President Donald Trump’s “maximum pressure” campaign against North Korea, built piece by piece over the past year and a half, has borne a surprising amount of fruit. It wasn’t just that the United States leveled unprecedented sanctions on Pyongyang—giving the lie to the previous administration’s claims that we had done just about all that we could do—it was the surprisingly successful efforts to cajole North Korea’s neighbors into pressuring the regime as well.
South Korean president Moon Jae-in, a thoroughgoing dove with instincts that lean strongly towards detente, supported the sanctions campaign, an achievement in itself. South Korean hawks, justifiably, feared a return of prior administrations’ “Sunshine Policy,” which saw lavish aid directed at the North in exchange for just about nothing. But there was no “Moonshine Policy” in 2017.
And even more consequentially, China, North Korea’s only treaty ally, even stepped up the pressure on Pyongyang, overcoming its historic reluctance to hurt the Kims. Trade between the two allies tanked over the past year. That’s a big deal, as a good 80 percent of North Korea’s foreign trade is with China.
Maximum pressure was a success. Officials in Asia credit the policy with pushing Kim Jong-un to the negotiating table. But now there are signs that maximum pressure is no longer quite so maximum.
Beijing is already relieving the pressure on Pyongyang, despite claims that it is still on board with the global campaign against the Kim regime. Three data points bear this out. For one, Kim Jong-un just returned to North Korea after his third visit to Beijing in three months. The meeting between Chinese leader Xi Jinping and Kim was heavy on symbolism that elevated the Korean dictator (sound familiar?): Chinese and North Korean flags were given equal treatment and a red carpet was literally rolled out for Kim. More revealing was the commentary published in the Global Times, the id of the Chinese Communist party, after the visit. “As two sovereign states, China and North Korea have the right to develop friendly relations. Facts have proven that since the outbreak of the North Korean nuclear crisis in the 1990s, stable Sino-North Korean relations have played a positive role in maintaining regional peace and stability. Beijing has never used its relationship with Pyongyang to undermine the stability of the peninsula,” the CCP-owned tabloid observed.
And then there’s this: Mass tourism of Chinese to North Korea has restarted. This is important, as Beijing uses group tourism as an economic weapon—it’s been punishing Taiwan for the past two years after the self governing island elected an anti-Beijing president by banning mainland tourists from visiting the territory. It’s also important for North Korea’s sake, as tourism brings much-needed foreign currency into the regime’s coffers. The third data point is that Air Koryo, North Korea’s state owned carrier, has just announced a new flight to Xian. This too indicates warming ties between Pyongyang and Beijing.
The problem is that maximum pressure is on the wane even as North Korea has given the bare minimum. The Singapore summit—while hopefully the start of a fruitful process—was ultimately about nothing, simply a (lavish) recitation of vague pledges. It would be alarming if that alone were enough to spur the end of maximum pressure. When it comes to North Korean behavior, if you expect the minimum, you’re likely to get it.
