that were created – the Military Armistice Commission and a variety of other bodies that were established – have not met for many years and even the neutral nations, supervisory committee, some of the – some of North Korea’s friends, old communist friends were on its team, on its side in past years after the end of the Cold War. They felt isolated in that process and they ended that committee’s activities.
So there’s a lot that could be done to really kind of update the armistice and (we are) just basically reduce – do what is possible to reduce tension or the potential for conflict or accidental conflict on the DMC …
DOUGLAS PAAL: Yes. The North Koreans but know perfectly well that their historic behavior in negotiations is to be very much adherent to the letter of whatever they agreed to. The armistice is the alternative to a peace agreement that’s been elusive all these years which they said they want to get past the armistice to a peace agreement which would then force us to withdraw our forces from the region and take away the nuclear umbrella, et cetera, et cetera.
The absence of an armistice and the absence of a peace agreement means you’re at war and there are other parties to the armistice which is why I suggest that the US and China remain parties to the armistice so that we – if we don’t want to go to war we can consult in New York under the UN (aegis) of the armistice and put some pressure on these parties to get back into the talks.
But nothing is as good as direct Chinese pressure on North Koreans to behave better and I think that’s where the emphasis will be as Kerry sits down with Wang Yi.
TOM CARVER: OK. Any other questions?
Q: Hi. I just wanted to follow up on the direct Chinese pressure you just mentioned. I mean, what kind of direct Chinese pressure would Secretary Kerry be looking for when in his talks? What practically other – other than the armistice agreement which is very interesting, what practically can the Chinese do to try and deescalate tensions with North Korea?
And further on the point that was made earlier, I wonder if you could expand a little bit on the problems or the impression that is created by the fact that no assistant secretary has been appointed yet to replace Kurt Campbell.
DOUGLAS PAAL: On the first part of your question, obviously the United States would hope that China would do a lot of things to restrain the flow of energy and food to North Korea to get their attention, hold back on new investment in various businesses in North Korea – all those things. Those all run against China’s primary interest to North Korea which is to provide for stability there and so we have a very fundamental difference. That difference is being now debated within China. It’s worth putting our views forward and hopes to tilt the debate in our direction.
But the proper topics of conversation between the American secretary of State and his counterpart will be those agreed actions that came out of the UN Security Council of Resolutions. And there’s been a lot of discussion by the expert committee to the UN sanctions of shortcomings in the imposition of those sanctions by China on North Korea, and so reminding China of its obligation just to meet these sanctions requirements would be an important part of the legitimate dialogue between the two sides.
China would probably say it’s doing all it can and know very well that they could do more in some cases. They have worked very hard in the UN Security Council to limit the scope and the effect of the sanctions because they do have a prior interest in stability in North Korea but they want to send a message to the North Koreans that while we’re trying to keep you stable, you got to pay attention to us, we’re very important to you, so we’re going to sign up for some new sanctions on you in the financial area, luxury goods and things like that.
But China has not, until very recently, been clearly enforcing them. There are some reports in South Korean precipice started to pick the enforcement of their sanctions but these are unconfirmed reports as of now. It’ll take probably a couple of months before we have a better picture of whether that’s actually being implemented.
On the question of the assistant secretary – you know, I’m seeing people every day and they all say, when is this going to happen, what’s going on – and the answer has been from people close to the process that they think they’ve got the person but it’s – the White House personnel process has slowed down. It’s plain that the process has been slowing down through successive administration and it’s gotten exquisitely slow in this administration.
So there may be a candidate out there. Certainly Danny Russel at the NSC is performing most of the functions on policy implementation and on travel with the principals that an assistant secretary would do, but not having an assistant secretary to provide the themes, to handle a lot of the meetings at the right levels, means the US is not functioning in all cylinders, so we’re still coming up short.
JAMES SCHOFF: Jim Schoff here, and I would add that I think part of what made Campbell and other past assistant secretaries effective is the relationship that they have or developed with the secretary and when they have the secretary’s trust and when others know that he or she has their trust and confidence, it really makes them an effective player in the (area) process, so hopefully they can rectify that soon.
TOM CARVER: Great. Any others? I have one question for you, which is this emphasis on stability that the Chinese provide, I mean, is that a real perception that it would cause enormous instability or is that a bargaining chip that they use against the Americans?
