Following the announcement that the United States had canceled a planned summit with North Korea, Stanford scholars discuss the future of diplomacy and denuclearization on the Korean peninsula.

What led to the U.S. canceling the planned summit with North Korea? Could a meeting realistically be rescheduled? Stanford scholars discuss the issues. (Image credit: Getty Images)

This post was originally published by the Stanford News Service. The following is an extended version, including comments by APARC Visiting Scholar, Daniel Sneider.

President Donald Trump was scheduled to meet North Korean leader Kim Jong Un on June 12 to discuss efforts for denuclearization and a peace plan for the region. What led to the U.S. canceling the planned talks? Could a meeting realistically be rescheduled? Can the U.S. diplomatically negotiate denuclearization when there are clearly different approaches to what disarmament looks like?

To address these questions, Stanford News Service talked to five Stanford scholars about the issues:

• Michael Auslin is the inaugural Williams-Griffis Fellow in Contemporary Asia at the Hoover Institution. He specializes in global risk analysis, U.S. security and foreign policy strategy, and security and political relations in Asia. He recently authored The End of the Asian Century: War, Stagnation and the Risks to the World’s Most Dynamic Region.
• Siegfried Hecker is a top nuclear security scholar, former Los Alamos National Laboratory director and senior fellow at the Center for International Security and Cooperation. Hecker’s research interests include plutonium science, nuclear weapons policy and international security, nuclear security (including nonproliferation and counterterrorism) and cooperative nuclear threat reduction.
• Gi-Wook Shin is a sociology professor, a senior fellow at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies (FSI), director of the Walter H. Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center and the founding director of the Korea Program. His research has concentrated on social movements, nationalism, development and international relations. He recently authored Superficial Korea, a book about social maladies currently affecting Korean society.
• Kathleen Stephens is the William J. Perry Fellow in the Korea Program at the Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center. From 2008 to 2011, she served as the U.S. ambassador to South Korea. She has four decades of experience in Korean affairs, first as a Peace Corps volunteer in rural Korea in the 1970s, and in ensuing decades as a diplomat and as U.S. ambassador in Seoul.
• Daniel Sneider is a visiting scholar with Stanford’s Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center. His research is focused on current U.S. foreign and national security policy in Asia and on the foreign policy of Japan and Korea. His publications include History Textbooks and the Wars in Asia: Divided Memories, and First Drafts of Korea: The U.S. Media and Perceptions of the Last Cold War Frontier.

What led to the summit’s cancellation?

Auslin: The real problem was the rushed nature of the summit. The lure of an unprecedented first-time meeting between the U.S. president and the North Korean dictator meant that there was a short window in which the two sides could resolve key issues before the leaders sat down together. And after nearly 70 years of hostility and failed negotiations, negotiations between Washington and Pyongyang would have been extraordinarily difficult in any case. At the core, however, the two sides needed to agree on the fundamental question of the definition of denuclearization, let alone its timetable and the sequence of U.S. aid, before the two principals met. As the time drew near, North Korea tried to force the U.S. into recognizing its own definition of denuclearization and timetable.

Hecker: Two weeks ago, matters looked very good, especially after Secretary [of State Mike] Pompeo’s second visit to Pyongyang. After he returned, he said the U.S. and North Korea had similar visions of the future. Then, during the past week, high-level Trump administration officials painted a very different vision for North Korea’s future by pushing for a Libya model of denuclearization. Not surprisingly, visions of Muammar Gaddafi’s mutilated body did not go over well in Pyongyang. North Korean officials wrote scathing rebuttals that appeared to lead to a race as to who would cancel the summit first. President Trump won that race.

Shin: The summit fell through because two sides failed to narrow the gap on how to get to denuclearization of North Korea. Trump was obsessed with a complete, verifiable and irreversible dismantlement, known also as CVID, and the principle of “denuclearization first, then economic rewards,” but Kim wanted a gradual, step-by-step approach. Trump was probably under pressure from Republican conservatives that he could not settle for a “bad” deal – which would mean anything less than CVID. At the working level, the U.S. was probably not ready for talks to happen in two weeks. Trump might have used North Korea’s recent verbal attacks as an excuse to cancel the June summit.

Sneider: The summit fell apart because the gap between the positions of the United States and North Korea became so evident that it could no longer be credibly claimed that this meeting was going to lead to the North Koreans giving up their nuclear weapons capability. 

