July 24, 2018
PacNet #46 - Kim Jong Un’s Long Game
Welcome to North Korean Negotiations 101. North Korea’s reaction to Secretary of State Mike Pompeo’s recent visit to Pyongyang was expected and does not signal the end of the diplomatic process; it just shows us it will be a long and difficult one. On top of dealing with North Korean-style negotiations, President Donald Trump already made important concessions too soon before concrete North Korean denuclearization steps while Kim is playing a long game, looking 40 to 50 years down the road. Trump, on the other hand, seems to be focused on the next 2.5 years, until the next US presidential election in 2020.
A successful diplomatic process will depend on three things: First, whether North Korea agrees to declare all of its nuclear inventory and submit to intrusive verification measures; second, whether all sides can agree on a sequence for denuclearization, security guarantees, and peace; and third, whether President Trump has the political commitment and patience to see this through. If diplomacy fails, and the Trump administration only manages to place a Band-Aid over the problem, the result could be an economically vibrant, nuclear-armed North Korea that enjoys normal relations with Washington.
Round one, Kim. The winner of the first round of negotiations in Singapore was undisputedly Kim Jong Un—and by extension, Chinese President Xi Jinping—because Trump revealed Washington’s ultimate bargaining card too soon: US troop withdrawal from Korea. Another major summit success for North Korea was that Trump accepted Pyongyang’s decades-old demand that the United States and South Korea cancel their joint military drills. To be sure, the joint drills have been cancelled before, but that was in 1992, before Pyongyang had nuclear weapons and inter-continental ballistic missiles. The longer the soldiers do not train and exercise, the more their readiness declines, and the weaker the rationale becomes for justifying their presence on the peninsula from Pyongyang and Beijing’s point of view.
Read the Full Article at CSIS
More from CNAS
-
Thanks to Trump, Russia’s Own ‘Pivot to Asia’ Is Bearing Fruit
Commentary
If Washington wants to maintain its strategic position in Southeast Asia, it will need to do more than compete with China. It will also need to avoid handing Russia opportunit...
By Derek Grossman
-
Navigating the Currents: Sri Lanka’s National Security Debate in the New Indian Ocean Order
Commentary
Sri Lanka’s national security debate in 2026 is ultimately between whether the country can break from the institutional pressures that have constrained previous reform attempt...
By Keerthi Martyn
-
XI Jinping Looking to Bring North Korea Back Into China’s Orbit: Analyst
Video
Duyeon Kim, Adjunct Senior Fellow at the Center for a New American Security, says her sources have informed her that Beijing is unhappy with Pyongyang’s growing relationship w...
By Duyeon Kim
-
Does the Quad Still Matter?
Commentary
Under the second Trump administration, some analysts have expressed growing pessimism about the group’s effectiveness, given the president’s apparent lack of interest in atten...
By Lisa Curtis
