On Thursday, North Korea continued to play games, announcing that it had tested a “new-type tactical guided weapon.” On Friday, Acting Defense Secretary Patrick Shanahan was quick to downplay the launch, pointing out that “it was not a ballistic missile.”
Although North Korea’s penchant for aggressively pushing limits isn’t anything new, these latest developments speak volumes about where the U.S. and North Korea stand as the Trump administration floats the possibility of renewed talks.
By testing a new weapon, even if it seems to be a short-range missile meant for use in ground combat, North Korea sends a clear message that despite playing footsie with Washington and South Korea, it has no intention of changing its tune on militarization any time soon. And although Shanahan is right to point out that since it wasn’t a ballistic missile it technically didn’t violate the Kim’s self-imposed ban on missile tests, the test still shows that peace on the Korean Peninsula is still a long way off. North Korea is more interested in developing its weapons than in bolstering its relationship with Washington or Seoul.
For President Trump, who has made negotiating a deal with North Korea a central part of his foreign policy, the launch reinforces the difficultly of actually securing an agreement. The launch was clearly testing the waters to see how the U.S. would respond. Shanahan’s attempts to brush off the launch makes it clear that Washington is still interested in a deal – so interested, in fact, that the Pentagon is willing to give North Korea’s games a pass in the vain hope that turning a blind eye might bring Kim to the negotiating table (again).
For a bit of context, North Korea did a similar test in November 2018. Trump rewarded that launch with the announcement of a second summit just a few weeks later.
Of course, no denuclearization deal with Pyongyang is likely to strip the country’s military of its conventional weapons nor prevent the other humanitarian abuses rampant in Kim’s regime. Indeed, given the sort of weapon Kim tested this week, he may well be allowed to keep that if he ever did reach a deal with the U.S. Nevertheless, a weapons test hyped up by state media does little to show that North Korea has a good faith interest in coming to a deal.
[Related: Pompeo rejects North Korea’s suggestion he be replaced in nuclear talks: ‘Still in charge of the team’]
