As President Trump seeks a deal in North Korea, he must not forget whom he is dealing with and what he is dealing with.
Kim Jong Un is a bad actor: He kills his own people, runs a brutal regime, and wields nuclear weapons as a deadly bargaining chip for political and, potentially, economic gain. His government has pursued chemical weapons and engaged in cyberattacks against the U.S. His country is one giant concentration camp.
That’s the whom of the matter
The what of the matter is nuclear weapons.
Removing the threat of a nuclear armed rogue state is important enough that it justifies what would normally be unthinkable: negotiating with a leader who is essentially a terrorist.
It’s true that removing his weapons won’t make Kim a benevolent leader, but it would prevent him from unleashing the terror of a nuclear strike. Taking away his nuclear strike capabilities, not regime change, is the goal of U.S. negotiations. Kudos to Trump for his willingness to take on that thorny issue.
Trump will undermine his own mission, though, if he follows the folly of his predecessors and is too eager for a deal. No deal with Kim would be better than a deal that doesn’t denuclearize him.
Such a deal would legitimize North Korea as a nuclear state. Normalizing relations with Pyongyang without dealing head on with Kim’s nuclear arsenal would pave the way for the rogue state to exist on the world stage, not as the deservedly ostracized rogue state that it is, but as a nation among nations.
Moreover, as the escalating conflict between India and Pakistan demonstrates, the threat of a nuclear attack, often talked about only as an abstract possibility, can rapidly become a dangerous component of hostilities. As both countries have nuclear arms, what might have been a small border skirmish has instead become an international incident with world powers weighing in worried about the lack of restraint and the potential deployment of nuclear weapons.
Those tensions, playing out in parallel to the Trump-Kim summit in Vietnam, are a stark reminder of the stakes of the negotiations and the necessity of securing a real agreement.
Denuclearization is not simply one foreign policy deal among many, but a dangerous balancing act in which the safety of Americans and our allies depends.
[Read more: Trump: No urgency to secure denuclearization deal with North Korea]
