President Moon Jae-in arrives in Washington this Wednesday for two days of talks with US President Donald J. Trump. While political observers will be watching closely for any signs of disagreement over Moon’s desire to improve intra-Korean relations through dialogue and engagement, the most significant discussions are likely to take place out of the public eye.

One of those events will be on the Friday night after the summit, when President Moon delivers an important policy speech to the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), one of Washington’s most powerful think tanks. Funded heavily by the US and Japanese governments as well as major defense contractors such as Lockheed Martin, the manufacturer of the THAAD system, the organization has played a key role in shaping US policy towards Korea for decades.

Last fall, John Hamre, the CEO of CSIS and a former deputy secretary of defense, made public comments expressing deep concern over the rising strength of South Korea’s left-leaning political parties. “We have to do something so we don’t become an issue in [Korea’s] next election,” he told a forum at the right-wing Heritage Foundation in October. “There’s a strong strain in the left parties that America is the problem.”

Eight months later, CSIS and the US foreign policy establishment have been forced to accept a new, independent South Korean leader with an agenda markedly different than his conservative predecessors. The new reality was clear on Monday, when Victor Cha, a CSIS senior adviser and the former director of Korean affairs for the George W. Bush administration, addressed a Seoul conference on the US-Korean alliance co-sponsored by CSIS and Joongang Ilbo (with Samsung, it is a major donor to the think tank).

Cha, who is about to be named the next US ambassador to South Korea, began his speech by praising the “extraordinary demonstration of democracy at work” during what he called the “crisis” over the impeachment of Park Geun-hye. But he quickly shifted into lecture mode, warning the Moon government not to take “unilateral action” on North Korea and to avoid “unconditional” economic assistance that could violate the current sanction regime endorsed by the UN.

In a subtle dig at Moon’s strong emphasis on North Korea, Cha insisted that the new government should prioritize the US-ROK alliance as “critical to dealing with the North Korean threat.” He argued that differences between Seoul and Washington could only be managed with “true, seamless, almost daily policy coordination” between the two sides. His speech sounded much like a practice run for his term as US ambassador, although some Koreans might wonder if “governor-general” might be a better term.

Cha’s comments underscored that Moon will likely face open criticism and skepticism in Washington, where the political establishment is united behind tough, militaristic policies towards North Korea. Over the last two years, discussions about regime change and pre-emptive strikes have become almost routine in both Democratic and Republican circles, and eagerly reported on by journalists of both liberal and conservative bent.

The latest trigger for US hostility is the strange case of Otto Warmbier, the Virginia college student who was arrested in 2015 by North Korean authorities and suddenly returned to the United States in June in a coma. His doctors quickly dismissed North Korean claims that his brain damage was induced when he contracted botulism and then took a sleeping pill. But according to the Washington Post, doctors did not find any evidence that he was beaten or tortured, as alleged by his family.

Warmbier’s death several days after his return triggered angry denunciations of Pyongyang from Trump, his cabinet and many lawmakers. “The young Ohioan’s death may force President Donald Trump to take a tougher line with North Korea, a shift that could increase tensions with Beijing,” declared CNN, which typically views Korea only in terms of US relations with China. Several House and Senate lawmakers said they would push for a new law banning Americans from traveling to the North except in official capacities.

Meanwhile, US right-wingers disturbed by President Moon’s embrace of Kim Dae Jung’s Sunshine Policies, have started a relentless campaign to paint the new president as a dangerous leftist. Their latest target was Moon Chung-In, the president’s special advisor on foreign policy. Earlier this month, he told a Washington forum that US-South Korean military exercises, including the use of “strategic assets” such as aircraft carriers and nuclear submarines, could be scaled back if North Korea suspended its nuclear and missile tests.

This apparently irritated President Moon, whose office issued a terse statement asking the adviser to “exercise restraint.” In response, Bruce Klingner, a former CIA officer who directs Korea policy at Heritage, tweeted that “Moon Jung-in’s visit only exacerbated US concerns about Moon Jae-in’s policies on North Korea, US alliance, and THAAD.” A few days later, Joshua Stanton, a fanatical champion of regime change in North Korea, wrote a blistering attack on the South Korean president.

“Moon has spent his entire political career in the brain trust of South Korea’s hard left, among those who’ve shown more solidarity with North Korea than with America,” he wrote in his notoriously slanted blog, FreeKorea. These attacks prompted several Korean media outlets, such as the Chosun Ilbo, to declare that Moon Chung-In’s “dovish” comments had “raised hackles” in Washington.

But that was an exaggeration. In fact, key players in the US national security state have decided that Moon’s election, and his positions on North Korea, pose no threat to the US-Korean military alliance.

In an unusual public speech on Monday, Scott Bray, the National Intelligence Manager for East Asia at the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, told a conference at Heritage that US spying agencies are spending enormous resources on North Korea. “There are few issues that garner the same level of attention at the highest levels of government” than North Korea, he said. But, asked if Moon’s election and anti-THAAD protests in Korea posed a problem for the United States as it confronts the North, he said no.

