InsideSources

The campaign for a successor to South Korea’s President Moon Jae-in promises to be one of the most exciting in the county’s recent history. It will be a referendum on the policies of the previous five years in which the economy has suffered and Moon’s dramatic overtures to North Korea have gone nowhere.

The reaction against Moon is so severe that Yoon Seok-youl, the conservative People Power Party candidate, is favored though he has had no previous experience as a political candidate. Rather, Yoon dedicated his career before seeking the nomination to criminal cases, often against political figures mired in corruption. It’s a tribute to his zeal as a prosecutor that Moon named him prosecutor-general in June 2019 and that Yoon did not hesitate to go after figures in Moon’s government.

For U.S. policy-makers, however, the more immediate question is how to get along with the winner of the election. The U.S. establishment, from the White House to the Pentagon and the State Department, is sure to put on a show of neutrality. Nobody in a position of power and influence in Washington is going to create a sensation in Korea by declaring support for either Yoon or his Democratic or Minjoo Party opponent, Lee Jae-myung, the leftist governor of Gyeonggi Province surrounding the capital of Seoul, a separate entity.

We may be sure, however, that the Americans prefer Yoon to Lee. Yoon might continue the quest for dialog with North Korea, but he has said clearly that denuclearization of the North remains a priority as it’s always been for the U.S. He has also said perhaps the U.S.  should deploy nuclear weapons in South Korea as it did before President George H.W. Bush ordered their withdrawal soon after his inauguration in 1989. He clearly believes in the historic U.S.-South Korea alliance.

Yoon’s view on the alliance contrasts starkly with that of Lee going back to his days as the leftist mayor of a city near Seoul.  Following in Moon’s footsteps, he would dedicate his efforts to appeasing North Korea, calling for doing away with sanctions imposed by the US and UN. Superficially, he would say North Korea should take corresponding steps, but the North under Kim Jong-un is not going to live up to any such deal.

Lee signaled his anti-alliance outlook several years ago when he called for withdrawal of THAAD, the Terminal High Altitude Area Defense missile complex installed by the U.S. army 200 miles south of Seoul. Needed for defense against high-flying hypersonic missiles that North Korea has been testing, THAAD remains the focal point of leftist protest.  As president, Lee could be expected also to oppose joint U.S.-Korea military exercises and to question the need for the alliance.

The Americans will approach Lee gingerly, trying to get him to tone down his more extreme views. The goal would be to preserve the alliance, to ensure that U.S. troops remain in Korea while not jeopardizing the structure of U.S.-Korean relations. The Americans would also have to deal carefully with Yoon, coordinating on approaches to North Korea and the alliance, but could expect understanding of the need for solid defense against the North.

The U.S. and South Korea, under Yoon, want to tie humanitarian aid to North Korea to the North’s showing signs of denuclearization, and they would also want to know where the aid was going. Yoon would almost certainly signal his outlook by a summit with President Biden next Spring soon after the election in March.  Lee might not demand the withdrawal of U.S. troops, but he definitely would not want to encourage cooperation while increasing efforts for dialog and reconciliation with the North.

North Korea and the American alliance, however, may not be the pivotal factor in the campaign.  Korea’s flagging economy and corruption count for more in everyday Korean politics. Yoon’s essential conservatism comes as a relief to many who are tired of Moon’s unsuccessful attempts at economic reform. Moon’s promise of a “New Deal” to digitize the economy and attack the climate crisis by reducing dependence on oil natural gas is largely forgotten.

Amid disappointments on the economy, Lee Jae-myung has called for universal income, and he’s likely to undermine the system in which huge conglomerates like Samsung and Hyundai Motor have made Korea a global economic power. More importantly, for the U.S. the real fear is he would also undermine if not destroy the U.S.-Korean alliance.

The departure of Jim Mattis as defense secretary this week has grave implications for Korea. If there was one voice of reason, calm and common sense when it came to North Korea and U.S. defense of the South, it was that of Mattis.

I encountered Mattis on his first trip to Seoul and then during a couple of others. He was strong in his belief in the need to be sure of having the troops and resources for defense of the South. At the same time, he went along with the shift in policy under President Moon Jae-in. His response was, give peace a chance.

Talks between Moon and Kim Jong-un, or between President Donald Trump and Kim were fine–but on one condition: Mattis wanted no compromise on denuclearization, on North Korea giving up its nukes or the long-range missiles capable of carrying them to distant targets, and, yes, the facilities for making them.

