Reflecting its uncertainty as to whether President Trump or Joe Biden would be better for its interests, North Korea is yet to comment on Biden’s recent victory. Still, Kim Jong Un’s regime will quickly seek to test the incoming president’s attitude toward it.
Kim’s strategy toward Washington rests on extracting his maximal economic opportunities alongside minimal nuclear concessions. It’s an urgent concern for Pyongyang in that Trump, to his credit, has refused to dance to the traditional North Korean diplomatic waltz, which is to say, entertaining North Korea’s offering of limited nuclear disarmament gestures alongside corollary sanctions relief. The limit of this approach, in terms of U.S. interests, is that once sanctions are removed, they are very difficult to reintroduce.
Nevertheless, it’s clear that Kim is moving closer toward resumed intercontinental ballistic missile tests. An October parade showcased a new ICBM with a larger warhead payload capability and multiple independent reentry vehicles (the means to use one missile to deliver multiple nuclear warheads). That doesn’t mean Kim will immediately test an ICBM. Kim is likely to be excited by the prospect of a more multilaterally minded president. The Wall Street Journal reports that Biden’s foreign policy team is considering multinational nuclear talks with Pyongyang and offering some sanctions relief in return for Kim’s frozen production of new fissile material.
This approach would be a gift to North Korea. The key to Pyongyang’s threat is not its nuclear material per se, but rather its intercontinental ballistic missiles. And Pyongyang already has a significant stockpile of highly enriched uranium. So were Biden to grant sanctions relief in return only for restricted fissile production, two things would happen. First, North Korea would continue to advance its ballistic missile research into warhead reentry vehicles, rocket fuel technology, and terminal stage targeting. Second, Kim would have cause to push Washington for more concessions on even more favorable terms.
This is not to say that the Biden administration should simply replicate Trump’s strategy.
The idea that Kim is going to surrender his nuclear weapons is at best delusional, and at worst, totally idiotic. As Kim sees it, those weapons provide his dynastic regime with the ultimate guarantee against any future U.S. regime change campaign. This isn’t to say, however, that Kim wouldn’t balance his nuclear program to exigent U.S. interests. Were Biden to leverage the threat of force against sanctions relief in return for Kim’s destroying his ICBMs, limiting his nuclear portfolio to a few warheads, and accepting a credible inspections regime, he might take that offer. The remaining warheads could then be stored at an IAEA monitored site on North Korean soil. A facility Kim would have confidence of seizing with ease in war but could tolerate in peace. Such a pathway would balance Kim’s need for regime surety alongside America’s need to prevent him from being able to nuke Los Angeles. But any agreement along these lines would have to be negotiated as an all-in proposition. To allow Kim to slow roll the process would ensure its inevitable failure.
As a start, let’s hope Biden recognizes that Kim won’t do anything unless the threat of U.S. military action remains credible and sanctions remain in force.
