ED Trump 2.0 and Korea

 

Differences over NK nuclear weapons may emerge
By John Burton

Politico, a U.S. media outlet, recently reported that former U.S. President Donald Trump, if reelected in 2024, would consider easing economic sanctions and allow North Korea to keep some of its nuclear arsenal under an arms control deal.

Although Trump immediately dismissed the report as “fake news,” such a proposal would make sense to those belonging to the realpolitik school of international relations.

The realpolitik theory of global politics was best exemplified in the U.S. by Henry Kissinger, the former U.S. secretary of state who recently died at the age of 100.

Kissinger’s realist version was based on the premise that national interests, not ideology, should drive foreign policy. He argued that there was a need to recognize the vital interests of other countries. This should be combined with a willingness to compromise, and caution in exercising U.S. power in certain situations.

His critics, however, accused him of being amoral and cynical for dealing with “evil” regimes such as the Soviet Union and China as he pursued a policy based on the acceptance of the world as it is. Kissinger rejected such criticism by arguing that statesmanship should be judged by the management of ambiguities, not absolute principles.

This conflict between a realist and ideological foreign policy has been reflected in U.S. policy toward North Korea over the last three decades. The willingness to engage North Korea placed the administrations of George H.W. Bush and Bill Clinton largely in the realpolitik camp.

But the onset of the George W. Bush administration, which represented the ideological neoconservative movement, led to a more skeptical, if not hostile, attitude toward Pyongyang, which largely has remained the default mode in Washington ever since.

Realpolitik proponents would argue that this ideology-driven policy has proved to be a failure. U.S. relations with Pyongyang have now regressed back to where they were in the late 1980s, except for the fact that North Korea now has a sizable nuclear arsenal and is closer to Russia and China than it has been in years. The U.S. insistence on the complete denuclearization of North Korea appears to be a dead letter.

When Trump came into office in 2017, he initially shared the predominant view in Washington about North Korea, threatening it with “fire and fury” if it did not accept American demands for denuclearization. But he seemed to have a moment of epiphany in early 2018 when he agreed to meet North Korean leader Kim Jong-un.

At his subsequent summit with Kim in Singapore in June 2018, Trump seemed willing to seek a compromise deal. But at their follow-up summit in Hanoi in February 2019, Trump took a more maximalist stance, egged on by his neocon national security adviser, John Bolton, by insisting on complete denuclearization before easing sanctions.

Kim has since adopted a more aggressive policy course by developing and launching new long-range missiles, while making it clear that he will never give up nuclear weapons because they ensure the survival of his regime.

Washington has three basic options: maintaining sanctions as it watches North Korea continue to build up its nuclear forces; going to war to disarm North Korea; or negotiating a deal to slow down or freeze its nuclear program.

Trump may have dismissed the Politico story out of concern that it might anger some of his conservative supporters by appearing to appease North Korea. But he quickly added that “I do get along well with Kim Jong Un!”

Trump would still face several obstacles in concluding such a deal if he is elected again. One would be agreeing on a verification process to police the agreement, which has been a key stumbling block in the past. Any freeze-for-relief deal could also face opposition among conservatives in the U.S. Congress.

There are also other potential downsides to Trump’s proposal. One is that it could create a breach with President Yoon Suk Yeol, who favors a hardline policy on North Korea. Trump might weaken the U.S. military alliance with South Korea by demanding, for example, that Seoul should contribute more money to the stationing of U.S. forces.

Any sign that Washington is wavering in its defense of South Korea could encourage Seoul to pursue its own nuclear weapons program. But a nuclear-armed South Korea would likely lead Japan to follow suit, undermining the recent rapprochement between the two countries.

There is also the possibility that North Korea may no longer be interested in doing a deal with the U.S. due to its closer relations with China and Russia, with Beijing and Moscow appearing willing to bend, if not break, the international sanctions regime against Pyongyang.

John Burton (johnburtonft@yahoo.com), a former Korea correspondent for the Financial Times, is a Washington, D.C.-based journalist and consultant.