It would be hard to characterize Mattis as a hard-liner, a war hawk eager to bomb out the North’s nuclear sites or, for that matter, a foe of Moon’s efforts at rapprochement and dialogue. If anything, he saw defense of the South as the way to keep the peace, and he did not oppose moves toward accommodation.

Nonetheless, Trump–who never served a day in the armed forces even though his wealthy father sent him to a military academy for high school–was obviously not at ease with the generals whom he claimed to admire.

Trump did not think to let Mattis know before announcing, right after his summit with Kim on June 12 in Singapore, that he was canceling huge joint exercises with the South Korean armed forces. Nor did he consult with Mattis before saying the U.S. did not need so many troops in Korea, where the number is down to 28,500, and was spending too much on the defense of the South.

It was not until Trump arbitrarily ordered withdrawal of the small U.S. force, about 2,500, from Syria that Mattis broke with him. Mattis was not alone on Syria. All manner of allies and analysts think the U.S. withdrawal from Syria opens the way for deeper Russian and Iranian ties with the cruel regime of Bashar al-Assad, who’s stabilized his grip on power while subduing his enemies or at least holding them at bay.

Without Mattis around, there’s no telling what precipitous decisions Trump will make on Korea. Operating from his “gut,” as he likes to say, he may agree to a severe reduction in U.S. strength as demanded by the North. Or he may end most of the sanctions imposed by the U.S. and UN as punishment for the North’s nuclear and missile tests, conducted most recently in September and November 2017.

If nothing else, Trump may see no harm in signing off on just about any end-of-war statement or peace declaration that Kim thrusts on him on the vague understanding of denuclearization. No one seriously believes Kim is going to give up his nukes while demanding the U.S. also denuclearize. Never mind that the U.S. withdrew its nukes from South Korea in 1991. North Korea sees nukes on U.S. planes and ships based in Japan, Guam, even Hawaii, as more than matching its own arsenal.

Trump has already signaled his gullibility by tweeting on Christmas Day, “Progress being made” and “looking forward to my next summit with Chairman Kim” – the title “chairman” from Kim’s leadership of the ruling Workers’ Party.

The claim to “progress” rests on the first trip to North Korea by Trump’s new North Korea point man, Stephen Biegun, who like any tourist peered across the line at Panmunjom, then talked to South Koreans and Americans in Seoul. Biegun, in four days in the South, let it be known it was fine for South Koreans to break ground for a North-South rail link while the U.S. eased constraints on do-good groups going to the North dispensing food and medicine.

No problem, but Trump chose to ignore a drumbeat of rhetoric from the North taking the South to task for acting too slowly and accusing the U.S. of doing nothing in the quest for reconciliation. Mattis as defense secretary would undoubtedly take a realistic view of the North’s desire to make serious concessions, which is nil.

Trump doesn’t want to hear bad or negative news about his friend Kim Jong-un. Without Mattis around, he’ll be less inclined than ever to consider advice or views contrary to his own happy talk.

The notion of opening rail service between North and South Korea is captivating. You have to hope that someday the dream will come true and trains will be hauling passengers and freight from South to North and back again as they should have been doing for many years.

There are, however, obstacles that make the whole idea unrealistic. Quite aside from U.S. and UN sanctions that prohibit construction right away, other issues may be more serious. For one thing, there’s the cost. Who’s going to pay for overhauling the North’s railroads?

Experts from South Korea, after studying first the western and then the eastern rail system in North Korea, say the entire network is in awful shape. After 10 days looking at the tracks, roadbeds, bridges and tunnels of the North’s eastern rail system, Lim Jong-il, director of the railway construction division of the railway bureau of the ministry of land, infrastructure and transport, refrained from blunt language as he talked about what he and his colleagues had seen.

The eastern line, said Lim, was “almost the same” as the western or Gyeongui line, which the team had inspected earlier and was bad enough. “More in-depth inspections” would be necessary, he said, acknowledging his experts need much more time, months or even years, closely examining everything to do with the North Korean system before reconstruction and repair can begin. Will North Koreans permit microscopic study of their system? How deeply can South Koreans delve into the North’s infrastructure before the North Koreans decide they’re spying, jeopardizing security?

Let’s say eventually the South Koreans get past issues of security and sanctions. It’s fine to dream of the North-South trains running at last, but the price of fixing the system will run into the billions of dollars, or trillions of won. No one knows the final price tag, but one estimate comes to upwards of $40 billion.

