Defusing North Korea

Guest Opinion

By Jack Segal | Nov. 7, 2017

Kim Jong-Un wants to survive. Donald Trump wants to reaffirm what he already knows: that he’s a great President. Xi Jinping is riding a wave of power just handed to him by China’s 90 million Communist Party members, and Xi now wants to assert China’s role as the pre-eminent regional power. In other words, the three key players in the drama of North Korea’s nuclear weapons are basically on the same page. Each should be able to see a way to achieve their respective goals, if everyone just tones down the rhetoric. Not possible? It must be.

Although President Trump has exceeded expectations in antagonizing, disrespecting, and provoking North Korea’s Kim Jong-Un — e.g., “Little Rocket Man,” “fire and fury like the world has never seen,” “totally destroy North Korea” — Kim’s spokesmen have also been creative, calling the president a “mentally deranged dotard,” and Kim himself, in a uniquely personal attack, warned that “[Trump] convinced me, rather than frightening or stopping me, that the path I chose is correct.” Kim said he would defend North Korea “to the last.” President Trump responded on Twitter that Kim was “obviously a madman.”  

So why am I hopeful? What the president’s top leaders are signaling on North Korea is certainly not reassuring. On Oct. 27, Defense Secretary James Mattis warned Kim Jong-Un that “…The United States will never accept North Korea as a nuclear power.”

In diplomacy, that’s a red line — North Korea must never have nuclear weapons and presumably must destroy those it already has. But North Korea’s crafty (not crazy) dictator knows what happened to Muammar Qaddafi and Saddam Hussein when they abandoned their nuclear weapons programs. No thanks.

In fact, Kim inherited the nuclear card from his father, Kim Jong-Il. As far back as the 1980s, U.S. intelligence detected cooperation among North Korea, Pakistan, Iran, and Libya. Just this year, analysts noted new North Korean missile designs that mirror those used in Ukrainian missiles.

Trying to get North Korea to rid itself of its nuclear ambitions failed once before. In 1996, North Korea under Kim’s father was facing famine and shortages of heating oil. He negotiated a deal with the U.S., the “Agreed Framework.” North Korea promised to halt its weapons program, dismantle a reactor, and open suspect sites to inspectors. Once the deal was announced, North Korea promptly moved its program underground. By 2002, Kim’s father shocked the world by announcing that the country had developed a nuclear device. In 2006, it conducted its first A-bomb test. Surprise, North Korea cannot be trusted.

But if our position is that North Korea cannot have nukes, what we expect North Korea to do is less clear. Meanwhile, our allies, particularly South Korea and Japan, are terrified that the personal vendetta between President Trump and Kim could escalate into a war — even a nuclear war — and they would have no say about that. China shares that fear.

During his Asia tour, General Mattis promised that the U.S. commitment to our Asian allies was “ironclad.” Their security rests on extended deterrence; if anyone attacks any of them, we would use our military power, including nuclear weapons, to respond. For South Korea, this commitment was codified at a June 2009 summit that declared “the continuing commitment of extended deterrence, including the U.S. nuclear umbrella … .” to the [Republic of Korea].

That’s right, friends. We have promised to sacrifice American lives and even American cities if Seoul (or Tokyo or Sydney) were destroyed by North Korean nuclear bombs. We would retaliate with nuclear weapons even if that meant sacrificing Seattle.

But our Asian allies have begun wondering whether that commitment is still valid. This is where China comes in. Xi Jinping does not want a war in Korea, nor new nuclear weapons states in Asia, nor to see President Trump calling the shots in Asia. Vi’s claim to preeminence relies on his being able to manage “his” region. Xi’s upcoming meetings with President Trump provide the forum for a negotiation aimed at ending this crisis while also making Xi and our president look “presidential”.

I doubt North Korea will agree to disarming itself in the face of U.S. threats. So that is probably off the table, for now. Nor can China be seen to be carrying our water and joining in the bullying of Kim Jong-Un. Instead, we should agree with Xi to broaden the discussion. Could China offer a nuclear “extended deterrence” guarantee to North Korea? Could the U.S. agree to scale back our large U.S./South Korean military exercises? Could North Korea shelve its long-range missile development? Could China reconvene peace talks between the two Koreas? 

The U.S. should not go to any negotiation one-on-one with North Korea. That would almost certainly fail, play right into Kim’s rhetoric, and lead to more threats, which would further frighten our regional partners and China. Instead, we should persuade China to come to a regional security table — chaired by Xi Jinping and Donald Trump (they’d both like that) — with Japan, South Korea, Australia, Singapore, Malaysia, and whomever we care to include. But the atmospherics we should seek is to pit an isolated, weak North Korea against a strong, wealthy, and powerful Asia.

In that atmosphere, and with cautious, quiet diplomacy, a way out of this manufactured mess just might be possible.

 

Jack Segal served as national security council director for non-proliferation (1998–2000). With Karen Puschel Segal, he co-chairs the International Affairs Forum; its next speaker is former U.S. ambassador to Russia, John Beyrle, 6pm Nov. 16 at Milliken Auditorium.