What happened to denuclearizing North Korea?
North Korean leader Kim Jong-un, right, looks at U.S. President Donald Trump before their meeting during the second U.S.-North Korea summit at the Metropole Hotel in Hanoi, Vietnam, Feb. 27, 2019. Reuters-Yonhap
Victor Cha, once champion of CVID policy, argues that denuclearization and sanctions on North Korea have ‘failed’
A former National Security Council official who long championed the U.S.’s policy on North Korea’s denuclearization has declared it a “failure,” saying Washington’s “overreliance on sanctions” was a mistake.
In a Foreign Affairs essay that drew weeks of editorials and ministerial-level responses in Seoul, Victor Cha, the NSC’s director for Asian Affairs during the George W. Bush administration, argued Washington should pursue a “cold peace” with Pyongyang and face North Korea “as it is.”
Cha currently serves as the president of the Geopolitics and Foreign Policy Department and Korea chair at the Center for Strategic and International Studies based in Washington, D.C.
“The United States should not renounce denuclearization, but policymakers must acknowledge that it is now a distant objective. Moving forward, Washington needs a new strategy that does not let the long-term goal of denuclearization get in the way of its more immediate national security needs,” Cha wrote.
“Denuclearization is a noble goal, but past policy failures and North Korea’s dogged determination to obtain weapons have made it unattainable for now.”
The U.S. should instead prioritize near-term goals such as homeland defense and crisis-management channels, especially as Washington faces “a dizzying array of challenges from China, Russia and Iran,” he added.
Ankit Panda, a senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, told NK News that the essay reflects “recognition of the unsustainability,” or the current diplomatic trajectory many analysts have “long warned about.”
Frank Aum, a former senior Pentagon advisor for Korea during the Obama administration, said that while the argument circulated in Washington for years, Cha’s voice has given it weight.
“What makes Cha’s article unique and potentially effective is the messenger and the message,” Aum told NK News. “He is arguably the most renowned Korea expert in Washington. He’s argued in the past for North Korea’s imminent collapse, he helped design the [complete, verifiable and irreversible dismantlement] (CVID) strategy, he advocated for pressure and sanctions — and now he’s arguing that denuclearization is dead and that sanctions are ineffective,” Aum said.
“Perhaps more important, he has sugarcoated the bitter pill that many experts have advocated — stable coexistence and arms control — into a more palatable goal for hardliners: ‘stable cold peace.’”
South Korean Unification Minister Chung Dong-young addressed the essay last week, calling it “very surprising … that a scholar with a conservative, hard-line perspective is now saying North Korea should be taken off the list of enemies.”
Victor Cha testifies before the Senate Armed Services Committee in Washington, D.C., April 27, 2017. Courtesy of CSIS
Failed approach
Cha worked for the Bush administration that coined the long-standing U.S. goal CVID, a principle that shaped U.S. and South Korean policy across multiple administrations.
In the essay, Cha described CVID as a “failure,” arguing that Washington’s fixation on denuclearization has come at the expense of near-term dangers.
North Korea has “blown past even the most pessimistic predictions,” building around 50 nuclear bombs, possessing enough material for dozens more and intercontinental ballistic missiles that can “overwhelm U.S. defenses,” he wrote.
Cha also argued that North Korea never intended to disarm itself, recalling a North Korean interlocutor telling him in 2006: “We will never give up our nuclear weapons.”
Sanctions, Cha added, have “only hardened Pyongyang’s resolve,” while China and Russia are weakening enforcement. The U.N. Panel of Experts that monitored sanctions evasion disbanded in April 2024.
U.S. and South Korean armored vehicles drive across a rapidly constructed bridge during a joint river-crossing exercise for Ulchi Freedom Shield near the Namhan River in Yeoju, Gyeonggi Province, Aug. 27, 2025. Courtesy of Republic of Korea (ROK) Army
‘Cold peace’
Cha’s essay appeared alongside another recent column with a provocative headline, “How North Korea Won.”
The April 21 column penned by former deputy special representative for North Korea Jung Pak reinforced Cha’s case that Washington needs a new approach toward the regime.
North Korean leader Kim Jong-un now has “new networks, new capabilities, and tacit acceptance that North Korea will remain a nuclear power,” Jung Pak wrote.
Under this new reality, Cha proposed narrower deals, including limits on missile and nuclear testing; restrictions on missile production; crisis-management channels and bans on nuclear technology transfers. He argued this revised approach is urgent because North Korea has adopted a more dangerous nuclear posture, including a possible first use in a “use or lose” crisis.
