At least he is interested in breaking with the past and facing reality about nukes

Doug Bandow

Donald Trump’s foreign policy mistakes were many, but on the North’s nuclear challenge he has been farsighted compared to most foreign policy analysts. That continues with his reported willingness to deal with the DPRK as it is, not how everyone wishes it were. North Korea is a nuclear state. It is time to confront that reality.

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With opinion polls showing Donald Trump ahead of Joe Biden in the 2024 race, Washington policymakers are contemplating the possibility of another Trump administration.

No doubt there would be dramatic changes in U.S. foreign policy. Including, it appears, in Washington’s approach to North Korea.

As Politico reported: “Donald Trump is considering a plan to let the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea keep its nuclear weapons and offer its regime financial incentives to stop making new bombs, according to three people briefed on his thinking.”

This would overturn decades of international insistence that the North eschew nuclear weapons, commonly called CVID: complete, verifiable, irreversible dismantlement/denuclearization. Until now, questioning this policy triggered wild wailing, gnashing of teeth, and rending of garments among Korea-watchers.

The conventional wisdom is that Washington must stand firm — until the end of time, or beyond, if necessary — despite the growing North Korean nuclear arsenal. Pyongyang has enough fissile material to make at least 45-55 weapons, and perhaps twice that number, though estimates vary widely.

Moreover, the DPRK continues to add nukes. One controversial study warned that the North could amass as many as 242 weapons in the next few years, which would place it ahead of Israel, Pakistan, India, and the United Kingdom.

Virtually no one believes that Pyongyang will denuclearize. Only South Africa, with just six weapons (and another being constructed), has eliminated an existing arsenal. Almost certainly disarming the DPRK would require either defeat or collapse of the Kim dynasty. Regarding North Korea, fantasy has seemingly become policy.

However, it appears that Trump is prepared to overturn conventional wisdom when it comes to Pyongyang — again. After threatening war in 2017, he turned to summitry with Kim Jong-un, a switch widely denounced in Washington. Distrust of Trump as a negotiator was pervasive, with the greatest fear that he would succeed and agree to something other than CVID. After the 2019 Hanoi summit collapsed without a deal, Kim appears to have decided that Trump was unwilling to agree to sanctions relief without a commitment to full denuclearization. The former then ended his dialogue with the US (and South Korea).

Biden continues to insist on CVID, instructing the DPRK not to conduct another nuclear test. Despite his proposals for contact, which at times came perilously close to begging, Kim has refused to talk. Rather, the latter is expanding North Korea’s nuclear capability, testing ballistic missiles, launching satellites, developing submarine-launched and tactical weapons, and threatening first use of nukes.

These efforts may now be aided by Russia, which is relying on the North to provide artillery shells and perhaps more for the Ukraine war.

The future looks no better. Last year after the Supreme People’s Assembly enshrined the North’s nuclear status in law, Kim declared that “As long as nuclear weapons exist on Earth, and imperialism and the anti-North Korean maneuvers of the US and its followers remain, our road to strengthening our nuclear force will never end.”

This policy, he added, is “irreversible.” He is likely strengthening his nuclear deterrent to prepare for talks with Washington — presumably offering to trade nuclear limits for sanctions relief.

Policymakers almost uniformly reject this course since arms control won’t deliver denuclearization, Washington’s preferred outcome. However, the result still would be better, likely far better, than Pyongyang continuing to augment its stockpile and replacing Pakistan as a global Nukes ‘R Us. However, that doesn’t matter to critics.

Some simply insist that the North cannot have nuclear weapons. Of course, it shouldn’t have them, but successive U.S. presidents repeating that point have left North Korea as an undisputed nuclear state.

Another argument is that dropping CVID would undermine the nonproliferation regime. However, the DPRK’s possession of nuclear weapons, not America’s recognition of that reality, poses the real nonproliferation challenge.

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