If President Trump can match U.S. security to peace on the Korean Peninsula, he’ll rightly etch himself into the history book of great foreign policy successes.
Yet any true peace must be durable, verifiable, and commensurate to the protection of American lives. Pursuing that end up until now, Trump has rightly embraced a so-called “maximum pressure” strategy to force Kim Jong Un to the table. As recent as Wednesday, White House Press Secretary Sarah Sanders claimed that Trump and President Moon Jae-in of South Korea had “underscored the importance of continuing the maximum pressure campaign against North Korea.”
Unfortunately, the maximum pressure strategy is now dead.
We can say this with confidence since Trump has endorsed South Korea’s newly commenced talks with North Korea, even though the latter nation has not yet suspended its ballistic missile-plus-nuclear warhead development.
It’s a sea change on the situation from a few months ago, in which Trump lambasted Secretary of State Rex Tillerson for expressing openness to similarly formed talks.
And in the sea change, it seems clear that Trump has concluded he cannot pressure North Korea to kneel in return for negotiations. Trump’s amenability to talks also suggests he is unwilling to exert the kind of economic pressure on China that is needed to get President Xi Jinping to tighten the screws on Pyongyang.
So we are where we are: with a new U.S. strategy of static pressure alongside talks.
I don’t think it will work.
The North Koreans will now sense they have the upper hand, that the U.S. has blinked. And while they will likely pledge some concessions, they’ll roll ahead with their intercontinental ballistic missile program until it reaches final operational capability. Considering how rapid ballistic missile development tends to be in its latter stages, and North Korea’s proven ability to exceed the time assessments of the U.S. intelligence community, we should assume that Kim’s confident ICBM platform will become reality within the next six months.
If President Trump wants to counter that catastrophic outcome, he must alter his strategy. Fortunately, even though it makes things more complicated, Trump can do this even having abandoned the maximum pressure strategy.
First, the president should qualify the exact circumstances in which he would be willing to engage in negotiations with North Korea. His newly stated amenability to talks should be made contingent on three factors.
First, that the U.S. continues to regard a North Korean ICBM program as an intolerable threat. In this sense, Trump would be showing that the rules of the game haven’t changed.
Second, Trump should affirm that the failure of any talks will lead to a U.S. introduction of sanctions on any and all financial entities that do any and all dealings with North Korea. This will necessarily include Chinese banking firms and a range of other companies across the Asia-Pacific region. This assertion would focus China’s pressure on Kim Jong Un to engage in talks in a greater measure of good faith.
Third, that talks will immediately be suspended for the foreseeable future if North Korea conducts new missile tests once talks are underway.
Absent these strategic qualifications, Kim and his Chinese patrons will be laughing. After all, they will have played the once ardent Trump straight into their corner: winning his acceptance of a status quo that weakens U.S. security interests, delays any prospective U.S. military action and avoids any new sanctions.
Even then, however, Trump must also reemphasize his willingness to use force if necessary. Outlining Kim Jong Un’s profound unpredictability and possible irrationality, Trump should explain that a nuclear ICBM-armed North Korea is incompatible with Trump’s oath to protect the homeland.
Ultimately, the road to peaceful security in Korea is eminently possible, but only if President Trump is willing to seize the initiative.
