Can the yearlong United States-North Korea diplomatic process proceed despite prognostications of its imminent demise after last February’s Hanoi summit? Depending on what the Trump administration does from here on out, the answer is yes.
Indeed, if Washington follows South Korean President Moon Jae-in’s lead when he meets with the president at the White House this week, the U.S.-North Korea relationship can improve to the point in the future when North Korean leader Kim Jong Un decides he no longer needs a nuclear weapons capability for his country’s security.
Over the past quarter-century, the Washington foreign policy establishment has viewed North Korea through the prism of immediate, unconditional, and full-blown nuclear dismantlement. According to this formula, as long as Pyongyang refuses to capitulate to American demands, North Korea would be unable to benefit from the significant economic and political dividends of normalization. Successive U.S. administrations firmly believed the combination of economic sanctions, diplomatic isolation, and periodic threats of military force would be enough of an incentive for the Kim regime to hand over its nuclear weapons on a silver platter. Despite Trump’s decision to meet with Kim Jong Un directly, the White House has essentially adopted the same bankrupt approach.
President Trump reportedly delivered Kim a proposal during their summit in Hanoi that demanded Pyongyang ship all of its nuclear weapons and bomb fuel to the U.S. for disposal. To the surprise of nobody, Kim refused to seriously consider the idea.
The U.S. is operating as if a nuclear-armed North Korea is an existential threat to American civilization. Yet, as terrorizing as the North Korean government is to its own people and as cultish as its political system is, the Kim regime is not a direct threat to U.S. national security.
Kim Jong Un, like his father and grandfather before him, understands that North Korea is a weak shrimp among giant, strong whales and would be eaten alive if it dared to do anything rash militarily. Kim is also keenly aware that to utilize any of his nuclear weapons would be the signing of his own death warrant, an action that would guarantee the destruction of his regime, the deaths of millions of his people, and the writing of history books that would depict him as the North Korean leader who brought massive catastrophe to the North Korean people.
Kim, to put it simply, is not interested in cutting off his own head.
The U.S. can afford to wait for North Korea’s denuclearization. In this contest, Washington holds all of the cards: not counting its reserve and retired nuclear warheads, the U.S. nuclear arsenal is 22 times larger than the highest North Korean estimates; its system of partners in Northeast Asia is juxtaposed to Pyongyang’s deep diplomatic isolation; and the U.S. military is the envy of the world.
North Korea’s conventional armed forces, in contrast, are on another planet — antiquated, highly dependent on using North Korean troops as cannon-fodder in the event of a conflict, and reliant on artillery systems that would be destroyed the moment a barrage of missiles reveal their exact location.
The United States has successfully deterred the North Koreans ever since Pyongyang tested its first underground nuclear explosive more than 12 years ago. Indeed, Washington has deterred the North Koreans from a large-scale conventional war against South Korea for the last six decades. There is no evidence that the Trump administration, or any administration in the future, can’t continue to force the Kim regime to think long and hard before making a regime-ending decision.
The U.S. should use the time that deterrence has granted it to push for a wholesale change in the way it approaches North Korea policy in general.
Peace on the Korean Peninsula should be the ultimate U.S. foreign policy objective as it pertains to North Korea: a situation that, if accomplished, would decrease hostile intent, improve the prospects of a lasting inter-Korean reconciliation, formally end the Korean War, and eliminate any possibility for a reckless and wholly unnecessary war that would kill millions of people (including hundreds of thousands of Americans who live in South Korea and Japan).
Rather than obstructing progress towards a peace regime on the Korean Peninsula that would serve everybody’s interests, Trump should buck the advice given by his more interventionist advisers and reinforce South Korean President Moon Jae-in’s diplomatic efforts of a rapprochement with North Korea.
Fixating on denuclearization at the expense of peace and security on the Korean Peninsula and more productive relations between the U.S. and North Korea is foreign policy malpractice.
While North Korea’s nuclear disarmament would be the absolute best-case scenario, the American public can be safe and secure without it. All of this safety, however, goes out the window the moment Washington continues to preface the considerable benefits of a peace process on a denuclearization fantasy.
Daniel DePetris (@DanDePetris) is a contributor to the Washington Examiner’s Beltway Confidential blog. He is a fellow at Defense Priorities.