Who, exactly, will pick up this tab? Can the South cover the costs in a time of economic uncertainty at home? Should South Korean taxpayers have to pay for the North’s new railroads while the North invests precious funds not only on nukes and missiles but also on a conventional military establishment of more than 1 million troops? Might Kim Jong-un ever abandon his nuclear program and vastly scale down his armed forces, allocating the savings to upgrading the North’s railroads and roads and much else, including medical care and food for his people?

Yet another question arises. Who’s going to provide the labor? Would South Koreans be working on the North’s railroads, taking advantage of their experience on the South’s great system? And if North Korea provides thousands of its people to carry out the South Korean plan, how much would they get paid, and by whom? Would it be too much to tell Kim, no forced labor, no de facto slavery?

And that’s not all. The team inspecting the North’s eastern system had to return from North Korea by bus even though a single-track line was built by Hyundai Construction nearly 20 years ago to carry tourists from the station on the south side of the Demilitarized Zone in the northeastern corner of South Korea to Mount Geumkang, looming north of the DMZ.

That line remains unused. U.S. Army Captain Eric Estrada, with the military armistice commission of the United Nations Command, told me the gleaming new station was empty. Nor does any line run up the South Korean east coast all the way to the DMZ. A single track, built during the Japanese colonial era, has long since been scrapped. That’s in contrast to the west coast Gyeongui line, which runs up to Dora-san Station before linking to the track, also not used, also built by Hyundai, to the Gaesong Industrial Complex inside North Korea.

In other words, even if sanctions are removed and serious work begins on the North Korean system, the eastern or Donghae line has to be extended northward from Gangneung more than 100 kilometers below the DMZ. Again, the total price tag would be well into the billions of dollars – an investment that’s needed if freight is to move from Busan, one of the world’s biggest port complexes, up the Korean peninsula to Russia and eastern Europe.

One conclusion is inescapable. Though the road may be paved with good intentions, don’t count on the trains running up and down the east and west sides of the Korean peninsula any time soon.

It’s fine to talk to the North Koreans about their nukes and missiles. Go ahead and tell them they’re a threat to the world, the human race, to civilization. No problem. The North’s stock retort is they’re needed for self-defense against the Americans, who bombed our country indiscriminately in the Korean War.

One topic, however, is strictly off the table, verboten, banned, forbidden, absolutely not mentioned if you want to keep talking to them: human rights.

That’s why South Korea’s President Moon Jae-in, on the 70th anniversary of passage by the U.N. General Assembly of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, said not a word about North Korea as he gingerly remarked, “The way to improve the human rights of the entire Korean people” is “to eliminate the remains of the Cold War on the Korean peninsula and establish permanent peace.”

Sure, but what’s he going on about? Is he equating South with North Korea, suggesting the South’s record on human rights is comparable with that of the North? Or is he just trying to avoid the topic, to bury it beneath fine words?

Kim Tae-min, head of the inter-Korean cooperation mission for “sustainable development goals,” put the problem this way at a conference staged by the Database Center for North Korean Human Rights in Seoul, which for years has been collecting facts and figures on what’s happening up there. “When we talk about human rights in North Korea,” he said, “that can halt any conversation with North Korea.”

But the dreaded topic cannot be ignored so easily. “Human rights must be discussed at the same time,” said Oh Joon, professor of peace studies at Kyung Hee University, talking at the Database Center conference. “Humanitarian assistance can be used to improve human rights.”

Hanna Song, Database Center researcher, observed, “Exemption of human rights issues from high-level talks does not mean North Korea is exempt from its obligations to protect the human rights of its citizens.”

Maybe not, but over the years the North Koreans have thumbed their noses at offers by South Korean leaders of fast aid, multi-billion dollar payoffs for just about anything.

They are simply not going to consider any assistance, any offer, however massive, that’s conditioned on freeing tens of thousands of prisoners held in the North’s sprawling gulag system for political crimes. Nor are they interested in returning several hundred South Koreans, mainly fishermen whose boats were captured on or near North Korean waters.

One wonders, though, if dialogue between Moon and Kim Jong-un is worth anything if Kim refuses to do anything about human rights, just as he won’t reveal where he’s hiding his nukes and missiles, or the facilities for making them, much less getting rid of any of them?

