President Trump is prepared to offer North Korea full diplomatic relations in return for full denuclearization, Jonathan Swan and Mike Allen reported at the website axios.com. The US president “is willing to consider establishing official relations with North Korea and even eventually putting an embassy in Pyongyang,” the news site quoted US government sources, in return for denuclearization.
The trade-off of North Korea’s nuclear weapons in return for international legitimacy for the Pyongyang regime is an approach that previous US Administrations considered and rejected. But it is the only diplomatic strategy that has a chance of working. Pyongyang might accept Complete, Verifiable and Irreversible Dismantlement, or CVID, of its nuclear weapons stockpile in return for one thing and one thing only, and that is survivability of its regime.
The North Korean regime cannot ask the United States and its allies to guarantee its longevity, but international legitimacy is the next best thing. It would give Pyongyang standing under international law and discourage future efforts to change the regime.
Regime survival is North Korean leader Kim Jong-un’s dominant concern. He also wants to leave open the possibility of unification under his family dynasty. Diplomatic recognition would make this possible at least in theory.
Kim did not come to the negotiating table because of tough American talk about regime decapitation. The North Koreans have heard such threats for years and are not impressed. Nor will economic sanctions sway the Pyongyang regime. North Korea’s economy has improved markedly since Kim took power six years ago. As economist Steve Hanke wrote recently in Forbes magazine, Kim has allowed “spontaneous ‘dollarization’ and ‘privatization’” of his country’s currency and economic activity. As a result, Hanke argues, North Korea’s economy is “more resilient and in better health than the press and experts assert.”
The most important thing for the American side to grasp is that Kim Jong-un is not coming to Singapore out of weakness, “begging on its hands and knees” for the summit, as Trump adviser Rudy Giuliuni told the press last week. He is not in Singapore because he fears American attack, or because he wants an American bribe, or because the Chinese sent him there.
On the contrary: Kim believes that he now has something valuable to trade, namely, nuclear-tipped ballistic missiles that can strike American allies and perhaps America itself. He also presides over a stronger economy than his predecessors. Kim isn’t talking to Trump because his people are starving or because his economy is imploding. He wants to emulate Deng Xiaoping’s economic reform initiative of 1978.
Kim Jong-un can’t be bullied by threats of military attacks, and he can’t be bought by the offer to lift sanctions. He wants to be treated as an equal.
Kim wants what he and his predecessors have always wanted and will always want. That is full, internationally recognized sovereignty and security within its borders, certified by a peace treaty with the powers involved in the Korean War. That would require the establishment of diplomatic relations with the major countries not presently recognizing North Korea, notably the US, France, South Korea, and Japan, as well as security guarantees to its borders by the US and underwritten by China and Russia. Recognition of the North Korean regime by all the major powers would legitimize the Kim dynasty and keep alive the option of eventual unification of the Korean peninsula under its rule – although such an outcome is not certain, nor even likely.
President Trump’s instincts have been sounder than those of his advisers. National Security Adviser John Bolton nearly killed the negotiations by mentioning the “Libyan Option” (first give up your nuclear program and then get killed), but Trump publicly disavowed his remark. It is encouraging that Trump reportedly is willing to discuss diplomatic recognition and the opening of a US embassy in Pyongyang. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo averred April 12 that the US is not seeking regime change in North Korea, although regime change has been the foreign policy establishment’s Shibboleth for Pyongyang for decades.
If Trump comes to Singapore to bully and bribe Kim Jong-un, the summit will fail. If the US President instead is willing to trade legitimacy for a regime that has been a thorn in America’s side for the elimination of the nuclear threat, it has a chance to succeed.
Shane Tarr Meaning what, exactly? Do you actually have anything to contribute to this discussion?
Hard to say how it all turns out. Trump is correctly taking a political approach. The sanctions should remain in place. Until he shows progress to a to “complete, verifiable, and irreversible dismantlement” (CVID) of North Korea’s nuclear weapons program. The two pressure points I see is that China’s return to Balanced trade with the US happens very fast or slowly depending on how much they cooperate with North Korea. Given no progress in a year. we start making noises about return nuclear weapons to South Korea so they can match the war-heads and missles that North Korea has. A joint verification regime can guide both nations to a complete de-nuclearization. If North Korea goes for Long-Range ICBMs we strike (massively?) at their nuclear forces.
Michael Chan …who cares? They are all liteweights like obama.
That’s "MAGA" baby!!!
Trump is da man.
I respectfully disagree with one asertion in this article. I feel certain Kim was at the Summit precisely because China did send him there. I think China woke up to two realities that are very uncomfortable for China:
1. When Kim launched a ballistic missile capable of carrying a nuclear warhead 500 miles into the Sea of Japan, I think it was not lost on the Chinese that 500 miles was almost precisely the distance from the launch site to Beijing, and that Kim could have chosen almost any other distance to fire it; looks like a message, doesn’t it? Probably because it is a message,
2. I think China listened to Henry Kissinger when he opined that a nuclear North Korea able to hit mainland USA means countries like Sourh Korea and Japan will hesitate to depend on the US nuclear umbrella and will feel obliged to develop nuclear capability of their own. China certainly does not want Japan to have nukes, and I’m sure not South Korea either.
There is a reason China moved 300,000 troops to the North Korean border last fall, and abruptly shut off fuel supplies to the Norks in midwinter. (You have to read more widely than the US mainstream media; try Reuters, for instance,or the Chinese media.) The reason is to explain to Kim that the time has come to de-nuke. Trump’s true achievement happened a year ago, when China President Xi came to visit in Washington, and Trump got him on board to resolve this problem.