Backchannel between middle rank US and
North Korean diplomats established in New York, making opening the way to a
possible breakthrough in relations like the one between the US and China in the
1970s.
Even as the rhetorical battle between
the US and North Korea threatens to spiral out of control, a report by the Associated Press suggests that
their diplomats are already quietly talking to each other.
It seems that the diplomatic contacts
between the US and North Korea are happening at the UN headquarters in New
York, where middle rank diplomats of the two countries have been quietly
talking to each other for some months. Here is how Associated Press
describes it
The contacts are occurring regularly
between Joseph Yun, the U.S. envoy for North Korea policy, and Pak Song Il, a
senior North Korean diplomat at the country’s U.N. mission, according to U.S.
officials and others briefed on the process. They weren’t authorized to discuss
the confidential exchanges and spoke on condition of anonymity.
Officials call it the “New York
channel.” Yun is the only U.S. diplomat in contact with any North Korean
counterpart. The communications largely serve as a way to exchange messages,
allowing Washington and Pyongyang to relay information.
It seems that though the contacts have
mainly focused on work to get US citizens detained in North Korea released, Yun
and Pak also discuss the general state of US-North Korean relations.
Moreover it seems that though there
have been sporadic diplomatic contacts at this level between the US and North
Korea for some time, the dialogue has become far more sustained – developing
practically to the level of a ‘backchannel” – since the Trump administration
took office
Trump, in some ways, has been more
flexible in his approach to North Korea than President Barack Obama. While
variations of the New York channel have been used on-and-off for years by past
administrations, there were no discussions over the last seven months of
Obama’s presidency after Pyongyang broke them off in anger over U.S. sanctions
imposed on its leader, Kim. Obama made little effort to reopen lines of
communication.
The contacts quickly restarted after
Trump’s inauguration, other people familiar with the discussions say.
“Contrary to the public vitriol of the
moment, the North Koreans were willing to reopen the New York channel following
the election of President Trump and his administration signaled an openness to
engage and ‘talk about talks,’” said Keith Luse, executive director of the
National Committee on North Korea, a U.S.-based group that promotes U.S.-North
Korean engagement.
It is not difficult to see the
influence of Rex Tillerson – President Trump’s realist Secretary of State –
behind these moves.
The Yun-Pak dialogue is for the moment
little more than an exchange of information. However if a decision is
made to get talks properly started, it could serve as the vehicle to set them
up.
A good precedent would be the channel
Henry Kissinger opened to China with the help of Pakistani and Romanian
diplomats in 1971, which led to Kissinger’s first secret trip to China and
talks with Prime Minister Zhou Enlai in July 1971. That eventually led to
US President Nixon’s breakthrough visit to China in February 1972.
Kissinger’s contacts with China in
1971 had to be conducted in great secrecy because of the strong opposition to a
normalisation of relations between the US and China which existed both in the
US and China and also internationally. Indeed relations between the US
and China at this time were so fraught that the first public sign of a
diplomatic thaw between the two countries was the
visit of a US table-tennis team to China in April 1971.
It is difficult to recall today the
extent to which in the 1950s and 1960s relations between US and China were as
tense as those between the US and North Korea are today. However the
rhetoric used by the US and China about each other at that was every bit as
tough as the rhetoric used by the US and North Korea about each other now.
Moreover the US during this period was
also trying to overthrow of the Chinese government – and replace it with a
pro-US ‘Chinese government’ it had in place in Taiwan – just as it was seeking
regime change in North Korea until recently, especially during the period of
the George W. Bush administration, and it also sought to enforce a worldwide
economic blockade of China then, just it is trying to enforce a worldwide
economic blockade of North Korea now.
In the event President Nixon went to
Beijing and met with Mao Zedong – an individual as vilified then as Kim Jong-un
is now – achieving what is still considered the greatest and most spectacularly
successful stroke of diplomacy carried out by the US since the end of the
Second World War.
North Korea is obviously not as
important today as China was in the 1970s, though with the rapid advance of its
ballistic missile and nuclear weapons programme it is arguably more dangerous.
However there is no reason for the secrecy which circumstances forced on
Nixon and Kissinger in 1971. The entire world – apart from some
recalcitrant politicians in the US, but including the governments of China,
Russia, South Korea and Japan – would welcome US steps to normalise relations
with North Korea.
If President Trump wants to secure his
place his history he could do worse than copy the example of Kissinger and
Nixon, and use the diplomatic channel available to him in New York – and the
help offered to him by the Chinese and the Russians – to get himself an
invitation to Pyongyang.
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