How Trump Can Truly 'Solve' the North Korea Challenge

Doug Bandow

Security, Asia

So what to do? Start afresh with a new negotiating strategy. First, maintain denuclearization as the ultimate objective, but set intermediate goals that would enhance security.

President Donald Trump and North Korea’s Supreme Leader Kim Jong-un are heading toward another summit. Yet Kim’s public frustration is rising. In his New Year’s Day talk he pledged to “work hard to produce results welcomed by the international community without fail,” but threatened to take “a new path for defending the sovereignty of our country and supreme interests of our state” if the United States did not respond to his efforts. The latter could return Northeast Asia to the dangerous polarization of just a year ago.

Denuclearizing North Korea remains a long-shot. The isolated dictatorship is allied with China. It lags far behind South Korea, which is allied with America, the globe’s dominant military power. One could argue that it would be irresponsible, from a standpoint of regime survival, for the Kim dynasty not to develop the ultimate deterrent.

Trump is the fifth president to insist that the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea cannot be allowed to develop nuclear weapons. The last four presidents failed in that endeavor. However, he is the first president to engage in direct negotiations with the North’s leadership. While Kim likely is no more eager than his father and grandfather to disarm, there is evidence that this Kim would prefer to take a more responsible path, which could make Northeast Asia a safer place.

Whether or not that happens will depend on the president’s objectives and expectations. It will also depend on, most critically, his willingness to ignore hectoring from just about everyone. He will need to ignore the ever-aggressive neoconservatives, who appear to prefer war as a matter of principle, and uber-nationalists determined to bring the world to heel, antagonist liberals who hate the president more than they support peace. Also, he will need to sidestep a potpourri of analysts who prefer the status quo—U.S. domination, American-run alliance, overseas military deployment—to denuclearization, if the latter requires meaningful concessions. That is, a rather tattered Pax Americana, which could erupt into nuclear war, trumps an imperfect peace, in which Pyongyang reduces its ability and willingness to do harm.

In thinking about what to do with North Korea, it is important to see the issue plain. In particular: