“The spectacle of the Singapore Summit, the first-ever meeting between a North Korean leader and a sitting U.S. president, naturally captured the world’s attention. The compelling images of the encounter between Kim Jong-un and Donald Trump should not, however, obscure two essential realities,” writes Daniel Sneider in an analysis written for The National Bureau of Asian Research. Read it here.

This editorial was originally carried by Asia Times on June 13, 2018, and reposted with permission.

Bedecked with skyscrapers, Malaysia’s capital Kuala Lumpur is a high-rise city. In that lofty context, the headquarters of the People’s Justice Party (PKR) are down to earth.

They occupy one in a row of nondescript low-rise buildings unfashionably far from downtown. Even the lettered number of the floor that includes the PKR leader’s office is anomalous: 3A.

As if the “A” stood for Anwar—Anwar Ibrahim, the head of the PKR. As if, years ago, the builder had presciently inserted the “A” floor, predicting correctly that the trials and incarcerations of Malaysia’s most famous political prisoner would end years later, on May 9, 2018, in a historic, peaceful, electoral ouster of Prime Minister Najib Razak and his inter-communal National Front, or Barisan Nasional (BN).

Included in the defeated coalition was its leading member party, the United Malays National Organization (UMNO), which had been returned to power in every general election held in Malaya/Malaysia since 1959.

This writer has known Anwar since the 1980s. In November 2014 at Stanford University, I joined him and my colleagues Larry Diamond and Frank Fukuyama on a panel to discuss Islam and democracy, with specific reference to Malaysia. Anwar was on his way back to Kuala Lumpur.

He and we knew he was almost certain to be detained again on politically motivated charges of sodomy, a crime under Malaysian law. He could have gone into exile. He did not. He went home to face his accusers in the ruling UMNO party.

He was jailed three months later, in February 2015, and was not released until more than three years later still, on May 16, 2018, not coincidentally a week after Malaysians had voted his four-party “Alliance for Hope”, or Pakatan Harapan (PH), coalition into office.

Promptly at the new government’s request, Malaysia’s king issued a pardon amounting to an exoneration that covered not only Anwar’s latest detention, but an earlier political jailing from 1999 to 2004 on the same sodomy charge.

On June 6, 2018 I visited Anwar at his office. He was in fine spirits. Had he chosen not to fly back to Malaysia after speaking at Stanford in 2014, had he opted for exile instead, he would not have been able to stage a martyr’s comeback into his country’s political life. “Out of sight, out of mind” applies to politicians as well as lovers.

Now Anwar is very much in sight, out of jail, and leading the PKR, the main party in the Alliance of Hope that ousted Najib’s National Front including UMNO.

The words “I’M BACK” appear next to his photograph on a poster in the elevator to his office. But the man upon whom Anwar’s immediate political future depends is also back.

The blunt, decisive, nonagenarian Mahathir Mohamad, who led the PH’s winning campaign against the incumbent BN, has reassumed the prime ministership that he held for 22 years from 1981 to 2003.

Prior to the May 2018 election, Mahathir apparently agreed that if the PH won, he would, as prime minister, free Anwar and eventually cede the position to him. Already the world’s oldest head of state, Mahathir will be 93 in July. In August, Anwar will be 71.

The gap of more than two decades between them suggests that time is on Anwar’s side. Or is it? Could history repeat itself? After all, it was Mahathir as prime minister who, in 1998, blocked his then-deputy Anwar’s ascent to the top slot. Mahathir fired him and, in effect, hounded him into prison.

The reason? In 1997-98, while the Asian financial crisis raged, Anwar as finance minister argued for relatively liberal, International Monetary Fund-friendly economic reform and opposed the corruption associated with Mahathir’s rule. Mahathir disagreed. He responded to the crisis along more or less state-nationalist lines, and he resented what he thought was Anwar’s premature ambition to replace him.

There are no visible signs of such acrimony between the two men today. They are indebted to each other. Technically, Anwar owes his freedom to Mahathir. But politically, without Anwar’s iconic status and popularity, the PH might not have won the lower-house majority that enabled Mahathir, as prime minister, to obtain his former rival’s release.

The good news is that Najib’s massively corrupt and incrementally despotic nine-year rule is over. The cautionary news is that Malaysian democracy is not yet fully secured, given the uncertainties and contingencies that could affect its future.

As for my having met Anwar on floor 3A, the “A” does not of course stand for Anwar. The elevator rises directly from 3A to 5 for a different reason. In spoken Mandarin, “four” sounds like the word for “death.” Only the tones differ. Whoever built the building, knowing that superstitious Chinese occupants would shun a numerically fatal fourth floor, called it “3A” instead.

Will the ruse fool the devil? Will renascent Malaysian democracy survive? Bandwagoning is already underway, as venal officials and executives who benefited from Najib’s kleptocratic ways seek political safety by ingratiating themselves with the new government, potentially weakening its ability to clean house.

Nor were reformers necessarily encouraged when Mahathir chose his long-time ally Daim Zainuddin to head a Council of Eminent Persons to advise the new government. Daim both preceded and succeeded Anwar as minister of finance during Mahathir’s long and controversial earlier reign as prime minister.

Also concerning in this context was the June 8, 2018 decision by the Council’s head of media and communications to resign from the position because it prevented him from speaking freely. A veteran journalist, he had been criticized for reporting in his blog that the Najib administration had allocated public funds for the royal family’s expenses in 2017-18 far in excess of the amount allowed by law.

Anwar himself felt obliged to warn against disrespecting the country’s basically symbolic and constitutional monarchy—an arrangement whereby the national kingship in effect rotates every five years among the ceremonial rulers of Malaysia’s nine states.

In Anwar’s plausible if debatable view, the country’s newborn and vulnerable administration can ill-afford to criticize royals whose symbolic support it may well need in the years ahead.

The newly ruling “Alliance of Hope” for democracy in Malaysia, as it transitions from opposing to governing, will need to navigate skillfully the problematic space between reformist candor and pragmatic restraint.

That dilemma instantiates, on a far-from-whimsical scale, Anwar’s need to protect the democratic freedom of Malaysians to be outspoken in principle, while he works on a floor whose number is unspoken in practice.

Donald K. Emmerson heads the Southeast Asia Program at Stanford University where he is also affiliated with the Center on Democracy, Development, and the Rule of Law.

The 2018 IISS Shangri-La Dialogue was held in Singapore, June 1-3. Shorenstein APARC's Donald Emmerson was in attendance; some of his observations from the the 17th Asia Security Summit are provided below.

NOTE: This post is forthcoming from YaleGlobal.

Donald K. Emmerson heads the Southeast Asia Program at Stanford University where he is also affiliated with the Center on Democracy, Development, and the Rule of Law.

On May 24, Shorenstein APARC hosted the final three research presentations by this year’s Corporate Affiliate Visiting Fellows. What had been months in preparation was at last over; any indications of nervousness or anxiety now gave way to jubilant smiles and celebratory thumbs-ups for cameras. The journey that began for many nearly a year ago had come to a successful end.

Established in 1982, the Corporate Affiliates Program introduces personnel of Asian organizations that have become APARC corporate affiliates to American life and institutions. Over the span of a year, Corporate Affiliate Visiting Fellows have the opportunity to immerse in daily interaction with specialists, students, and scholars from Stanford and abroad. In turn, the practical experience and international perspectives that Visiting Fellows bring with them enrich and inform intellectual exchange at both Shorenstein APARC and Stanford at large. 

The 2017-2018 Visiting Fellows came to APARC from 14 different organizations including government agencies, state-owned enterprises, and private sector industry corporations from four countries: China, India, Japan, and Korea.

Academic Engagement

The Corporate Affiliates Program is ideal for mid-career professionals looking to expand their knowledge and international experience. Visiting Fellows participate in a structured, yet individualized year of academic exploration. Elements of the program include creating individual research projects, auditing classes, attending exclusive seminars, and visiting local companies and institutions.

Following summer intensives and orientation, Visiting Fellows embark on their nine-month research projects under the guidance of an APARC faculty advisor. Fellows are matched with an advisor based on the research project subject and/or their professional background and region of employment.

“The best thing about this program is that I have one entire year to focus and to manage my own time,” observed a previous Visiting Fellow.

The months of thorough research culminate in a paper and its public presentation. Fellows present their research findings before an audience of APARC faculty and researchers, Stanford community members, and their “fellow Fellows.” Over the course of five days in May, audiences heard presentations on a wide variety of subjects ranging from the impact of U.S. Supreme Court decisions on the AI Industry to regulatory requirements for bio-similar products, and from the role of large industries in Urban Air Transport to the benefits of shifting a government’s focus from economic growth to people’s happiness.

Presentations were well received by APARC faculty, though not before standing up to the rigorous follow-up questions from a highly engaged audience.

University Enrichment

For Corporate Affiliates, the year was not exclusively about their research. Fellows found ample opportunities to take advantage of non-academic pursuits, both on-campus and in the greater Bay Area.

One way to further encourage exploration was a team-based activity designed by the program. Fellows were broken up into groups of five, each tasked with coordinating an excursion to take the rest on. Facilitated trips included a hike to Stanford’s famous radio telescope (“the Dish”), an exploration of the Berkeley neighborhood and its local industries, and a visit to NASA’s Ames Research Center at Moffett Field.

In addition to their professional experiences, Fellows also enriched the Center and university community through their personal pursuits. Takahito Inoshita, for example, brought his musical talent to Stanford along with an extensive experience in engineering. While researching how cities could identify policy needs via natural language data, he also performed with the Stanford Jazz Orchestra as lead trombonist at a November performance at Stanford’s Bing Concert Hall.

Next year’s Visiting Fellows are scheduled to begin arriving in mid-June, and include personnel from government, SOEs and private industries, but also the military and non-profit sector as well. For now, however, the Center is still saying goodbye to the 2017-2018 Fellows as they leave to join a distinguished, ever-growing alumni network of government and private sector professionals throughout Asia.

Following the announcement that the United States had canceled a planned summit with North Korea, Stanford scholars discuss the future of diplomacy and denuclearization on the Korean peninsula.

What led to the U.S. canceling the planned summit with North Korea? Could a meeting realistically be rescheduled? Stanford scholars discuss the issues. (Image credit: Getty Images)

This post was originally published by the Stanford News Service. The following is an extended version, including comments by APARC Visiting Scholar, Daniel Sneider.

President Donald Trump was scheduled to meet North Korean leader Kim Jong Un on June 12 to discuss efforts for denuclearization and a peace plan for the region. What led to the U.S. canceling the planned talks? Could a meeting realistically be rescheduled? Can the U.S. diplomatically negotiate denuclearization when there are clearly different approaches to what disarmament looks like?

To address these questions, Stanford News Service talked to five Stanford scholars about the issues:

• Michael Auslin is the inaugural Williams-Griffis Fellow in Contemporary Asia at the Hoover Institution. He specializes in global risk analysis, U.S. security and foreign policy strategy, and security and political relations in Asia. He recently authored The End of the Asian Century: War, Stagnation and the Risks to the World’s Most Dynamic Region.
• Siegfried Hecker is a top nuclear security scholar, former Los Alamos National Laboratory director and senior fellow at the Center for International Security and Cooperation. Hecker’s research interests include plutonium science, nuclear weapons policy and international security, nuclear security (including nonproliferation and counterterrorism) and cooperative nuclear threat reduction.
• Gi-Wook Shin is a sociology professor, a senior fellow at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies (FSI), director of the Walter H. Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center and the founding director of the Korea Program. His research has concentrated on social movements, nationalism, development and international relations. He recently authored Superficial Korea, a book about social maladies currently affecting Korean society.
• Kathleen Stephens is the William J. Perry Fellow in the Korea Program at the Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center. From 2008 to 2011, she served as the U.S. ambassador to South Korea. She has four decades of experience in Korean affairs, first as a Peace Corps volunteer in rural Korea in the 1970s, and in ensuing decades as a diplomat and as U.S. ambassador in Seoul.
• Daniel Sneider is a visiting scholar with Stanford’s Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center. His research is focused on current U.S. foreign and national security policy in Asia and on the foreign policy of Japan and Korea. His publications include History Textbooks and the Wars in Asia: Divided Memories, and First Drafts of Korea: The U.S. Media and Perceptions of the Last Cold War Frontier.

What led to the summit’s cancellation?

Auslin: The real problem was the rushed nature of the summit. The lure of an unprecedented first-time meeting between the U.S. president and the North Korean dictator meant that there was a short window in which the two sides could resolve key issues before the leaders sat down together. And after nearly 70 years of hostility and failed negotiations, negotiations between Washington and Pyongyang would have been extraordinarily difficult in any case. At the core, however, the two sides needed to agree on the fundamental question of the definition of denuclearization, let alone its timetable and the sequence of U.S. aid, before the two principals met. As the time drew near, North Korea tried to force the U.S. into recognizing its own definition of denuclearization and timetable.

Hecker: Two weeks ago, matters looked very good, especially after Secretary [of State Mike] Pompeo’s second visit to Pyongyang. After he returned, he said the U.S. and North Korea had similar visions of the future. Then, during the past week, high-level Trump administration officials painted a very different vision for North Korea’s future by pushing for a Libya model of denuclearization. Not surprisingly, visions of Muammar Gaddafi’s mutilated body did not go over well in Pyongyang. North Korean officials wrote scathing rebuttals that appeared to lead to a race as to who would cancel the summit first. President Trump won that race.

Shin: The summit fell through because two sides failed to narrow the gap on how to get to denuclearization of North Korea. Trump was obsessed with a complete, verifiable and irreversible dismantlement, known also as CVID, and the principle of “denuclearization first, then economic rewards,” but Kim wanted a gradual, step-by-step approach. Trump was probably under pressure from Republican conservatives that he could not settle for a “bad” deal – which would mean anything less than CVID. At the working level, the U.S. was probably not ready for talks to happen in two weeks. Trump might have used North Korea’s recent verbal attacks as an excuse to cancel the June summit.

Sneider: The summit fell apart because the gap between the positions of the United States and North Korea became so evident that it could no longer be credibly claimed that this meeting was going to lead to the North Koreans giving up their nuclear weapons capability. 

Stephens: President Trump surprised everyone, including his own staff, some weeks ago by suddenly and seemingly impulsively agreeing to a summit with the North Korean leader. His letter to Kim Jung Un this morning withdrawing from the June 12 summit had the same feeling of hasty improvisation. He took umbrage, understandably, at the tone and substance of recent North Korean statements, though they were not exceptional by Pyongyang’s historical standards. He also seemed to realize, belatedly, the huge gap between U.S. expectations of “complete, verifiable and irreversible denuclearization” of North Korea and Pyongyang’s vague pledge to negotiate, as a nuclear weapons state itself, the eventual denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula. 

Is a delayed summit likely?

Auslin:  Trump left open the possibility of a future meeting, but only if Kim ratchets down the rhetoric and insults. It is just as likely that Pyongyang will increase its threatening words, and possibly even undertake aggressive acts, to try and blackmail the U.S. back to the negotiating table. If the two sides can quietly continue high-level talks aimed at agreeing on a definition of denuclearization and a timetable, along with U.S. aid – admittedly, difficult objectives – then a delayed summit is possible. 

Sneider:  I don’t see much chance for a summit to be rescheduled, although I don’t entirely rule it out provided the United States is willing to accept something less than what it has previously demanded.

Shin: Trump has now handed the ball over to Kim, and whether the two can get back on the path to diplomacy will depend on how Kim reacts to Trump’s statement. If he reacts with merely provocative words and no actions, chances are that the talks can still happen in the near future. But if Kim cancels all the behind-the-scenes, working-level talks and negotiations altogether, we are expecting another long period of no communication between the two countries or even a rise of tension and conflict.

How can the U.S. diplomatically negotiate denuclearization when there are different objectives at stake?