Interestingly, the day after the anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights was the 49th anniversary of the hijacking by North Koreans of a domestic Korean Air flight with 50 people aboard. No, President Moon did not think to mention that anniversary when orating on his vision of human rights for the Korean peninsula.

Hwang In-cheol, whose father was never returned after the hijacking, won’t let the world forget even if his pleas fall on deaf ears. Nor does he think the matter should be limited to private off-the-record dialog between Moon and Kim or among working-level officials.

His advice: Get it out in the open. What is there to lose? Maybe Kim, eager for aid and assistance, would at last, at least, make token concessions, most especially as far as Hwang is concerned the release of the father whom he was too young to remember.

“These issues should be raised directly and publicly,” he told me on the anniversary after carrying signs in English and Korean begging for someone, somehow, to bring his father home. “Kim Jong-un should be ready to address these issues,” he passionately believes. “I do not agree that raising the issue will stop dialogue.”

Hwang is all in favor of Kim Jong-un making a quick trip to Seoul to see Moon but sets one condition: “If he wants to come to South Korea, he should come with my father.”

That’s not going to happen, of course, but Hwang sees no prospect of real and lasting peace on Korea if the South fails to demand the return of citizens held captive in the North. “What is ‘eliminating the remains of the Cold War,’” he asks, if that whole issue is ignored.

Good question.

Rail travel has a special fascination for me. My home in New Jersey was near the tracks of the mighty Pennsylvania Railroad, about 45 minutes from New York. I remember watching the trains roar by as a kid, counting the number of cars on the long freight trains with names of different railroad lines painted on the sides, waving at people staring out the windows of the passenger trains. A lot of them waved back, leading me to wave longer, as if bidding farewell to friends and relatives.

The trains are still running, but the “Pennsy” is long gone. Now the passenger trains are run by Amtrak, an amorphous quasi-national corporation, an acronym from the words America and track, carrying passengers all over the United States and into Canada. The freight are owned by an amalgam of huge carriers. So vital is freight service that often passenger trains are delayed, waiting while the freight trains rumble by, sometimes more than 100 cars carrying products for export and import, to and from around the world.

Railroads for passengers may seem old-fashioned, a lot slower than planes, less convenient than vehicles speeding to individual homes and companies, but there is a romance about railroads that never dies. It’s partly for that reason that the prospect of opening railroads from Seoul to Pyongyang is so alluring.

Imagine the fun of boarding at Seoul Station and getting off three hours later in central Pyongyang or perhaps going all the way to the Chinese border, crossing the Yalu or Amnok River at Sinuiju, stopping at Dandong on the Chinese side. Then there would be the east coast route, up from Busan to Gangneung and Sokcho, alighting at Mount Geumgang, then going up to the Rason special zone and across the Tumen River on the way to Vladivostok.

It’s got to happen that way someday, but when? It’s exciting to think of South and North Korean planners and engineers getting together to figure out how and where to run the tracks, open the stations and get the trains rolling. They may be far from laying down the tracks, upgrading and repairing the rail system in the North, but you have to begin somewhere.

But wait. Aren’t there a couple of railroads already linking North and South? What about the single-track lines built largely by Hyundai Engineering and Construction nearly 20 years ago, one running up the west side, past Dora Station and on to the Gaeseong Industrial Complex inside North Korea? And then, on the east side, there’s the line  built to carry train loads of tourists to Mount Geumgang, also just inside the North.  Both these lines link up to North Korean tracks with the potential for going up the map of North Korea to China and Russia.

These lines were opened with such pomp and circumstance, such expressions of hope and optimism, that it’s hard to believe they never carried a thing. For a time freight trains did run once a week from Dora Station to the Gaeseong complex, but they were only doing test runs. And on the east side, as far as I know, no trains ever ran on the track that I saw gleaming a few hundred meters to the right of the road the last time I visited Mount Geumgang more than six years ago.

Rail service up the Korean peninsula, though, should be more than a luxury or fantasy. The Russians for years have been pushing for trains to carry freight from the port of Busan all the way up the east coast, into Russia and on to Europe. The possibilities are tremendous. North and South Korea could both assess huge charges for the use of the tracks. Passengers could be whisked up to Vladivostok on super-expresses and go from there on existing trans-Siberian tracks.

Neglect of railroads is just one more sad result of North Korea’s squandering resources on nukes and missiles. Shutting off traffic on the lines built by Hyundai was North Korea’s way of punishing the South for its pro-American policies.