He also pointed to U.S. troops stationed in South Korea as a possible bargaining chip, a notable shift from the policy advisor who endorsed strengthening the alliance between the two countries. Cha reasoned that Pyongyang has long sought reductions to U.S. Forces Korea’s presence on the peninsula as the two allies have already considered changes to their military posture, including higher ROK defense spending, wartime operational control transfer and a greater U.S. air and maritime role in the region.
Cha said the possible removal of the U.S. Army’s 3,500- to 4,500-troop rotational brigade, as reported by The Wall Street Journal in March, could be “aligned” with Pyongyang’s goals and used in talks for phased arms reductions, caps on multiple rocket launchers or drone no-fly zones.
Then U.S. President Bill Clinton, second from left, is seen shaking hands with a soldier at the Demilitarized Zone in 1993. Courtesy of U.S. National Archives and Records Administration
A different era
The timing of Cha’s argument reflects a changed environment on the peninsula.
In 2022, Pyongyang broke from having only China as a treaty ally and signed a mutual defense pact with Russia, sending thousands of its troops to Kursk.
North Korea has also amended its constitution to note its nuclear status in Sept. 2023, revealed a second uranium enrichment facility and demanded recognition as a nuclear state as a precondition for talks with President Donald Trump at Party Congress earlier this year.
The timing of Cha and Pak’s columns likely also stems from Washington’s bandwidth and decision-making problem: The U.S. is managing multiple crises while Trump appears more willing than his predecessors to test risky initiatives.
Cha withdrew from consideration for U.S. ambassador to South Korea in 2018 over reported disagreements with then-National Security Adviser H.R. McMaster on a proposed “bloody nose” strike against North Korea. Cha maintains in his essay that he opposes preventive strikes against North Korea.
Critics may view cold peace as making “major concessions” and instead call for military action, including demanding that North Korea denuclearize or “face the same fate that Iran has,” Cha wrote, citing the U.S.’s strikes against Iran’s nuclear sites last year and the recent strike on Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei.
“But North Korea is not Iran: it is a proven nuclear weapons state that could retaliate against the United States and its allies,” Cha wrote.
North Korea tests the Hwasong-11D close-range ballistic missile, April 20, in this photo published by Rodong Sinmun. Courtesy of NK News
From fringe to mainstream
Cha’s assessment is not entirely new: Former officials and analysts have argued for arms control for years, though with varying degrees of comfort in acknowledging North Korea’s nuclear status.
Van Jackson, a former Pentagon official, argued in 2019 that Washington needed to confront reality on North Korea and move toward arms control. Jeffrey Lewis of the Middlebury Institute of International Studies put it more bluntly in 2022, arguing the U.S. should accept North Korea has nuclear weapons. Aum and Panda called for “stable coexistence” in a 2025 report centered on engagement, arms control and risk reduction.
Robert Einhorn, a former State Department non-proliferation official, has advocated for keeping denuclearization as the goal while prioritizing nuclear escalation risk management. Bonnie Jenkins, the then-State Department’s arms control official, drew controversy in 2022 by appearing to be open toward arms-control talks before clarifying that Washington had not given up on denuclearization.
Cha himself also noted the issue’s sensitivity, writing that many policymakers privately accept the need to move beyond the “single-minded focus on denuclearization and an overreliance on sanctions,” but will not do so publicly because officials in Washington, Seoul and Tokyo see it as “equivalent to surrender.”
“But the United States should not let the perfect be the enemy of the good,” he wrote, adding that “the best strategy for avoiding a hot war with a nuclear North Korea is to preserve a cold peace.”
Aum, however, noted that stable coexistence, or Cha’s “cold peace,” carries risks.
As North Korea continues to possess nuclear weapons, South Korea and Japan could become serious about developing their own nuclear programs — this scenario carries a political risk for a U.S. president, who can be viewed as the leader who allowed North Korea into the “international fold” as a nuclear weapons state, he said.
“But fortunately for President Trump, I don’t think he cares about international reputation or, if he does, he can spin this outcome as having tangibly enhanced security for the U.S. and its allies,” Aum said.
“If he can freeze, though not end, North Korea’s nuclear program, improve bilateral relations in a way that institutionalizes regular engagement, and reduce peninsula tensions in a way that decreases domestic South Korean support for nuclear weapons, he could be right.”
Read the article at NK News.