North Korean Negotiations

Floor Speech

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Mr. SHERMAN. Mr. Speaker, for 22 years, I have served on the Foreign Affairs Committee and focused on North Korea. For two decades I have urged the toughest possible pressure not only on North Korea, but on China, North Korea's lifeline.

Just last month I joined Chairman Yoho of the Asia Subcommittee, where I serve as ranking member, in sending a letter insisting that we have tougher enforcement of our sanctions on large Chinese banks and other entities that supplied the necessary services to Kim Jong-un.

When the possibility of a summit was announced, the foreign policy community came forward with a unified message: No concessions until we get CVID, or the complete, verifiable, irreversible dismantlement of North Korea's nuclear program.

I found myself on the dovish edge of the foreign policy community. While I supported tougher sanctions, I believe that we should settle for a verifiable limit, a freeze and monitoring, a system where there is no cheating and where we can be sure that they are not selling their nuclear weapons to other even more dangerous parties.

So I eagerly awaited Singapore. What we saw was a President that put into practice what he wrote about when he wrote his famous book, newly reissued and retitled, Trump: The Art of the Capitulation.

What are the steps in capitulation?

First, give the other side just about everything.

Second, accept in return vague platitudes.

Third, go on TV and announce that you have got the best deal ever.

What did we get from North Korea?

A temporary suspension of their most extreme barbarism. They agreed to release and did release three hostages. They said they will allow us to look for the bodies of our fallen heroes from the Korean War. They did not release the Japanese hostages, but they did release three American hostages.

They implicitly agreed, though not explicitly, to an end of testing. But testing is hardly necessary once you have already proven your capacity. Russia has the capacity to destroy American cities, but they haven't tested a nuclear weapon since 1990. Why? They proved it long ago.

Likewise, North Korea has proven the capacity of its nuclear weapons. They don't need further testing. They have missiles that can kill tens of thousands of Americans and millions of our allies in Tokyo, Seoul, and elsewhere in Asia. They have the capacity to smuggle their nuclear weapons near or into any of our West Coast cities. They have that capacity. They don't need further testing.

So they have given very little, but they gave one more thing. They pronounced the word denuclearization. This is the epitome of a vague platitude. For when North Korea says denuclearization, they say will give up their nuclear weapons when the whole world gives up its nuclear weapons; when, in the words of the Good Book, swords are beaten into plowshares.

So what have we given up?

First, we gave them what the Kim dynasty has always wanted: that face-to-face equality with an American President.

Second, we have relaxed our sanctions, in effect.

No, the statutes haven't changed. But those big banks that Chairman Yoho and myself as ranking member once sanctioned, no way that is going to happen. Businesspeople in Moscow and Beijing know it is now time to move forward with business deals with North Korea.

Also, he declared our military exercises to be provocative. What does that mean worldwide when an American President says: We better not train our troops; that is warlike?

In the words, of Admiral Stavridis, who wrote in Time Magazine just a few days ago: ``These are operational military exercises in which ships, aircraft, and ground forces . . . practice executing defined war plans.'' To have our forces forward deployed without the benefit of that kind of practice would be negligent in the extreme and would lead to major combat losses in a real fight.

Trump is saying these exercises are expensive. It is hardly expensive to train our troops.

We have got a long way to go. We need to enforce the sanctions and make them tougher. We have to do this until we get a complete declaration of their nuclear materials, a verification, and a freeze.

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