In the process, North Korea was punishing itself. Now the North Koreans want to take advantage of the skills and resources that have made the South Korean system one of the world’s best. As always, the question is what they’ll give in return.

Controversy surrounding President Trump is so intense that you have to wonder whether he’s going to want the job beyond his current four-year term.  Surfing the morning news, you get to listen to non-stop attacks from MSNBC on the left, equally hard-hitting defenses from Fox on the right — and not all that much in between.

Trump himself goes on with barbs at “fake news” in the middle of a firestorm that’s partly of his own making. Sometimes you doubt he’s thought through what he’s saying as when he criticizes a Navy SEAL team for not having gotten Osama bin Laden long before he was killed in a raid in the compound where he was staying not far from a Pakistan army base. And you find it hard to believe he could have been so hard on the late Senator John McCain, captured and imprisoned for years in North Korea after his plane was shot down during the Vietnam War.

Nor, for that matter, can anyone, really, see why Trump, so great at playing to his base among red-blooded Americans who can’t stand the media elitists who keep bashing him, would not have visited the Marine cemetery during his recent trip to France or, for that matter, have taken a bow at the Arlington National Cemetery on Veterans Day. Yes, Trump has said he should have visited Arlington, so why doesn’t he make the trek right now across the Potomac from the White House? The cemetery is open every day, not just Veterans Day.

The daily tirades, the sniping, the words of wisdom from panelists and analysts, capture your attention in a drama that never gets boring, but they’re also a massive distraction. Has Trump considered seriously what he’s going to say to Kim Jong-un if they do meet again for that second summit? Vice President Mike Pence, in Singapore at the recent confab of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations, spoke highly of Trump’s success in getting Kim to stop threatening the United States with nukes and missiles, but he also raised a couple of issues that might not be to Kim’s liking.

For one thing, Pence stuck to the mantra of CVID (complete, verifiable, irreversible denuclearization). While Kim might agree in an abstract sense on denuclearization of the Korean peninsula, as he did at his first summit with Trump in Singapore in June, it’s inconceivable he’s going to throw out all his nukes and missiles and the facilities for making them. In fact, there’s little doubt that North Korean engineers right now are making more of them or at least working on the means to do so.

For another, the North Koreans are not going to produce a list of everything to do with their nukes and missiles. A report released by the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington on the basis of commercial satellite imagery developed by Joseph Bermudez suggested the scope of the program.

No doubt the Pentagon knew about all that from its own spy satellites, but North Korea has a lot of other sites hidden away in nooks and crannies, caves and tunnels all over the country. The show that Kim has made of seeming to destroy a couple of them has fooled no one.

Not that those realities would deter Trump from saying, fine, I’d be glad to talk to the man. He might even consider signing another joint statement with Kim as they did in Singapore. This time around, it would be a “peace declaration” committing both countries to formally “ending” the Korean War.

But what if Kim avoided agreeing to a listing of anything or making a commitment, a real promise, of CVID? Trump has a lot of other stuff going on. Rather than answer such questions, he would prefer to leave North Korea to Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, still looking for another meeting with his North Korean interlocutor, Kim Yong-chol, to talk about the timing and setting for a summit.

No matter, national security adviser John Bolton will have trouble convincing his boss of the need to read up on what North Korea is doing. The president is too busy tweeting about political foes, playing games with the media that he loves to hate, making pronouncements about everyone else’s mistakes.

You think all that’s a sideshow? For Trump, North Korea is the sideshow.

Because President Donald Trump was a reality TV star, he is oriented toward winning each day’s news cycle, or at least deflecting any bad news of the day via distraction. Given that his governing style depends on such day trading, he basked in the ultimate high of startling the world with his unlikely summit with North Korean leader Kim Jong-un in Singapore last June. There he signed a vague summit agreement with Kim and then later tweeted that “there is no longer a Nuclear Threat from North Korea.”

Yet since then, things have not gone well in U.S.-North Korea negotiations to make the North Korean nuclear and missile threats evaporate, as Trump promised. Kim pocketed the international legitimacy that the leader of the Free World gave the dictator of a small, rogue state and has not even provided a list of his nuclear weapons, missiles and facilities, let alone getting rid of them. In fact, unsurprisingly, a U.S. think tank has recently cataloged 13 of 20 undeclared North Korean missile sites.

