Why Pompeo and his "team" are unsuited for diplomacy
The first is his temperament. He loses his temper and blames others inappropriately. He accused the South Korean National Security Adviser of lying to him at one point when things weren't going too well between the two summits. He said that the Blue House official untruthfully said Kim Jong Un was committed to denuclearization.
That angry remark by Pompeo last December toward the Blue House National Security Adviser, Chung Eui-yong, calling him "a liar," was made public March 26, as reported by Channel A News, in an escalation of recriminations and ill consideration toward the ally most directly affected by US diplomatic blundering, and the lack of a more constructive approach.
It isn't unlikely that Kim is dissembling more or less at various points in talks, that would be logical to consider, but why would you accuse a long standing ally of "lying"? Is that diplomatic? It's apparent that Chung Eui-yong doesn't really want to deal with Pompeo (or Bolton) personally again. There are other rude statements made anonymously and reported in advance of South Korean envoys or dignitaries meeting US officials emanating from the State Department which I won't bother rehashing. These reflect on Pompeo poorly.
I just watched a recently uploaded video in which Pompeo averred at a public presentation that Kim told him personally "no less than six times he wants to denuclearize" in the way of laying a foundation for future talks. So he blows whichever way is politically convenient for him at the time. (He went off on some reporter at a press conference in Colombia a few days ago.)
The second point is a technical one, he really has no experience negotiating nuclear issues. What experience does he have in international affairs really? One year at the CIA where Andrew Kim and others held his hand? On Channel A Top Ten News today, which is a conservative mainstream broadcast news channel in South Korea, one of their national security affairs analysts just stated it that bluntly. He's not really qualified to negotiate a nuclear agreement. This brings into question of course, who is qualified on the Trump team to negotiate nuclear issues? The whole issue of "top down" negotiations is now the issue. Why is it that Trump is enamored of "top down?" So he can opportunistically respond to events on the spur of the moment, to satisfy his political instincts such as they are, for domestic political reasons. One could easily contend that Pompeo plays the exact same game for his own political ambition. Such vacillation and uncertainty plays right into Bolton's game, who for better or worse, is the only one with a consistent but irresponsibly dangerous vision of what US policy should be - no negotiation at all, just demands.
In terms of just willy-nilly going one way or another, South Korean observers have noted that Pompeo before Singapore and intermittently before Hanoi, indicated a willingness to consider the "step by step" process in negotiations. Then when arriving at Hanoi he and "the team" abruptly reverse course and become completely inflexible in an all or nothing approach. One of the reasons for these reversals is that both Trump and Pompeo are looking toward their domestic political audience and playing to it, with views of the upcoming election cycle in mind.
Trump and Pompeo both make vague and slippery allusions to a step by step or long term process in their statements, in a context clearly intended to mislead the North Koreans. What they mean by this is completely different that what Koreans, Chinese or Russian's mean by step by step. One Top Ten analyst, a former South Korean National Intelligence Service analyst suggested, that the negotiating process was so subject to US domestic political influences, that it was likely that the White House "team" would just string North Korea along with the phony dichotomy of bad state to state relations between North Korea and the United States (maximum pressure), contrasted with the absurd "love relationship" between Donald Trump and Kim. The analyst proffered the scenario whereby North Korea and the US public are strung along for the necessary length of time, and then a confrontation similar to that in 2017 emerges with the possibility of war greater than ever during a key period of the 2020 election campaign.
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