Bait and Switch- US Duplicity at Hanoi
Stephen Biegun has the temerity to say, that he cannot trust Kim Hyuk Chol, who refused to respond to demands that North Korea give up all of it's nuclear weapons, resources and facilities, as if this was something that was in the cards or on the agenda for the Hanoi summit. To get Kim to the summit Biegun implied there was wiggle room or flexibility in the US approach to negotiations and that not everything need be achieved at once. Yet once at the summit, US demands included everything, in an all or nothing approach, that exceeded the parameters of the Singapore summit, with no offers of any sanctions relief of any kind for interim measures. For example, the US demanded that all weapons of mass destruction, (a pet phrase of the neo-con proponents of interminable middle east wars) including chemical and biological weapons, as part of the US demands that would require fulfillment in addition to the so called hek list or inventory of all nuclear weapons, enrichment facilities, missile sites, production facilities and so on. It was this all or nothing approach that previously caused the talks to falter last summer after the Singapore summit, when Pompeo made similar demands in Pyongyang and Kim Jong Un refused to meet with him or other US representatives for months.
This fundamental difference which is well understood by long term observers of the negotiations between the US "one bundle" or Libyan approach, and a simultaneously reciprocal step by step, phased trust building approach, favored by North Korea, has been the obstacle to negotiations all along. A retreat was required from the US all or nothing approach after Singapore which Stephen Biegun played out in working level talks, as evidenced by his presentation at Stanford before the Hanoi summit could even occur. Once, the North Koreans committed to meet at Hanoi, the US went back to the old playbook of all or nothing, give up everything in return for vague promises of future benefits and no sanctions relief of any kind in the interim. No one who knows anything about North Korea could have seriously thought this would work.
In fact, this whole approach, is little more than a deception plan, to conceal the real policy- regime change in North Korea. Anyone who takes Trump, Pompeo, or Bolton at their word on US receptiveness to talks with North Korea, are just being deceived.
