As the Trump administration seeks to prevent North Korea from becoming a nuclear power, it will probably want to close the barn door as well, now that the horse has gotten out.
Tuesday’s launch of an intercontinental ballistic missile simply underscores the status quo. It changed nothing. North Korea is a nuclear power. It also has a highly sophisticated missile program. The two will soon be linked—if they’re not already—and Pyongyang will shortly have the ability to launch nuclear attacks on the U.S. mainland. (By the way, can we marvel for a moment at the technical aptitude of the North Koreans? This impoverished, isolated country has managed to build weapons of fearsome strength and remarkable sophistication. They’ve literally mastered rocket science, under the most arduous of circumstances.)
The goal of “preventing” North Korea from going nuclear is farcical at this point. The Kim dynasty made the strategic calculus decades ago that the only way to ensure the durability of their ghastly regime was to acquire a nuclear deterrent. Nothing—not sanctions, not the Sunshine Policy, not jolly visits from Bill Clinton, Madeleine Albright, and Dennis Rodman—has altered that. That the Kim regime was probably correct in their determination makes the last 50 years all the more tragic. The world would be a much better place—chiefly, for those Koreans trapped north of the 38th parallel—were the regime to fall. Kim’s nuclear deterrent makes that outcome nearly immune to external events.
What is to be done? Former high-ranking officials in Seoul—hardly leftist, and certainly not sympathetic to North Korea—have told me that they think it’s time that the international community simply accept that Pyongyang is a nuclear power. That way, we can essentially table the nuclear issue and focus on reducing tensions and the very real threat of war. This is essentially the Pakistan approach: face facts—a dangerous regime has gone nuclear. Accept it, and move on. (As part of this approach, some hawkish South Korean politicians want the United States to re-deploy nuclear weapons to South Korea, thereby achieving nuclear parity.)
But there is another path.
Sanctions are never going to denuclearize North Korea. That issue is settled. But if used strategically, perhaps they can help precipitate the downfall of the regime.
Kim Jong-un’s leadership strategy is based on two prongs: fear and generosity. On taking the throne, he initiated a reign of terror that saw scores of formerly top-ranking North Korean officials purged and even executed. That’s the fear component. At the same time, he’s been liberal in bestowing gifts to buy the loyalty of the elites whose support he needs to maintain his rule. We’re talking about literal “gifts”—watches, foreign cars, expensive liquors.
Wielded cleverly, a sanctions regime could hamper Kim’s ability to give those gifts. A good start would be freezing the dictator’s overseas assets, a plan that has already been discussed by the United Nations Security Council. Estimates believe that the dauphin has somewhere between $3 and $5 billion sequestered in foreign banks. Cutting off his access to that money would hurt him, badly. Countries that are foolish enough to host North Korean embassies should shutter them as well: The “diplomats” there are busy cooking up criminal schemes to bring foreign currency back to Kim.
The trick is, a sanctions regime designed to bring down Kim by separating him from the elites could never be described as such. Beijing and Moscow, after all, would never get on board with a regime-change policy, even a non-violent one. So, we would need to pursue this strategy sotto voce. President Trump can bray loudly that he wants Kim to “freeze” his nuclear program, or some other pie-in-the-sky fantasy, while subtly pushing for regime change.
Let’s just hope nobody in Beijing is reading this article.