DOUGLAS PAAL: No. I think it’s such a genuine concern on their part that if things start to unravel in North Korea, the most important thing to them would be that the South being far stronger than the North would be the power that reunifies the Peninsula. The South is allied to the US and Chinese PLA and Chinese political leaders could look up and see American forces on the Yalu River on China’s border which would be a strategic setback in their view.
They also are concerned about refugee outflows should there be a disorder in the North. They’re concerned about the symbolic value of one of the last communist regimes anywhere falling and what does that mean for the people of China is this time being marked for them, Castro’s going in Cuba. So there’s a symbolic – politically symbolic value there.
Moreover there is a continuing but diminishing belief that North Korean soil is soaked in Chinese blood – 550,000 Chinese were killed in the Korean War which is a staggering number and there have been, up until this last March, the bloody shirt has been waved again and again by key people in the government. We’re now onto a new generation since March in the foreign policy established but – so there’s less of that, but it’s also been part of this desire to make sure that the fruits of the Chinese sacrifice, sending of volunteers so-called to North Korea during the Korean war, many years of support in the aftermath of that are not just lost to an American ally.
TOM CARVER: Then there’s no – do they have in your view the Chinese a longer term strategy beyond just saying, no, as it were, more sanctions?
DOUGLAS PAAL: Well, the longer term strategy is to promote reform and I’m sure the talking point on the lips of the Chinese when Kerry gets there will include that they have just had a big party meeting in North Korea which appointed a new prime minister who had been purged previously when these reforms started to go too far in agriculture and market reforms who has now been brought back rehabilitated and (Park Poong-joo) can be seen by the Chinese – he was educated in China, can be seen as a way for the North to undertake as China has been urging for more than a decade the same kind of reforms China has undertaken which would bring to North Korea economic and social stability that’s elusive with their current failing economic model.
But I think Kerry has an opportunity too, as I say to them. You know, this is a long term unsustainable situation. We’ve seen Kim Il Sung was not bad by their lights. Kim Jong-il was worse. Kim Jong-un was even worse yet. This is not going in the right direction. Let’s talk about our fundamental concerns. Can we talk about what North Korea would look like after reunification? And I think the president could authorize Kerry to say that the US has no need nor intention of putting its troops north of the 30th parallel, except to extract the nuclear weapons.
Now, can you live with that? Do you want a South Korea that’s – that reunifies that is hostile to you or do you want to work with it? What kind of outcome do you see long term that would be good for your interest and we would see as benign to our interest? That conversation hasn’t been held at any level. It’s a kind of strategic conversation that used to be done in the 1970s by the Kissinger and Nixon types and we haven’t had those since. If you want – if Secretary Kerry wants to enter the annals of great diplomats, here’s an opportunity.
JAMES SCHOFF: And if you look at – I mean, if you look at North Korea, they really, just a blight or ghetto sitting in – amidst an incredibly wealthy and productive part of the world and the potential – if you create that kind of land bridge between the Mainland and the dynamic South Korea and link to Japan and other countries, the economic potential in that region for China’s northwest and northeast and for Russia’s far east is tremendous.
So how would we manage the transition, that conversation and what is the potential down the line for thinking differently about the geopolitics in that region? It’s a very difficult conversation for China to have but perhaps getting easier as the years go by.
TOM CARVER: As you say, it presents an opportunity for Kerry. OK. Any other questions? OK. I think we will – unless you guys want to say anything else. I think we’ll call it …
JAMES SCHOFF: Well, the last point I was just going to make, I feel like I’ve overlooked Japan a bit in this discussion and there will be further discussion about the US marine base (Futenma), the proposal to move that. Prime Minister Abe has submitted the landfill permit for the – to the Prefecture of Okinawa to try to begin that process and just looking for early returns of US bases in the area to help sweeten the pot and turn Okinawan public opinion in support of that, so that is an issue that’s out there and of course the inclusion of Japan in Trans-Pacific partnership negotiation, checking in on how that’s going.
I mean, Japan remains an important of this – of US foreign policy in the region and a part of this broader mix and so I just don’t want to overlook that.
TOM CARVER: Right. OK. So a lot in Kerry’s entrée. Thank you both very much, Jim Schoff and Doug Paal. Thank you for participating everyone.
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