Auslin: That has always been the great problem in negotiating with Pyongyang. It has little incentive to give up its nuclear weapons, even with security guarantees from the United States. Three U.S. presidents have failed in negotiations, and the Kim regime has steadily progressed in developing both a nuclear weapons capability and a ballistic missile capability. The Trump administration gambled that threat of a U.S. attack, combined with “maximum pressure,” would create a breakthrough that eluded previous administrations, but Pyongyang reverted to form by making increasing demands in the past week. Right now, the U.S. has failed to figure out the right mix of pressure and accommodation that gets the North to the table, absent pre-emptive U.S. concessions. However, it does not need to continually remind Kim of the fate of Muammar Gaddafi, overthrown in Libya in 2011, to try to strong-arm it into talks.

Hecker: There actually appeared to be a partial reconciliation of views during the past week with some in the Trump administration, including the president, acknowledging that denuclearization will take time and most likely will have to occur in a phased manner. I have promoted for some time what I call a “halt, roll back and eventually eliminate” approach. It will take years, but there was some hope that North Korea would front-load some of its steps in rolling back its nuclear program, as it did in destroying a nuclear test site yesterday.

Shin: Trump was mistaken if he thought he could handle and directly deal with North Korea by himself. He needs help from all involved stakeholders such as China, South Korea, etc. Diplomacy is different from doing business.

Stephens: By working closely with allies, through both pressure and engagement, and by doing the heavy diplomatic preparation and lifting that was missing this time around.

What does this mean for relations between North Korea and South Korea?

Shin: It will certainly create a big dilemma for South Korea. It has declared that a new era has begun with North Korea and promised to improve inter-Korean relations by all means. So, it will be difficult for South Korea to rejoin the U.S.’s maximum pressure campaign. At the same time, inter-Korean relations, especially in the economic sector, cannot be improved without the support from the U.S. and ease of sanctions.

Hecker: South Korean President Moon just released a statement saying it was regretful and disconcerting that the summit was canceled. He made it clear that North-South reconciliation must proceed, commenting that “[We] hope that the leaders resolve problems through direct and close dialogue.”

Stephens: South Korea is in a very difficult position. They were blindsided by Trump’s letter to Kim. They will be eager to get Pyongyang and Washington back into dialogue. Again, much will depend on Pyongyang.

Who do you think lost the most with the summit’s cancellation: Trump? Kim? Moon?

Auslin: Moon is the big loser, having declared a new era of peace and bet everything on a durable peace process. North Korea looks like its usual, disruptive, untrustworthy self, which in turn makes Moon appear naive. Now, the North may well try to pressure the South into unilateral concessions to get the “peace” process back on track; these could include aggressive acts against South Korean interests. For his part, Trump has made clear he won’t play Charlie Brown to Kim’s Lucy with the football.

Hecker: The world lost a chance for moving away from the brink of war on the Korean Peninsula. I believe it was the greatest shock to President Moon, who worked so hard to create the conditions for the summit.

Shin: It will be Moon>Trump>Kim in the order of who loses the most. Moon’s aggressive efforts in the recent months to mediate between Kim and Trump didn’t pay off after all.

Stephens: Kim has lost the least and has the most leverage at the moment.

Sneider: The South Korean government of Moon Jae-in is obviously stunned by this development, particularly after Moon’s meeting in the White House earlier this week where the President gave no such indication apparently. They will try desperately to restore diplomatic engagement between Washington and Pyongyang, and may meet again with the North soon. But this is a crisis for South Korea’s strategy.

What realistically will happen next?

Sneider:  I would predict a rise of tensions as both leaders will feel the need to look and act tough — as the President has already shown in his White House statement today.

Auslin: North Korean aggression against South Korea is not out of the question, as a way to try to force everyone back to the table. Increased rhetoric from the North against Trump and America is also very likely. Behind the scenes, however, if the administration can quietly continue talks with high-ranking North Koreans to try and reach agreement on what denuclearization means and a possible timetable, then the two sides could return to the idea of a summit, possibly by the end of the year.

Hecker: Hopefully the leaders will take the time afforded by this pause to work at the lower levels to move closer to creating the conditions for a successful summit.

Shin: We can expect some periods of crisis and conflicts again, however long it will last. There is still room for hope that the talks will be resumed, but it will now depend on how North Korea reacts.

Stephens: President Trump appears to want to leave the door open for a summit. The most optimistic scenario would be an interest in both Washington and Pyongyang to keep a channel open for talks. South Korea will want to get the parties to reengage.