The last four years proved once again that Kim Jing-un is rational & therefore able to lớn be deterred – not the madman with nukes that is so often portrayed – & that he is sufficiently interested in talks to lớn voluntarily halt nuclear and long-range missile tests while they were going on, to lớn slow his march if not to halt it altogether.
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Modern Korean HistoryConflict Resolution và PeacebuildingGreat power CompetitionNorth KoreaUnited States
U.S. President Donald Trump meets with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un at the demilitarized zone separating the two Koreas, in Panmunjom, South Korea. October 12, 2020.
It’s easy to lớn criticize Donald Trump on North Korea: the declarations of love for a brutal dictator, the disdain for details & history, the photo opportunities where the strategy should have been, but while the execution may have been lacking, he did attempt a new approach, & that offers important lessons for the incoming administration.
It did not get off lớn an auspicious start. During Trump’s first year in office, Kim Jong-un tested his first intercontinental ballistic missiles, demonstrating the potential khổng lồ reach the U.S. Homeland for the first time, along with a slew of short & medium-range projectiles & what appeared to be his first hydrogen bomb.
Trump threatened him with “fire and fury lượt thích the world has never seen.” The two leaders traded insults. Tensions ratcheted up. By the fall of 2017 conflict looked lượt thích a real possibility. Kim was pictured studying strike plans with the head of his strategic forces. Jim Mattis, then U.S. Defense Secretary, slept in his clothes to be ready khổng lồ give the order lớn shoot down an incoming North Korean missile. In a rare show of unity from the permanent members of the UN Security Council, even đài loan trung quốc and Russia were persuaded lớn back tough new sanctions on Pyongyang.
But then Kim Jong-un declared victory, proclaiming his nuclear force complete & abruptly shifting his attention to diplomacy. He still talked about the “nuclear button” on his desk, but he also sent his sister khổng lồ the 2018 Winter Olympics in South Korea –the first thành viên of the Kim family khổng lồ cross the border since the Korean War – & he invited Donald Trump khổng lồ meet him “as soon as possible,” who quickly agreed.
But it was the summit with Donald Trump in Singapore in June 2018 that made history, as Kim Jong Un became the first North Korean leader to meet a sitting U.S. President – a feat neither his father nor his grandfather achieved.
Kim’s relations with china had been seriously strained by his repeated nuclear và missile tests, but with the news that a meeting with Trump was on the cards they underwent a rapid thaw. Within the month he was in Beijing, where he was welcomed as a guest of honor by Chinese Communist các buổi tiệc nhỏ leader Xi Jinping and the two men put on a convincing show of forgetting their recent differences. He strengthened ties with Russia too, later dining with Vladimir Putin at a glitzy gala in Vladivostok. But it was the summit with Donald Trump in Singapore in June 2018 that made history, as Kim Jong Un became the first North Korean leader to meet a sitting U.S. President – a feat neither his father nor his grandfather achieved.
By meeting Kim, Trump was accused of legitimizing the young dictator & playing into his domestic propaganda – both of which were valid concerns – but that doesn’t mean direct engagement was necessarily wrong. Refusing to talk khổng lồ Kim hadn’t stopped him from developing nuclear weapons so far, & in North Korea’s top-down political system he was the only one capable of making real concessions. In short, it was worth a try.
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But from the outset the implementation was flawed. Trump treated the summit as a victory in itself, reveling in the truyền thông attention & acting as though he had pulled off something truly remarkable by persuading Kim khổng lồ meet, when in fact North Korean leaders had long sought the prestige such an sự kiện would bring. Kim wasn’t conceding anything by sitting down with Trump – just the opposite – he was proving that his strategy had worked, that by developing nuclear weapons he had forced the hostile imperialist enemy (as the United States is depicted in North Korea) khổng lồ take him seriously và to treat the country with the dignity và respect it deserved. The photographs of Trump listening attentively lớn Kim, the cheering crowds, & the North Korean flag flying alongside the Stars và Stripes only underlined his point.
The summits themselves delivered little of substance for either side. Kim offered the same vague commitment to denuclearization his predecessors had given, sticking with the regime’s preferred formulation on the removal of weapons from the “Korean peninsula,” potentially including every U.S. Base from which it could be targeted, rather than just North Korea. Trump rejected Kim’s proposal to lớn dismantle the Yongbyon nuclear facility in return for lifting sanctions, choosing instead khổng lồ walk away from their second summit in Hanoi. Their final meeting on the border between North and South Korea amounted khổng lồ barely more than a photocall. But along the way, the American president threw in some unexpected bonuses.
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Speaking khổng lồ the press after the Singapore summit, Trump called the United States’ joint military exercises with South Korea “war games” & “very provocative” – terms more commonly used by Pyongyang – announcing that he was canceling them, apparently without consulting his own generals or Seoul. He publicly and repeatedly complained about the cost of keeping U.S. Troops in South Korea, demanding Moon Jae-in’s government pay more and questioning the value of regional alliances. Và he undermined his own officials, inadvertently signaling to Pyongyang that any working level agreements could be quickly overturned by the presidential Twitter account & they should hold out for another summit with the leader instead.
By the end of Trump’s term, the talks had petered out và he had little more khổng lồ show for his efforts than a drawer full of flattering letters. For all of the talk of their great personal relationship, Kim Jong Un had only advanced his capabilities once again. At a military parade in October, he rolled out his biggest intercontinental ballistic missile yet, immediately dubbed the “monster missile” by analysts. Donald Trump could only địa chỉ his name khổng lồ the list of American presidents who had tried and failed to lớn curb North Korea’s nuclear ambitions before him.
But that doesn’t mean there is nothing lớn learn. The failure of Trump’s talks doesn’t mean that all talks are doomed khổng lồ fail. By agreeing to meet Kim at all, Trump handed him some powerful domestic propaganda, but his other major gifts – cancelling military exercises, questioning the U.S. Troop presence, undermining alliances – were given away in press conferences & tweets, not at the negotiating table. Talks that were preceded by serious working-level preparations và conducted by a president who worked with allies & stuck khổng lồ his script, might have looked very different. But Trump has at least lowered the cost for Biden to meet Kim should he eventually decide to vì chưng so, inoculating him against some of the inevitable criticism that he is showing weakness by sitting down with a dictator when a Republican president has done so first.
The last four years also proved once again that Kim Jing-un is rational và therefore able khổng lồ be deterred – not the madman with nukes that is so often portrayed – and that he is sufficiently interested in talks to voluntarily halt nuclear và long-range missile tests while they were going on, to lớn slow his march if not to lớn halt it altogether. In the meantime, his own domestic pressures have only increased. Last month Kim tearfully apologized khổng lồ his citizens for failing to lớn improve their lives & repay their trust in him as the country’s economy continues to lớn struggle under the weight of sanctions and the coronavirus pandemic. He might be persuaded khổng lồ hold off testing his new “monster missile” if he believes he stands to lớn gain from another round of dialogue with the Biden team.
Finally, & perhaps counterintuitively given where they ended up, the Trump years showed that the United States was able lớn work together with trung quốc and Russia khổng lồ put serious pressure on Pyongyang, that there were limits khổng lồ the behavior they were prepared khổng lồ tolerate. As relations between Washington & Beijing now rapidly spiral down, the need to lớn contain the nuclear threat from North Korea may be one thing they can agree on.
This article originally appeared on The National Interest.
Katie Stallard is a Global Fellow at the Woodrow Wilson international Center for Scholars & author of the forthcoming book khiêu vũ on Bones: History and Power in China, Russia, and North Korea, to lớn be published by Oxford University Press.
