On June 30, President Trump crossed into North Korea and became the first U.S. president to visit the hermit kingdom. Figures on both sides of the political aisle condemned the president for entertaining a maniacal and evil dictator such as Kim Jong Un. Yet these critics get it all wrong: By maintaining dialogue, the president has yanked us from the brink of nuclear war and balanced a trilateral relationship between China and North Korea.
Open dialogue is essential in international politics. If we’re in ongoing economic or military discussions, we’re not lobbing intercontinental ballistic missiles at one another. That’s a good thing.
Consider the critical framework of dialogue with evil dictators through a Chinese lens. If we didn’t engage with dictators, no American president would ever have met with Mao Zedong, who killed over 1.5 million during the Chinese Cultural Revolution and over 45 million estimated during the totality of his rule. Yet President Richard Nixon met Mao. And upon Mao’s death, our relationship with China has steadily improved, with frequent summits and cross-border negotiations. One thing has been suspiciously absent in U.S.-China relations since the 1970s: war.
Nixon’s unprecedented trip to China in 1972 is now regarded by foreign policy experts as the beginning of a relationship that has been complicated, but fruitful. It’s easy to forget how close we were to open hostilities with China after a proxy war in Korea in the 1950s. Since Nixon’s trip, military conflict with China, with the exception of the occasional game of chicken in the South China Sea, has been nonexistent, cross-strait relations have improved, American businesses have an increased presence in China, and the Chinese people have become more free as a result.
There is little doubt that we could achieve the same with North Korea.
Prior to Trump, American presidents didn’t successfully engage with the Kim family. In fact, President Clinton allegedly wanted to bomb North Korean enrichment facilities. Then in 2001, President George W. Bush instigated diplomatic back-channels to improve relations and set up a summit with no real progress. Under President Barack Obama, North Korean missile tests were frequent, and uncertainty regarding the relationship reached an all-time high following the death of Kim Jong Il and the assumption of control by Kim Jong Un. Obama at one point even threatened military strikes.
Now, we have a president who has met with the North Korean dictator several times both on foreign soil and within North Korea. As a result, the rhetoric has been toned down and missile tests have decreased tremendously.
An unequivocal nuclear disarmament seems unlikely and far-fetched, given North Korea’s past reluctance and their belief that nuclear weapons give them legitimacy in the world playing field. This is why the parallelism to China and Nixon is so important and relevant now.
Dialogue is as much progress as it is leverage. A week ago, Chinese President Xi Jinping left North Korea after meeting with Kim Jong Un. The summit comes amid a trade war between the Chinese and the United States which has had complicated and detrimental economic impact for both countries. Such meetings suggest the Chinese have felt the adverse impacts, and President Xi proffered a meeting on Kim’s home turf to solidify the relationship as one of their sole trading partners.
While the policy impacts of the meeting remain secret, President Xi has indicated that Kim is open to de-nuclearization. This is good news for open dialogue between the U.S. and North Korea, and a step toward curbing a regime that only a few years ago was hell-bent on creating worldwide legitimacy by launching ICBMs over Japan.
Keeping the Chinese uncertain about fruitful dialogues between North Korea and Trump elevates our bargaining position with the Chinese during trade negotiations that have stalled lately. All in all, making a peaceful relationship out of one formerly built on distrust, noncommunication, and a Pacific-Ocean-scaled game of Battleship, well, that shows progress.
Criticizing the president for anything and everything is in vogue. However, he is right to engage with world leaders, even ones as reprehensibly evil as Kim Jong Un. We should all prefer a world where Trump can pick up the phone and call the hermit kingdom’s chairman than one where American diplomats have to back-channel diplomacy in secret.
Tyler Grant (@TyGregoryGrant) is a contributor to the Washington Examiner’s Beltway Confidential blog.