Stephens: President Trump surprised everyone, including his own staff, some weeks ago by suddenly and seemingly impulsively agreeing to a summit with the North Korean leader. His letter to Kim Jung Un this morning withdrawing from the June 12 summit had the same feeling of hasty improvisation. He took umbrage, understandably, at the tone and substance of recent North Korean statements, though they were not exceptional by Pyongyang’s historical standards. He also seemed to realize, belatedly, the huge gap between U.S. expectations of “complete, verifiable and irreversible denuclearization” of North Korea and Pyongyang’s vague pledge to negotiate, as a nuclear weapons state itself, the eventual denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula. 

Is a delayed summit likely?

Auslin:  Trump left open the possibility of a future meeting, but only if Kim ratchets down the rhetoric and insults. It is just as likely that Pyongyang will increase its threatening words, and possibly even undertake aggressive acts, to try and blackmail the U.S. back to the negotiating table. If the two sides can quietly continue high-level talks aimed at agreeing on a definition of denuclearization and a timetable, along with U.S. aid – admittedly, difficult objectives – then a delayed summit is possible. 

Sneider:  I don’t see much chance for a summit to be rescheduled, although I don’t entirely rule it out provided the United States is willing to accept something less than what it has previously demanded.

Shin: Trump has now handed the ball over to Kim, and whether the two can get back on the path to diplomacy will depend on how Kim reacts to Trump’s statement. If he reacts with merely provocative words and no actions, chances are that the talks can still happen in the near future. But if Kim cancels all the behind-the-scenes, working-level talks and negotiations altogether, we are expecting another long period of no communication between the two countries or even a rise of tension and conflict.

How can the U.S. diplomatically negotiate denuclearization when there are different objectives at stake?

Auslin: That has always been the great problem in negotiating with Pyongyang. It has little incentive to give up its nuclear weapons, even with security guarantees from the United States. Three U.S. presidents have failed in negotiations, and the Kim regime has steadily progressed in developing both a nuclear weapons capability and a ballistic missile capability. The Trump administration gambled that threat of a U.S. attack, combined with “maximum pressure,” would create a breakthrough that eluded previous administrations, but Pyongyang reverted to form by making increasing demands in the past week. Right now, the U.S. has failed to figure out the right mix of pressure and accommodation that gets the North to the table, absent pre-emptive U.S. concessions. However, it does not need to continually remind Kim of the fate of Muammar Gaddafi, overthrown in Libya in 2011, to try to strong-arm it into talks.

Hecker: There actually appeared to be a partial reconciliation of views during the past week with some in the Trump administration, including the president, acknowledging that denuclearization will take time and most likely will have to occur in a phased manner. I have promoted for some time what I call a “halt, roll back and eventually eliminate” approach. It will take years, but there was some hope that North Korea would front-load some of its steps in rolling back its nuclear program, as it did in destroying a nuclear test site yesterday.

Shin: Trump was mistaken if he thought he could handle and directly deal with North Korea by himself. He needs help from all involved stakeholders such as China, South Korea, etc. Diplomacy is different from doing business.

Stephens: By working closely with allies, through both pressure and engagement, and by doing the heavy diplomatic preparation and lifting that was missing this time around.

What does this mean for relations between North Korea and South Korea?

Shin: It will certainly create a big dilemma for South Korea. It has declared that a new era has begun with North Korea and promised to improve inter-Korean relations by all means. So, it will be difficult for South Korea to rejoin the U.S.’s maximum pressure campaign. At the same time, inter-Korean relations, especially in the economic sector, cannot be improved without the support from the U.S. and ease of sanctions.

Hecker: South Korean President Moon just released a statement saying it was regretful and disconcerting that the summit was canceled. He made it clear that North-South reconciliation must proceed, commenting that “[We] hope that the leaders resolve problems through direct and close dialogue.”

Stephens: South Korea is in a very difficult position. They were blindsided by Trump’s letter to Kim. They will be eager to get Pyongyang and Washington back into dialogue. Again, much will depend on Pyongyang.

Who do you think lost the most with the summit’s cancellation: Trump? Kim? Moon?

Auslin: Moon is the big loser, having declared a new era of peace and bet everything on a durable peace process. North Korea looks like its usual, disruptive, untrustworthy self, which in turn makes Moon appear naive. Now, the North may well try to pressure the South into unilateral concessions to get the “peace” process back on track; these could include aggressive acts against South Korean interests. For his part, Trump has made clear he won’t play Charlie Brown to Kim’s Lucy with the football.