The first jolting reality is that the supposedly kooky and irrational Kim has used the need of Trump’s monstrous ego for pomp and circumstance to play the inexperienced U.S. president. The second harsh actuality is that the North Koreans saw the United States overthrow Saddam Hussein of Iraq and Moammar Gadhafi of Libya after they gave up their nuclear programs and are thus reluctant to experience the same fate.

Because no viable U.S. military option exists to take out all of North Korea’s missiles, small nuclear weapons stockpile and related facilities, the United States will eventually need to use its vastly superior atomic arsenal to deter any attack from a nuclear North Korea — as it has successfully done in the past with more formidable nuclear foes such as those of China and the Soviet Union (and its successor state Russia).

Yet the fear of U.S. military planners is not really that the North Korean autocrat will ever attack the United States with nuclear weapons — a suicidal mission given the vast dominance of the U.S. nuclear arsenal compared to the small number of nuclear weapons and long-range missiles in possession of “Dear Leader.”

Even now, doubt exists among some analysts about the North’s capability to launch a long-range missile containing a nuclear warhead, have it survive re-entry into the Earth’s atmosphere, and accurately hit a target in the United States. Their real apprehension is less with American security and more with the preservation of the informal U.S. Empire in the Asia/Pacific region.

The reasoning among military planners and nuclear analysts is that if North Korea even had some possibility of hitting the United States with a long-range nuclear-tipped missile, it could attack, invade, harass or intimidate South Korea or Japan and then threaten the United States with nuclear retaliation if it came to the aid of either of its allies militarily.

The solution to this problem and the remedy to the valid perennial irritant on which Trump has shined a spotlight — the U.S. subsidizing the defense of now wealthy allies and getting little in return in terms of economic benefits, such as the full opening of their markets — is to ween Japan and South Korea off U.S. military protection, thus spurring them both to spend more money on defense.

And if that required them developing and deploying nuclear weapons to deter North Korea or other potential regional adversaries, Trump’s suggestion that such a course would not be objectionable might be acceptable. After all, Japan and South Korea are not Iran and have been responsible actors on the international stage for decades now. Nuclear proliferation to unstable or rogue states is one thing and to stable, lawful nations is an entirely different matter.

Much of the problem with U.S.-North Korea relations lies with the continued American military tutelage of South Korea and Japan. The United States now has almost $22 trillion in national debt and can no longer afford such a dangerous, forward-based and overextended military posture in East Asia.

On the 100th anniversary of the end of the horrific World War I, Americans should remember that alliances should be temporary means to a nation’s security and are not ends in themselves. In the early 20th Century, none of the great powers in Europe wanted a general war on the continent, but their entangling alliances dragged them into what would become a brutal meat grinder. Also, America’s founding generation cautioned about “permanent” and “entangling” alliances, but modern-day politicians have forgotten their warnings. The anniversary of World War I is a great time to jog their memories.

Around 6pm Tuesday evening, NH Sen. Jeanne Shaheen tweeted out that, despite voting to confirm Mike Pompeo for CIA Director a few months ago and saying she “appreciates his dedication” in the position, she refuses to support him for Secretary of State.

“I continue to have deep concerns regarding Mr. Pompeo’s past statements and policy views, particularly in regards to the LGBTQ community, American Muslims and women’s reproductive rights,” the NH Democrat said in a statement.  “For these reasons, I have concluded that I cannot support Director Pompeo to lead the State Department at this critical time.”

Less than two hours later, the Washington Post broke the story that the man Sen. Shaheen declared unfit to serve as America’s top diplomat over his personal religious views has secretly visited North Korea and met with Kim Jong-un.

“The extraordinary meeting between one of Trump’s most trusted emissaries and the authoritarian head of a rogue state was part of an effort to lay the groundwork for direct talks between Trump and Kim about North Korea’s nuclear weapons program, according to the two people, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the highly classified nature of the talks,” the Washington Post reported.

“The clandestine mission, which has not previously been reported, came soon after Pompeo was nominated to be secretary of state.”

No word on whether Director Pompeo discussed gay rights or abortion with the North Korean dictator.

What should Shaheen do? She was one of 14 Democrats who voted for Pompeo for CIA Director, and the consensus is he’s done a competent job. Now she’s going to bail on him?  If she does, Shaheen faces the prospect of publicly voting to end Pompeo’s efforts to resolve one of the greatest global challenged of the day–the threat of a nuclear North Korea with weapons that could reach the US–over social issues.