“I know that President Trump is looking forward to Moon’s visit, and know they will have a lot to talk about on North Korea and broader issues,” Bray replied. “I also know that, even with the changed domestic environment in South Korea, our alliance remains remarkably strong.” He added: “Even if at times our approach is somewhat different – if we prefer stronger measures and South Korea prefers engagement – ultimately we’re both dedicated to the same outcome.”

That may or may not true, but should set the right-wingers straight. This week’s visit could prove to be very interesting indeed.

Last week, Moon Jae-in’s government made its first formal overture to North Korea, proposing military discussions on ceasing hostile actions and Red Cross talks on resuming reunions of divided families. But the proposals were quickly shot down by the White House, where presidential spokesman Sean Spicer said the atmosphere for such talks was “far away.” The New York Times leapt on the exchange, calling the disagreement the “first visible split” between Moon and the Trump administration.

But it’s not clear how deep this rift really is, or if the press was exaggerating it. After all, during Moon’s summit with Trump last month, the two governments signed a joint communique that strongly endorsed Moon’s desire to resolve North-South conflicts through bilateral dialogue and negotiation. Moon himself has played down any differences with Trump, explaining on July 19th to Korean lawmakers that the initial phase of any talks will focus on humanitarian issues. “Denuclearization talks require the right conditions,” he added, through a spokesman.

Ironically, reports of a US-ROK dispute over North Korea surfaced as the Trump administration itself is talking to Pyongyang. “The Trump administration has been negotiating with the North Koreans – that’s a fact, not a myth,” Leon V. Sigal, a former State Department official, told Newstapa in an interview. Sigal is part of a team of former US officials and experts who meet regularly with North Korean government officials for discussions that are called “Track 2 dialogues.”

The administration’s talks with North Korea came to light in June, shortly before the death of Otto Warmbier, the American college student held by Pyongyang for 17 months. According to a story published on June 18 by the Wall Street Journal, US diplomats have been holding secret talks in Pyongyang and Europe with North Korea’s top nuclear negotiator, Madame Choi Sun Hee, for “more than a year” as part of the “Track 2” process. Then, after President Trump’s inauguration in January, “the official and nonofficial American contacts with the North Koreans started to merge.”

In May, Joseph Yun, the State Department’s special representative for North Korea, met Choi in Oslo at a meeting organized by US participants in the “Track 2” process. Their purpose was to discuss the plight of four Americans in prison in North Korea. But after leaving Norway, Choi, whose title is director-general of the North American affairs bureau of North Korea’s Foreign Ministry, told reporters that her government would be willing to meet US officials for talks on the nuclear issue “if the conditions are set,” the Journal said.

In early June, as part of this process, Yun met in New York with Pyongyang’s ambassador to the UN. It was here that he was informed that Warmbier, who was being considered for release, was in a coma. Yun, on instructions from Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, then flew to Pyongyang to bring him back. Since his death a few days later, no new talks have been scheduled as the Trump administration considers its options. “The question is, is this a hiatus or is Trump rethinking the process?” asked Sigal.

Judging by the administration’s latest statements, the road to direct talks is still open. Secretary of Defense Jim Mattis, for example, has repeatedly said that the United States is not going to war with North Korea, and has instead emphasized negotiations. After Trump’s UN Ambassador Nicki Haley threatened the use of force against North Korea after its July 4 missile test, Mattis called reporters into his Pentagon office and flatly denied that the launch had brought the US and North Korea closer to war.

This does not mean, however, that a consensus has been reached in Washington for negotiations to proceed – far from it. Hawkish elements from both the Democratic and Republican parties continue to call for a harder line against North Korea, and even for regime change. But there are indications that key elements of the national security state are beginning to see that there is no viable option but re-opening direct talks with North Korea over its nuclear and missile ambitions.

Some of the strongest voices for engagement have come from former senior leaders of US intelligence who came of age during the Cold War. One of them is James Clapper, the former US Director of National Intelligence who flew to Pyongyang in 2014 to retrieve a US prisoner. Several times over the last month, he has proposed that the United States and North Korea open “interest sections” in each other’s capitals. This is similar to the US arrangement with Cuba before President Obama normalized relations in 2015.

Clapper, who was a military intelligence officer in Korea during the 1980s, has also proposed that North Korea “cap” its missile tests “in return for dialogue and a peace treaty.” In a recent interview on CNN, he said, “The only option is diplomacy. The best hope is to engage with them.” In his recent speech in Seoul about his 2014 visit to Pyongyang, he spoke almost wistfully about learning about the pain of national division from the senior North Korean intelligence officer who rode with him in his car.