Hecker: The world lost a chance for moving away from the brink of war on the Korean Peninsula. I believe it was the greatest shock to President Moon, who worked so hard to create the conditions for the summit.

Shin: It will be Moon>Trump>Kim in the order of who loses the most. Moon’s aggressive efforts in the recent months to mediate between Kim and Trump didn’t pay off after all.

Stephens: Kim has lost the least and has the most leverage at the moment.

Sneider: The South Korean government of Moon Jae-in is obviously stunned by this development, particularly after Moon’s meeting in the White House earlier this week where the President gave no such indication apparently. They will try desperately to restore diplomatic engagement between Washington and Pyongyang, and may meet again with the North soon. But this is a crisis for South Korea’s strategy.

What realistically will happen next?

Sneider:  I would predict a rise of tensions as both leaders will feel the need to look and act tough — as the President has already shown in his White House statement today.

Auslin: North Korean aggression against South Korea is not out of the question, as a way to try to force everyone back to the table. Increased rhetoric from the North against Trump and America is also very likely. Behind the scenes, however, if the administration can quietly continue talks with high-ranking North Koreans to try and reach agreement on what denuclearization means and a possible timetable, then the two sides could return to the idea of a summit, possibly by the end of the year.

Hecker: Hopefully the leaders will take the time afforded by this pause to work at the lower levels to move closer to creating the conditions for a successful summit.

Shin: We can expect some periods of crisis and conflicts again, however long it will last. There is still room for hope that the talks will be resumed, but it will now depend on how North Korea reacts.

Stephens: President Trump appears to want to leave the door open for a summit. The most optimistic scenario would be an interest in both Washington and Pyongyang to keep a channel open for talks. South Korea will want to get the parties to reengage.

Stanford scholars debate whether the Iran nuclear deal can withstand U.S. withdrawal, if a revitalized nuclear program is possible and what a new deal would look like.

Following the announcement of the U.S. withdrawal from the Iran deal, three Stanford scholars consider what it means for American foreign policy and diplomacy.

Stanford scholars debate how the Trump administration’s decision on Iran will affect foreign relations. (Image credit: ruskpp / Getty Images)

In 2015, the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action – known as the Iran nuclear deal, or JCPOA – was agreed between Iran and the U.S., United Kingdom, France, Germany, China and Russia. The international agreement limited Iran’s nuclear activities in exchange for a reprieve from international sanctions.

What happens next remains unclear. What does withdrawal signal about American foreign policy? What would a new agreement look like – and is it even possible? To answer some of these questions, Stanford News Service talked to three scholars about the issues:

• Siegfried Hecker is a top nuclear security scholar, former Los Alamos National Laboratory director and senior fellow at the Center for International Security and Cooperation. Hecker’s research interests include plutonium science, nuclear weapons policy and international security, nuclear security (including nonproliferation and counter terrorism) and cooperative nuclear threat reduction.
• Abbas Milani is the Hamid and Christina Moghadam Director of Iranian Studiesand affiliate at FSI’s Center on Democracy Development and the Rule of Law. He has been one of the founding co-directors of the Iran Democracy Project and a research fellow at the Hoover Institution. In 2016, he launched the Iran2040 Project that produces research on the future of the Iranian economy, population, energy, water, agriculture and the financial system.
• Allen Weiner is a senior lecturer of law, director of the Stanford Program in International and Comparative Law and co-director of the Stanford Center on International Conflict and Negotiation. His scholarship focuses on international law and the response to the contemporary security threats of international terrorism, the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction and situations of widespread humanitarian atrocities.

What does withdrawal from the Iran deal signal about American foreign policy?

Milani: It signifies that U.S. foreign policy is dependent on the views, even whims, of one person – the president – and the rhetoric he used during the campaign. Views of U.S. government experts or allies has I think never counted for less.

Weiner: The withdrawal from the JCPOA signals a departure from the notion that the U.S. places high value on the benefits of stability, predictability and consistency in its foreign relations. It also reflects the Trump administration’s belief that the U.S. has the ability to persuade other countries to accommodate American interests through coercive mechanisms.

How will withdrawal from the Iran nuclear deal be viewed from inside Iran?

Milani: Iran is a country divided. The people, suffering from a profound – even existential – economic crisis, are worried about their future. Bickering political factions in the regime are playing the blame game: first blame the U.S., and then opposing factions.

Can the Iran nuclear deal withstand U.S. withdrawal? What options are available – both politically and legally?

