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‘No deal is better than a bad deal’ seems to be the emerging centrist and hawkish interpretation of the Hanoi summit collapse. While I’m inclined to agree, the perfect shouldn’t be the enemy of the good, a point @DanielLarison often makes about hardliner complaints of the Iran /1
nuclear deal. If a good deal with NK gets defined as CVID or unilateral disarmament, we’ll never get a deal. Here Trump, and Moon’s, failure to give a major programmatic address on what kinds of swaps we could tolerate with NK is a big problem. We need to have a serious public /2
debate on what terms would be good, specifically on what costly, politically uncomfortable concessions we are willing to make. Trump and Moon have laid no political groundwork for the huge concessions NK will demand - sanctions relief, cash, recognition, military changes, and /3
so on - for the grand bargain Trump and Moon seem to be pursuing. My own sense is a grand bargain is too hard bc the gaps are too wide - small, achievable steps would be better first - but if we’re going to shoot for a huge deal, then there has to be some kind of /4
consensus among the many interested parties on the US-SK-Japan side about specifics of the swap. Without that, it’s hard to know what a good, but not fantastical, deal would be and if it would have political legs beyond these presidents. So what, specifically, do you think we /5
give up for what? I’ve been arguing this point for awhile - - but it seems more relevant now that Trump is calling Hanoi a bad deal. A debate on a good deal’s specifics is overdue. END