He even wanted to talk about the tragedy that occurred when the peninsular was being split through these many years. In fact, he mentioned, I thought it was interesting, how the two languages have separated. The North Korean version of Korean was very different than the South Korean version. In many ways I thought that was a very telling comment.

Another advocate for a negotiated peace is Robert Gates, the former Secretary for Defense who spent nearly 27 years at the CIA, where he was the director from 1991 to 1993. He recently unveiled a sweeping proposal that would allow North Korea to keep some of its nuclear weapons while agreeing to hard limits on his arsenal of missiles. Under his plan, which he outlined in an interview with the Wall Street Journal on July 10, the US would “forswear a policy of regime change” as it did with Castro after the 1962 missile crisis, sign a peace treaty with Kim Jong Un and consider “some changes” in the structure of US military forces in South Korea.

But Gates’ plan has a fatal flaw: it would be brokered entirely through China. Under Gates’ proposal, Beijing would be required to bring North Korea to the talks and convince its government to accept invasive inspections of its weapons facilities to ensure compliance with the agreement. The US would tell China, “If that is not an outcome you can accept, we are going to take steps you hate,” Gates told the Journal.

This “let China do it” mentality is very strong in Washington at the moment. Its most prominent proponent is Victor Cha, the director of Korea programs at the Center for Strategic and International Studies who was the deputy head of the US delegation to the six-party talks with North Korea in the Bush administration.

“It’s not enough to ask China to pressure Pyongyang to set up a U.S.-North Korea negotiation,” Cha wrote recently in the Washington Post with Jake Sullivan, the former director of policy planning for the Obama administration. “China has to be a central part of the negotiation, too.” They argued that “China, rather than the United States, should be paying for North Korea to halt and roll back its nuclear and missile programs.”

While this view is heartily endorsed in the media, many Korea specialists scoff at the idea that North Korea would let China push it around like that.

“Pyongyang will perceive any effort to get them to denuclearize as another overly intrusive move and lacking respect for North Korean sovereignty,” said James F. Person, a historian who has specialized in North Korea’s diplomacy with China and the former Soviet Union. “We can’t afford to outsource our policy to China because that’s asking North Korea to do what they most resent,” he said. “Ultimately, we will have to talk to the North.” Person spoke at a July 10 press briefing organized by the Woodrow Wilson International Center, a US government think tank in Washington.

This pragmatic view has emerged in recent months among former high-ranking officials, such as William Perry, who negotiated with North Korea on its missile program as Secretary of Defense in the Clinton administration. On the eve of President Moon’s visit to Washington in June, Perry was one of several retired senior officials who signed a letter to Trump urging him to begin negotiations without any preconditions with the North. This week, in an interview with Senator Bernie Sanders, Perry explained his position.

“North Korea is not a crazy nation,” he told Sanders. “They are reckless, ruthless, but they are not crazy. They are open to logic and reason. Their main objective is to sustain their regime. If we can find a way of dealing with them that they can see gives them an opportunity to stay in the regime, we can get results.”

That was the primary message at the Wilson Center briefing, which was led by former California congresswoman Jane Harman. Last fall, she and Person floated a proposal for direct talks with North Korea in the Washington Post. “Only the United States – the supposed existential threat that justifies [North Korea’s] nuclear and ballistic missile programs – can fully address Pyongyang’s security concerns,” they wrote. At the Wilson briefing, Person elaborated on their proposal.

He argued that the latest North Korean missile test was not a “game changer,” as many analysts have suggested, but is instead part of a “credible defensive rationale that goes back a very long time.” But now that they have the capability to launch ICBMs that can travel great distances, he said, North Korea will continue to test to give it the best possible leverage when the door opens for talks with Washington. “They want to make sure when they get to the negotiating table that they’ve pushed their program as far as they can,” he said.

So what would a direct US-North Korean negotiation look like? Most analysts believe it would have to begin with the North offering to freeze its nuclear and missile programs in exchange for the US and South Korea scaling down their annual military exercises. At the Wilson briefing, New York Times reporter David Sanger suggested that the US has a “window of opportunity” to offer such a deal soon because the main US-ROK exercises take place in the spring. “Between now and next spring, we wouldn’t lose much” if the US temporarily halted the exercises, he said.

Sigal, who has been talking to the North for over 20 years, cautioned that, for any deal to be accepted in Washington, a North Korean moratorium would have to go beyond the freeze of current programs as suggested by China and Russia. He said that would involve North Korea stopping its uranium enrichment and plutonium production as well as its nuclear and missile testing. That, in turn, would require the United States to pledge to end its “hostile policy,” as demanded for decades by North Korea.

“You’ve got to suspend the production of fissionable material too,” he told Newstapa. He said the US would “have to pay for that, not in money terms but in terms of moving away from the hostile policy. Some of that’s going to involve military exercises, some of that’s going to involve [lifting] sanctions, some of that’s going to involve starting the peace process. But that’s what’s got to be worked. That’s the first stage agreement that may be possible.”