Hecker: I don’t see Iran making a mad dash for nuclear weapons to respond to the U.S. withdrawal. The country has too much to lose. Tehran could decide to keep the essence of the deal with the other countries and isolate the U.S. It may find that it will get adequate sanctions relief from the other countries in spite of U.S. pressure. That may be sufficient for Iran to continue to honor its nuclear deal commitments for now.

Milani: I would be surprised if the deal does not survive. It was never a U.S. deal.  The U.S. was simply a key player. Europe, U.K., China, Russia, the UN, and International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) want it to continue – Iran, too.

Weiner: In a sense, yes. Iran is free to continue to comply with the restraints on its nuclear activities negotiated in the JCPOA and to accept IAEA inspections. The other signatories to the JCPOA are free not to re-impose on Iran the sanctions that were lifted under the JCPOA. Because of the reach of U.S. sanctions, however, European companies in particular will face significant risks in doing business in Iran, which means Iran will be deprived of many of the commercial benefits it sought in negotiating the JCPOA. It is far from clear that the remaining, much more limited benefits available under the JCPOA will be appealing enough for Iran to continue to suspend those aspects of its nuclear program that are covered by the JCPOA.

What are reasons to oppose the Iran nuclear deal?

Hecker: The deal was able to get more Iranian nuclear concessions than I had ever thought possible. Apparently, the Trump administration objected primarily that the deal did not include Iran’s other activities, such as missile tests and Iran’s role in the region that it views as unacceptable. However, some of President Trump’s claims about the nuclear deal were simply incorrect.

Milani: The deal surely had flaws. It did not address such critical issues as Iran’s missile program, the regime’s role in places like Syria and Iraq, and human right abuses at home. It surely was not the worst deal in history. It was the least bad option at the time.

Weiner: The key objection voiced by many critics of the JCPOA concerns the “sunset provisions” in the deal, under which many key restrictions in the JCPOA on Iranian nuclear activities last only for 10 or 15 years (depending on the particular restriction). This potentially allows Iran to benefit from sanctions relief now and to merely postpone its pursuit of a nuclear weapon. Other objections concern the failure of the JCPOA adequately to address Iran’s missile development programs or its destabilizing regional activities more generally.

What nuclear facilities remain in place in Iran, and how easily might they be repurposed to create weapons?

Hecker: Iran has dramatically reduced its inventories of enriched uranium in compliance with the deal. It has enrichment facilities that could be restarted rather easily to enrich uranium to weapons grade, but not without withdrawing from the deal. It could also begin construction of a new plutonium-producing reactor, but that would be rather costly since it made the one under construction inoperative in compliance with the deal. The bottom line is that it would take quite some time to get back to the material inventories and facilities Iran had before the deal went into effect.

Milani: Iran’s enrichment facilities remain but much of their capacity has been mothballed. Ninety-eight percent of the country’s low enrichment uranium has been shipped out of the country. The Arak heavy water reactor has been virtually dismantled. All known facilities are under constant surveillance by the IAEA. The regime’s missile program has, however, continued.

What effect could withdrawal have on anticipated talks with North Korea?

Hecker: That’s quite uncertain. North Korea may still want a deal, but it would likely ask for greater assurances from the U.S. about potential withdrawal, just as the U.S. is pressing North Korea about its past history of compliance.

Weiner: Commentators have observed that withdrawal from the JCPOA raises questions about U.S. credibility and its willingness to keep its word. Some suggest that this will make North Korea less likely to move actively in the direction of complete, verifiable, irreversible nuclear disarmament for fear that once it has given up its nuclear program, the U.S. might simply re-impose sanctions or pursue other hostile policies towards it. On the other hand, President Trump has emphasized that he would keep any commitments he makes in negotiations with North Korea; it was only the commitments of the prior U.S. administration that he did not feel obliged to honor. Whether this would provide enough confidence to the North Koreans to trust the United States is, of course, far from clear.

What would a new deal look like?

Hecker: I don’t see a new deal involving this administration as a possibility.

Milani: I think the U.S. could have had more impact on a possible revamped deal had it stayed in the agreement. It remains to be seen whether Europeans will continue to try to coordinate with the U.S. and will try to forge a different agreement with the regime.

Weiner: A new agreement, to be acceptable to the U.S., would have to eliminate (or at least significantly extend) the sunset clauses and address Iran’s missile program. From Iran’s side, a revised deal would have to involve more than just lifting sanctions against Iran. It would also have to more emphatically embrace the prospect of American companies doing business in Iran. With respect to commercial relations, Iran argues that even though the United States formally lifted sanctions against Iran after the JCPOA took effect, the ongoing threat that U.S. sanctions would be re-imposed has effectively dissuaded many businesses in both the U.S. and Europe from pursuing long-term business arrangements in Iran.

