President Moon Jae-in on Wednesday returned from Pyongyang to South Korea with another worthless deal from Kim Jong Un. The problem: It won’t stop Kim from developing a nuclear bomb that could hit the United States.
[Read: Kim Jong Un agrees to dismantle missile test site, visit Seoul: Report]
As is always the case with an agreement Kim Jong Un has signed, things seem good on paper. The North Koreans have agreed to invite international inspectors to verify the dismantling of the already defunct Tongchang-ri missile engine test site and launch facility. The two Koreas also agreed on steps to reduce tensions at the demilitarized zone.
For Moon, these are positive developments in that they achieve the overriding South Korean strategic interest: reducing Kim’s aggression and thus reducing the possibility of a conflict. But lack of conflict isn’t the same as peace. Peace is served only by denying Kim the ability to develop intercontinental ballistic missiles tipped with nuclear warheads.
This North-South deal gives Kim Jong Un new breathing space from increased U.S. pressure without his yielding of any significant concessions. In that sense, this isn’t a deal so much as it is a dangle for President Trump to bite on. And as his tweet praising the deal suggests, Trump has bitten. Now, he’ll be inclined to delay imposing any new sanctions on North Korea and less willing to challenge China and Russia for their rampant circumventing of the existing sanctions regime.
There is nothing here that the U.S. should celebrate. The BBC’s Korea correspondent, Laura Bicker, disagrees. She says that the verified dismantling of Tongchang-ri is “a major step forward” because Kim is allowing inspectors onto his soil and into a site of former value to his ICBM program. But there are two problems with this understanding.
First, the Tongchang-ri site was already defunct. In turn, just as the police wouldn’t celebrate shutting down a crack house that had been empty for months, we shouldn’t celebrate this supposed development. Second, Tongchang-ri’s closure does not represent any broader reduction in North Korea’s nuclear-plus-ICBM program. The closure is actually a good representation of the fact that Kim’s program is going further underground. There are known to be dozens of sites in North Korea which are complementing various elements of Kim’s programs.
And those various elements are at the heart of why we should be far more concerned about the state of the North Korean diplomatic track than we appear to be. Because those elements involve making North Korea’s nuclear strike capability more versatile, more technologically advanced, and harder to destroy in military strikes. In specific terms, Kim is near-completion in the survivability and targeting development of his nuclear warhead re-entry vehicles. Crucially, North Korea doesn’t need to test those developments by missile tests, it can simply test them in advanced simulators deep underground. And so, if we wait for the final missile test, we will have waited for the credible provision of North Korean ability to launch a nuclear attack on any major U.S. city. Perhaps with the exception of Miami (which is likely too far for North Korean missiles to reach).
What does all this mean?
Well, I think that on the current trajectory of negotiations; with Kim calling all the shots, a few months from now when he is ready to do the final big test: the North Korean leader will likely have a fake freak-out over some made-up gripe with Trump. He’ll then launch a long-range missile test (albeit away from the U.S. homeland). Based on the success of that test Kim will either return to negotiations with faux-humility and a much stronger bargaining position (being able to tell the U.S.: “we can nuke you now so you better cut me some slack”), or he’ll return to negotiations with faux-humility, some minor concessions (closing a couple more sites and inviting in a few inspectors to see those sites), and more time to complete his programs.
Regardless, the Moon-Kim deal is not a step in the right direction. It is a pretense in preference to major concessions from a dictator who may be unstable (although probably isn’t), and who wants to be able to dangle nuclear attacks over the U.S. homeland. That should be unacceptable to the Trump administration. Trump should only be celebrating when North Korea has agreed to wide-ranging IAEA snap inspections, and when U.S. intelligence confidently determines that he has suspended his nuclear weaponization programs. Today, that’s a long way away.