Yes, it’s possible (in fact, it’s probably likely at this point) that Pompeo’s nomination will be approved by the US Senate without her support.  But if there is a breakthrough and Secretary of State Pompeo strikes an historic deal regarding North Korea–say, the signing of a peace agreement between the two Koreas– Senator Shaheen will be on the record as having tried to stop Pompeo’s progress after the fact.

Then again, she’s already flipped on Mike Pompeo once before. Maybe she will again.

Arkansas Republican Senator Tom Cotton admits to being something of a breath of youth in a legislative body not generally known for being spry. The youngest sitting senator, Cotton, who just had his 40th birthday, quips that only two of his colleagues were elected before he was born. Despite his youth, Cotton is quickly becoming a rising star in the GOP. On Thursday, he spoke with Washington Post columnist David Ignatius at an event focusing on the broad national security threats America faces, including North Korea, Iran, the JCPOA, and gun control. Cotton, who was scheduled to meet with President Trump soon after the talk, used his time to stress the need for America to project strength on the world stage.

First on his list of rogues is Iran. Cotton believes that refusing to certify Iran’s compliance with the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) signed under the Obama administration would give the U.S. an opportunity to work with its allies in the region and in Europe to try to get a “better deal.”

“This deal is not in America’s national security interests,” he said. “Even if the JCPOA stands, by the end of the next decade, they will be a lawful and legitimate nuclear power. I don’t think we can live with that. I don’t think Israel can live with that. I don’t think our Arab allies can live with that.”

For Cotton, a new and improved agreement would remove the sunset clause for Iranian nuclear development, hamstring their centrifuge and research development, stop ballistic missile testing, and change the menu of responses open in the event that Iran reneges on the deal. The current JCPOA offers few options outside of snapback sanctions, which makes it more difficult to garner European support, says Cotton. Part of the problem is that the treaty applies the same policy response to any Iranian violation, regardless of degree.

“Snapback sanctions are kind of like saying you only get the death penalty for murder or jaywalking,” he quipped.

Instead, Cotton wants to look towards other options that would keep international pressure on the Iranian regime without limiting the potential response types. Of crucial importance for him is an extended view of the future, which recognizes that an nuclear Iran will be just as harmful in 10 years as it is today, but fewer options will then be available.

“That is the blink of an eye in the lifetime of a nation,” he said of the ten-year projection that is the foundation of the JCPOA, citing North Korea as an example of a rogue regime that used treaties to buy time for its nuclear program.

Cotton’s strict interpretation of the law also extended to his view on the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program, which granted temporary amnesty for illegal immigrants brought to the U.S. as children. Expressing sympathy for young adults who have been raised as Americans, but still lack legal status, Cotton said that he worried that continuing the program would create a new “chain of immigration” with extended families following DACA recipients into the U.S.

The issue is part of the broader problems that Cotton sees in American immigration policy, which he broadly categorized as issues of documentation, enforcement, and border security. He has introduced a bill in Congress to address at least part of this problem, namely green cards. Cotton, who described his plan as moving immigration policy away from one designed for last century’s country and economy, towards one designed for this century’s country and economy, prioritizes immigrants with education and useful job skills, rather than family members of current immigrants.

“Every year we give out about the state of Montana in green cards,” Cotton said, trying to put the number into perspective. When immigration skews towards low-skilled labor, these new workers put a drag on American wages, particularly for those with only a high school education or less.

To accomplish this goal, Cotton wants to see Congress take action to end chain migration, which allows current residents to bring over family members. Cotton told Ignatius that he was willing to compromise with his colleagues in Congress and vote to pass an extension of DACA if Congress was able to pass a bill ending chain migration.

For Cotton, immigration is one of many issues that exposes how the life experiences of America’s elites differ from those of the working class.

“I’m more connected to the places in the country that understand the negative side of immigration,” he said. “If you live in New York City, Washington, or San Francisco, you see mainly the benefits of immigration. If you work the kind of job where you take a shower after you get off work rather than before you go to work, you see the negative side of immigration.”

These negatives include lost jobs and lower wages. While he did not want to discuss the likelihood of such a measure passing the Senate, Cotton emphasized the necessity for these types of reform.

It was a dense, information packed hour before Cotton had to rush back to Capitol Hill.

Correction: An earlier version of the piece identified David Ignatius as an associate editor with the Washington Post. He is an opinion columnist.

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