Asking North Korea to Totally Denuclearize is Unrealistic.
“A mentally deranged US dotard” and “Little Rocket Man” trumps up nuclear war rhetoric. On June 12, 2018, U.S. President Donald Trump and DPRK leader Kim Jong-un met in Singapore to resume talks on the DPRK’s nuclear program. The meeting was dubbed as a historical moment and the two leaders were greeted with fanfare.
Before the meeting in Singapore on June 2018, no other sitting US president have met with a North Korean leader. The decision to meet with the Korean delegation came as a surprise to many. President Donald Trump had declared often that he would not meet with Kim unless his regime took substantial and significant steps towards relinquishing their nuclear arsenal. (Stevens, 2019) Before their meeting, there was a war of words between the two leaders, both threatening total annihilation of each other’s country. While the doomsday rhetoric was alarming, in part it was expected.
Tensions escalated in 2017 when Kim tested many ballistic missiles. US responded with aggressive military exercises with South Korea. During the first year of the Trump administration, the Kim regime conducted over 20 ballistic missile test, to varying degree of success. In September of 2017, DPRK conducted its largest nuclear test to date. The DPRK claimed it was a hydrogen bomb and that it was a success.
The US response to these tests has been both condemnations, tightening the sanctions regime, and strategic maneuvering of its Navy and armed forces, including the deployment of THAAD to South Korea. Tensions began to thaw when Moon Jae-in was elected as South Korean President. From the onset, Moon expressed an openness in resuming diplomatic relations with its neighbors and paved the pathway for talks between the US and the DPRK in Singapore in 2018 and again in Hanoi earlier this year in February.
What did the summits accomplish, if anything at all? At the conclusion of the Singapore summit, both leaders released a joint statement expressing broad intentions including thawing relations, complete denuclearization and the recovery of remains of US soldiers from the first war. The summit did not produce a concrete timeline for the “complete denuclearization” and does not mention the easing of the sanctions regime. For his part, President Trump promised to halt annual US-South Korea military exercises and Kim promised to dismantle and destroy one of their testing sites. There is some speculation that the DPRK had previous plans to destroy that facility.
The second summit in Hanoi in February did not yield a joint statement and US President Donald Trump abruptly ended the summit. As Ankit Panda and Vipin Narang of Foreign Affairs explain, the failure of the summit was no surprise. Washington’s demands for a total denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula without any concession from the US, made any deal impossible. (2019)
It is understandable that the US would want significant reduction of their nuclear capabilities given DPRK’s track record on making good on its promises and obligations. For their part, the DPRK regime is also suspicious of the Trump administration. Kim have expressed many times that the US could be not trusted and pointed to President Trump’s decision to unilaterally withdrawal from the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA). Kim has also referenced the outcomes of Libya and Iraq. Both those countries gave up their nuclear program and were later invaded.
Is the request of the DPRK to give up its entire nuclear program even a realistic? Although Kim have made statements about his desire to denuclearize the peninsula, one should take those statements with great skepticism. The following are reasons that the DPRK will not relinquish their nuclear arsenal. One, Nuclear deterrence has been at the forefront of the DPRK’s foreign policy and defense strategy. The DPRK understands that in a confrontation with the West, it is probable that the Kim regime would be destroyed, and hundreds of thousands of his countrymen will perish. Kim believes, rightly so or not, that the west will not sacrifice Seoul simply for political gains and objectives. Two, Kim’s tight grip on power in the DPRK depends on him possessing nuclear weapons. For decades the DPRK propaganda regime have used the fear of an invasion by the US as a reason for sacrifices of the North Koreans, often times using images of the US-Korean war. Three, It is unreasonable to believe that the DPRK would agree to total denuclearization given the sheer vast amount of resources and time spent on building up the program, and the bomb has become part of their national identity.
So, what then? Let them have the bomb or another war? Neither the US nor the DPRK want a war on the peninsula. This much is clear to most. The question is then, how can we end this crisis. One option is to guarantee the DPRK a security umbrella. This umbrella would most likely have to come from China. The problem with this option is that China and the DPRK do not have much trust in each other as well. Furthermore there are historical grievances between the two nations. Russia could also provide this umbrella, but it is unclear if Moscow would want to give that assurance or get entrenched in a possible conflict involving North Korea.
The international community eventually had to accept Israel, Pakistan and India as nuclear weapons states and I believe the same should be for the DPRK. There is an assumption in the west that Kim is an erratic individual and is likely to use nuclear weapons. This cannot be far from the truth. Kim is a very calculated leader, and unlike his father and grandfather, he is more receptive to the west. The international community should focus more on what can be changed in North Korea, like their human rights violations. The gradual easing of sanctions should be determined by their progress on that front. Finally, The South Koreans have shown great willingness to ending the stalemate and resume normalized relations with its neighbors in the north. Sanctions regimes hurt the civilian population and have proved fruitless in North Korea. The idea that a suffering North Korean population will mobilize and demand leadership change is unrealistic.
