North Korea’s intercontinental ballistic missile and nuclear warhead development rolls on. But that doesn’t necessarily mean President Trump’s diplomacy with Kim Jong Un’s regime is failing.
To be sure, it’s easy to be disheartened by what’s happening. Following Trump’s landmark June 2018 summit with Kim in Singapore, the North Korean leader pledged to dismantle his nuclear and ballistic missile programs. But since then we’ve seen the opposite happen. Aside from a few meaningless North Korean faux-concessions in the public closure of decrepit facilities, Kim’s regime has boosted its ICBM development. As CNN reports, North Korea is secretly upgrading an ICBM facility close to a previously identified compound. Pyongyang is also working to refine its warhead re-entry vehicle systems.
Yet this isn’t the death knell of diplomacy. First off, the U.S. knows of at least 100 sites related to North Korea’s ICBM/nuclear program. The vast majority of these facilities are unknown to the media or think tanks, but they are known to the Trump administration. Correspondingly, any decisions that Trump and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo make in relation to their dealings with North Korea are an accurate reflection of what Kim’s regime is doing – not what North Korea says it is doing. Put simply, U.S. policy is informed in each moment of diplomacy.
Of course, that begs the question as to why Trump is being so patient and conciliatory with Kim even as he perfects his means of launching reliable multi-warhead nuclear strikes on just about every American city?
In part it’s because the conciliation is not total. With the exception of rampant Chinese and Russian breaches, international sanctions on North Korea remain in force. The Trump administration also calibrates its meetings with Kim’s inner circle to North Korea’s negotiating posture in each moment. Still, the key to Trump’s patience is Kim’s confusion – namely, the belief that at the most basic level Kim has not yet decided on whether to follow through on his pledges to Trump, or whether to rely on the old North Korean playbook of deception and threats in pursuit of American concessions.
It’s not that surprising Kim hasn’t yet decided what to do. After all, the paranoia that defines North Korean perceptions of the U.S. government is profound. Decades of bloody enmity means that some of Kim’s inner circle lack confidence that the U.S. can be trusted. Others simply despise the U.S. and want no part of a deal that involves major compromise.
As an example, one of Kim’s top assistants is a man by the name of Kim Yong Chol. Kim Yong Chol is a determined hardliner who sees North Korea’s ICBM program as a perpetual means from which to extract U.S. concessions, not something to negotiate away. This takes us back to the question of Kim’s mind and his strength. What will the North Korean dictator choose to do? Will he choose the U.S. deal in return for a Gorbachev-plus-U.S.-support route of economic and societal opening? And if he does chose that route, will Kim have the political and institutional power to resist possible domestic challengers?
While Kim retains a consolidated power base, it is crucial that the U.S. now take a balanced line between South Korea’s ardent appeasement of North Korea and overt confidence building efforts to try and woo Kim to the route of the carrot over the stick. Trump can do better here. While Trump has rightly sought to boost Kim’s personal confidence in him, he occasionally undercuts that which got Kim to the negotiating table in the first place: the threat of U.S. military attack.
Where does all this leave us? With a U.S. strategy that can be summed up with three words: wait and see.