In March 2011, a post-earthquake tsunami triggered nuclear meltdowns, hydrogen-air explosions and the release of radioactive materials from the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant in Fukushima Prefecture, Japan. The Fukushima disaster has been called the most significant nuclear incident since the 1986 Chernobyl disaster. Professor Rodney C. Ewing, Frank Stanton Professor in Nuclear Security and co-director at the Center for International Security and Cooperation (CISAC) in the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies (FSI), as a member of a team of Japanese researchers, today published a report on the details of what exactly — at the particle level — was released into the air after the disaster.

In the discussion that follows, Ewing explains the team’s findings and why they are important for health and environmental safety.

Why did you decide to study the Fukushima disaster?

The Fukishima Daiichi event surprised me. I now teach a freshman seminar on this event. I am particularly interested to understand why the accident occurred and what the long-term impact will be on the environment. This research paper reflects my interest in answering these questions.

We’ve heard lots about possible health effects from contaminated water after the Fukushima disaster, but less about particulates in the air. What did you find?

During the core melt-down events at Fukushima Daiichi, radioactivity was released as fine particulates that traveled in the air, sometime for distances of tens of kilometers, and settled onto the surrounding countryside.

In order to understand the health risk, it is very important to understand the form and chemistry of these particulates.

Recently, in a previous paper we have described a new type of particulate that is Cs-rich (some Cs isotopes are highly radioactive). The highly radioactive Cs-rich particles formed in the reactor by condensation from a silica-rich vapor, formed from the melting of core and concrete structures. In this paper, we describe the first identification of fragments of the melted core that were entrapped by the Cs-particles and transported away from the reactor site, some 4 kilometers. This is an important discovery because this provides us with samples of the fuel and melted core.

This is a special contribution because it uses very advanced electron microscopy techniques that allow for imaging of individual atoms or clusters of atoms. This advanced technique is required because the particles are so small — nanometers in size.

How did you come to work with your collaborators in Japan?

I have had long standing collaborations with Japanese scientists for decades. The lead researcher for the group, Professor Satoshi Utusunomiya, was once a member of my research group when I was at the University of Michigan. We have always collaborated on topics that involve radioactive materials and the use of electron microscopy. This collaboration is an entirely natural outgrowth of previous collaborations.

What, if any, policy recommendations would you suggest based on your findings?

The most direct result would be to design monitoring systems so that we have a good record of released particulates. Also, we need to push the development of advanced analytical techniques so that these particulates can be quickly identified and characterized.

Rodney C. Ewing, Frank Stanton professor in nuclear security and co-director at the Center for International Security and Cooperation (CISAC) in the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies (FSI) was named winner of the 2018 Robert Cahn Award by the Journal of Nuclear Materials and the committee of NuMat 2018, the Nuclear Materials Conference.

The annual award recognizes a scientist with a high scientific profile in the field of nuclear materials who has both the ability to communicate science to a broad audience and demonstrated interest in breaking down barriers between different scientific disciplines.

Ewing, also a professor in the Department of Geological Sciences in the School of Earth, Energy and Environmental Sciences at Stanford, the Edward H. Kraus Distinguished University Professor Emeritus in the Department of Earth & Environmental Sciences at the University of Michigan, and a Regents' Professor Emeritus at the University of New Mexico, primarily researches the study of radiation effects in materials. His body of work defined a new research field involving radiation-induced damage in solids from the radioactive elements present in their crystal structures, and has been recognized for its significant impact on the design of nuclear waste forms for containing high-level radioactive waste. Professor Ewing will receive the award in Seattle at the Nuclear Material Conference (NuMat) in October 2018 where he will open the conference with the Robert Cahn Award Keynote Lecture.

Read more about the 2018 Robert Cahn Award on the Elsevier website.

About the Center for International Security and Cooperation (CISAC)

The Center for International Security and Cooperation tackles the most critical security issues in the world today. Founded in 1983, CISAC has built on its research strengths to better understand an increasingly complex international environment. It is part of Stanford’s Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies (FSI). Though scholarly research, fellowships, and teaching, CISAC is educating the next generation of leaders in international security and creating policy impact on a wide variety of issues to help build a safer world.