Putting pressure on 73-year-old President Donald Trump to get back to the bargaining table, 35-year-old North Korea dictator Kim Jong-un signaled he was moving forward with his nuclear program, defying U.N. and U.S. sanctions. When Kim and Trump met for an impromptu meeting in the Demilitarized Zone June 30, they promised to get back to peace talks, though little has happened over the summer. Trump’s been mired in domestic politics, gearing up for what promises to be a bruising 2020 election campaign. Kim’s aloofness may reflect odds makers who give Trump less than 50% of getting reelected in 2020. Whether or not that prevailing wisdom applies to Chinese President Xi Jingping or Israel-Palestinian peacemaking isn’t known. But what’s known for sure is that Kim and Trump haven’t done much to get peace talks underway to resolve remaining differences.
When it comes to so-called “de-nucleariztion,” both countries have very different views of what that means. Trump left his summit Feb. 28 with Kim in Hanoi empty –handed largely over the de-nuclearization issue, something promised during the first summit June 28, 2018 in Singapore, Malaysia. De-nuclearization was always the sticking point since Kim’s grandfather Kim il-Sung, who founded North Korea, and his father Kim Jon-il have worked on nuclear weapons for some 40 years. Now that North Korean has about 60 nuclear weapons and the ballistic missile technology to deliver a warhead overseas, it’s always been unlikely that Kim would give them up. No matter how punitive the U.N. and U.S. sanctions, Kim still holds leverage with the West with his nukes and ballistic missile arsenal. It’s unrealistic to think that he’d give up his nukes and ballistic missiles.
In the run-up to Singapore, Kim agreed to shut down his Punggye-ri nuclear testing site, especially when its terrain became geologically unstable. “The nuclear programme of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea [DPRK] continues to operate, notwithstanding the absence of nuclear testing and the closure of the test site at Punggye-ri,” said DPRK’s panel of experts. North Korea has refused to scuttle its Yongyon nuclear complex, producing heavy-water plutonium radioactive material. U.S. officials wanted Kim to commit to shuttering Yongbyon but so far it hasn’t been included in any peace talks. U.N. officials admitted that Yongbyon’s nuclear enrichment activities have gone on unabated, during a time when the DPRK was supposed to stop its operations. We “assessed that the Yongbyon uranium enrichment facility continues to operated,” confirmed an unnamed U.N. official.
Instead of pushing the DPRK to give up its nukes, the U.S. negotiating team should work on a peace treaty to officially end the July 27, 1953 Korean War. Combatants signed an “armistice” to end the “hot war” but did not sign a peace treaty officially ending the conflict. When you look at the threat posed by North Korea to the U.S., it’s as good as the nation’s diplomacy. Whether admitted or not, Trump has done a good job of creating rapport with the North Korean dictator. Criticized for not getting unilateral disarmament from the DPRK, Trump has stopped the belligerent rhetoric that once had North Korea’s Foreign Minister Ri Yong-ho promising Sept. 27, 2017 that it was “inevitable” that DPRK missiles would hit the United States. Since that time, tensions have diminished, despite the fact that North Korean has not disarmed its nukes and ballistic missile program.
Launching a barrage of short-range missiles last month, Trump said it doesn’t violate the spirit of the summits, designed to get the U.S. and DPRK on the same page when it comes to peace talks. It’s become more clear than ever that Kim has no intent to giving up its nukes and ballistic missiles. Even 55-year-old Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan expressed frustration Sept. 5 over the international community preventing Turkey from developing nukes and ballistic missiles. Kim knows that when A.Q. Khan helped Pakistan get it first nuke May 28, 1998, 31 years after its archenemy India got the bomb. Whatever border skirmishes were fought with India and Pakistan since Pakistan’s Aug. 14, 1947 independence from Britain, peace now prevails, for the most part. Kim sees that in the nuclear age, the bomb is the “peacekeeper,” discouraging conflict between nuclear-armed states.
Trump needs to pivot on his policy with North Korea, moving quickly toward a peace treaty, assuring that two nuclear-armed states would not be in conflict. U.N. officials detailed how the DPRK has violated U.N. and U.S. sanctions, smuggling in more that 500,000 barrels of gasoline and jet-fuel into North Korea. Kim has asked Trump to end the sanctions as a pre-condition for continuing the de-nuclearization talks. Whatever the pre-conditions, it’s to the U.S.’s advantage to get Kim back to the bargaining table, especially over its nukes and ballistic missiles. Every time Kim and Trump meet, it builds more rapport, leaving both countries safer than before. Working on a peace treaty would be the best use of North Korean and U.S. time going forward. Kim wants the U.S. to return the peace-table but only if Trump promises to ease the punitive economic sanctions, something threatening to destroy prospects for peace, regardless of what happens to Kim’s nukes.
