When Donald Trump takes office, he will face an array of authoritarian adversaries — China, Russia, Iran and North Korea — that are coalescing into a formidable axis intent on challenging U.S. power. Together, they represent America’s greatest foreign policy threat, and the Trump administration should act quickly to exploit potential weak links in this coalition before it hardens into a unified bloc.
North Korea is that weak link. Its leader, Kim Jong-un, is a cynical and deeply transactional despot whose insecurities, ambitions and questionable commitment to China and Russia provide America’s best opening. Mr. Trump’s history with Mr. Kim during his first term positions him better than any previous president to make a deal with North Korea that is advantageous for America.
Mr. Trump should capitalize on this by seeking a lasting peace deal and formal diplomatic relations with North Korea, an outcome that would have important benefits for the United States.
It would finally bring peace to the Korean Peninsula, one of the most militarizedplaces on the planet. That would allow the United States to eventually reduce its substantial military commitments on the peninsula and concentrate on its single biggest geopolitical worry: China. Defusing the North Korean threat would likewise allow Washington’s allies Japan and South Korea to refocus on China, and the United States could gain new leverage to curb North Korea’s rogue-state behavior. At the very least, it would deliver an unexpected blow to the anti-U.S. coalition.
There are good reasons to believe Mr. Kim might play ball. Despite North Korea’s traditional alliance with China and its deepening relationship with President Vladimir Putin of Russia, Mr. Kim knows that these two patrons have a history of being unreliable. They have meddled in his country’s internal affairs in the past, sacrificing its needs and interests when it served their purposes. Mr. Kim’s grandfather, Kim Il-sung, North Korea’s first leader, frustrated Beijing and Moscow, causing Mao Zedong in 1956 to complain to the Russians that the elder Mr. Kim was “assuming airs.” He tried to play Beijing and Moscow off each other, and the militant official ideology he introduced — “juche,” or self-reliance — was adopted partly to avoid becoming a Chinese or Russian vassal state.
One of the primary goals of the elder Mr. Kim was to prevent his patrons from extending diplomatic recognition to his archrival, South Korea. But both Moscow and Beijing did precisely that in the early 1990s, enticed by the trade prospects. The Kim dynasty’s realization that it had no firm allies was, in fact, a key reason behind its decision to pursue nuclear weapons.
Today, Kim Jong-un’s relations with Mr. Putin are on the rebound and North Korea is providing both weapons and troops for Russia’s war in Ukraine. Yet this is a business deal. Mr. Kim, keen to develop his nation’s stunted economy and strengthen its military, is essentially selling his services to Mr. Putin for generous payments of Russian grain, oil and military technology.
But what Mr. Kim can get out of Russia — which is itself hobbled by economic sanctions imposed over the Ukraine war — pales in comparison to the potential long-term benefits of diplomatic and trade relations with the United States. America’s economy is around 14 times as large as Russia’s, and the removal of U.S.-led sanctions on North Korea would lift a great weight from its economy.
As for China, Mao once described the country’s relationship with North Korea as being as close as lips and teeth, and the North, as a pariah state is still heavily reliant on trade with China. But distrust and resentment linger. North Koreans remember how, during China’s Cultural Revolution, radical Red Guards loyal to Mao denounced Mr. Kim’s grandfather as a “fat revisionist.” The two supposed allies fought border skirmishes in the late 1960s and diverged ideologically when Deng Xiaoping instituted market reforms in the 1980s while North Korea stuck to its autarkic economic model. Relations have had a forced quality ever since.
Mr. Kim has met with Mr. Putin twice since last September, but has not met with Xi Jinping since 2019, when Mr. Xi made the short journey to his neighboring ally for the only time since coming to power 12 years ago. The American deputy secretary of state, Kurt Campbell, said in late November that China — which wants stability on the Korean Peninsula and has long sought to discourage North Korea’s military and nuclear ambitions — is unnerved by Mr. Kim’s military cooperation with Russia.
Mr. Trump had the right instincts in pursuing talks with Mr. Kim in his first term. Those collapsed after Mr. Trump insisted on full denuclearization by the North. But a change in U.S. strategy might achieve a better outcome this time.
Mr. Kim has previously expressed a willingness to eventually wind down his nuclear program, and America should continue to seek such assurances. But we must accept that demanding immediate, tangible denuclearization will doom negotiations with a regime that first tested the bomb 18 years ago and for which nuclear weapons are the ultimate guarantee of survival.
The Trump administration can focus instead on other, more realistic goals, such as getting North Korea to commit to a moratorium on further nuclear tests, refraining from provocative missile launches, preventing the transfer of nuclear, chemical, biological and missile technology to third parties, ending aggressive cyber operations against Western targets and working toward the withdrawal of offensive weaponry positioned near the Korean Demilitarized Zone.
In return, America can offer diplomatic relations, the removal of some economic sanctions and a peace treaty to formally end the Korean War. (An armistice halted fighting in 1953 but the United States and South Korea technically remain at war with the North.)
Engaging with autocratic regimes like Mr. Kim’s poses moral hazards. But America did the same in the early 1970s in reaching out to Mao’s China, which led to vastly improved relations and gave both sides leverage against the Soviet Union. And the United States already works with regional autocracies, like its old foe Vietnam, to counter Chinese power.
How well all of this would work with North Korea is anyone’s guess, given the regime’s tradition of rabid anti-Americanism, which has been central to the Kim family’s maintenance of its iron grip on power. Mr. Kim has repeatedly rebuffed overtures from the Biden administration. Even if he engages with Mr. Trump, the North’s leader is likely to be a problematic partner who will seek his own advantage above all to maximize his leverage. But that is not necessarily a bad thing. It at least weakens his dependence on China and Russia and pokes a hole in the authoritarian coalition.
Challenging times call for bold moves. And if Mr. Trump can tap once again into his personal connection with Mr. Kim, it could lead to an outcome that eases North Korean insecurities, creates better regional stability and undermines America’s nascent coalition of adversaries.
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