Sunday, April 22, 2018

I Still Think Kim Should Try This

Kim Jong Un has declared a moratorium on new nuclear weapons testing. The public pretext seems to be "hey, we've got working nukes, we don't need to test anymore." The obvious message to the US is "OK, we're giving you something as a prelude to these coming negotiations."

Of course, the US goal is for Kim to give up his existing nukes, not just to stop making and testing new ones. Most of the commentators I'm reading predict that that proposal will be received with words along the lines of "it will cold day in hell ..."

But I think Kim should go big in a way that leaves the US in a "put up or shut up" position.

He should offer to get rid of his nukes at the same time as, and at the same percentage rate as, the US.

If he has 10 nukes and the US has 1,000 nukes, he'll decommission one nuke for every 100 the the US decommissions. With mutual inspections for verifying both the declarations of numbers and the decommissionings, of course.

If the US negotiators don't just harumph and ostentatiously walk away from the table -- making the US look like a douche nozzle rogue state to the rest of the world -- their obvious objection will be "but all these other countries have nukes, and we can't get rid of ours until they get rid of theirs."

To which the obvious North Korean counter is "well, let's get them in here around the table and get this whole thing done, then."

Of course the US negotiators would just harumph and ostentatiously walk away from the table. Getting rid of weapons of mass destruction is always for those other regimes. And we'd be right back to the status quo ante.

But I still think that's the way Kim should go.

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