Should the United States restart talks with North Korea? In his press conference with Japanese Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba on Feb. 7, U.S. President Donald Trump stressed his good personal relationship with North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un, saying that “it’s a very big asset for everybody that I do get along with him.”
At the press conference with Ishiba, Trump also claimed that his talks with Kim during his first term had stopped a war on the Korean Peninsula. Regardless of whether this is true, Trump certainly dealt better with North Korea than his predecessor. Former President Barack Obama made pretty speeches but came across as weak to many countries in East Asia, including U.S. allies and partners. For eight years, he did nothing about North Korea and called it a policy of “strategic patience.” This eroded deterrence and allowed Pyongyang to advance its missile and nuclear weapon programs.
In August 2017, Kim threatened Guam, a U.S. territory and major military base in the Pacific, with missiles. Trump responded by promising to rain “fire and fury” on Pyongyang. To my knowledge, North Korea has never tested a long-range missile since then on any trajectory that would bring it anywhere near Guam.
Deterrence restored, Trump met with Kim three times: in Singapore in 2018, in Hanoi in 2019, and in the Demilitarized Zone separating North and South Korea, also in 2019.
These meetings failed because they were poorly prepared and set an unrealistic goal of “denuclearization.” That train left the station long ago and will not return. To expect what U.S. officials call “complete, verifiable, and irreversible denuclearization” of North Korea’s nuclear program is a fool’s errand.
There is zero possibility of North Korea giving up its nuclear weapon or missile programs. Regime survival is an existential issue, and Pyongyang regards these programs as absolutely indispensable for assuring this goal. There is no incentive that can be offered to Pyongyang—or cost that can be imposed—that can persuade or compel it to give them up, because to do so is tantamount to opening the door to regime change.
The United States’ denuclearization goals are an obstacle to dealing with North Korea’s nuclear program in a practical and realistic manner. Earlier this year, Trump called North Korea a “nuclear power.” Nonproliferation purists criticized him for doing so, since the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty only recognizes Britain, France, China, Russia, and the United States as official nuclear powers. What Trump said, however, was just a simple description of a fact.
North Korea is rational and can be dealt with in the same way as all nuclear-weapon states: by strong deterrence and adroit diplomacy. The first Trump administration was strong but not adroit. Still, trying diplomacy was not wrong, and trying again would not be a mistake.
Despite its habitually inflammatory rhetoric, North Korea is highly unlikely to start another war of reunification, as it did in 1950. War would put regime survival in jeopardy. Notwithstanding the battle experience North Korean troops are now gaining in the Russia-Ukraine war, the South Korean military is technologically superior to its neighbor’s conventional forces, and an invasion of South Korea could draw in additional forces from the United States, Japan, and perhaps Australia.
In January 2024, Kim renounced peaceful reunification as a policy goal and demolished the Arch of Reunification in Pyongyang. Rather than assuming that he seeks reunification by war instead, we should take this as a likely recognition that the two Koreas are here to stay—and the beginning of a healthy move out of the deep shadows of his father’s and grandfather’s legacies.
We tend to focus on North Korea’s military programs. But Kim’s signature policy has been Byungjin (“parallel development”), which places equal emphasis on military and economic development, unlike his father’s Songun (“military-first policy”). When I last visited Pyongyang in 2013, two years after Kim came to power, there were tangible signs of development—undoubtedly only token showcase projects affecting only a few places in the capital, but nevertheless real.
In February 2024, North Korean media reported that Kim said he was “ashamed and sorry” for neglecting economic development outside Pyongyang and called for a “rural industrial revolution.” He acknowledged that achieving this along with military spending on nuclear weapons “won’t be easy.”
We need not take what he said at face value to recognize that any sort of apology from any North Korean leader is such a rare event that it should not be lightly dismissed. With Kim likely satisfied with his country’s progress on nuclear weapons and missiles, will he return to diplomacy in order to further his economic agenda? We will not know unless the possibilities are explored.
Neither North Korea nor South Korea is really interested in reunification. To reduce the risk of miscalculation, it is better that they deal with each other as separate, sovereign states. This will require the United States, Japan, and South Korea to officially recognize North Korea and conclude a peace treaty with it.
Some will argue that a peace treaty will reward and thus encourage bad behavior. But this is unconvincing; rewarding bad behavior is hardly unknown in international relations, including the treatment of North Korea. What else was the 1995 Korean Peninsula Energy Development Organization agreement but an attempt to bribe Pyongyang to stop behaving badly?
The energy agreement did not stop North Korea’s nuclear weapons program. But now that Pyongyang has developed such a capability, however rudimentary, its calculations of interests could change, particularly when it develops a minimally credible second-strike capability vis-à-vis the United States, which will boost its confidence in regime survival.
Regime survival is a relatively modest ambition to accommodate. This may lead to discussions on arms control and nonproliferation to third countries, which are the only realistic goals for diplomacy with North Korea. In any case, what are the alternatives? Sanctions clearly have not worked. It is too late for a war.
The Biden administration lumped China, Russia, Iran, and North Korea into one ideological category and contrasted it with the West. Trump 2.0 will not look at these countries in such ideological terms.
Former President Joe Biden’s simplistic binary categorization was not a policy. It ignored differences in how these four countries define their interests, the degree of their integration into the world economy, and the scope of their ambitions. These differences should be the starting point for U.S.-North Korean diplomacy.
Importantly, it is pointless to try to enlist China’s help. Beijing is not enamored with Pyongyang’s missile and nuclear programs, but China and North Korea are two of only five surviving Leninist systems in the world. Beijing’s most vital interest is to preserve the rule of the Chinese Communist Party. On this, Beijing is completely risk-adverse; indeed, it remains continually insecure. Beijing will therefore never be complicit, however indirectly, in anything that might lead to regime change in North Korea, because it could give the Chinese people inconvenient ideas about their own system. To Beijing, tolerating North Korea’s nuclear and missile programs is the lesser evil.
Only Washington has any chance of shifting Pyongyang. North Korean officials are extremely clear-headed about this. Since the United States is the only country that can effect regime change, they know they need to deal with the United States. Pyongyang is not desperate and will not pay any price for a deal, but we will not know the cost unless the possibility is explored.
Speaking at the North Korean Ministry of National Defense on Feb. 8, Kim reaffirmed North Korea’s commitment to developing nuclear capabilities and criticized the United States for creating a military imbalance in Northeast Asia. But he also said that his country “does not want unnecessary tension of the regional situation but will take sustained countermeasures to ensure the regional military balance.”
Talking about “balance” and “imbalance” is intriguing. It is something less than wanting the United States out of the region. Is Kim open to a deal on an appropriate balance? Again, there is no way to be sure unless the two sides talk.
Many uncertainties remain. What is an appropriate balance? Will it require trading off Pyongyang’s long-range missiles, which are Washington’s chief concern, for U.S. acceptance of the short- and medium-range missiles that threaten Japan and South Korea?
These uncertainties—as well as China’s own nuclear modernization program—raise fundamental questions about the United States’ so-called nuclear umbrella, as well as Japanese and South Korean security.
During his 2016 campaign, Trump suggested that Japan and South Korea acquire their own nuclear weapons. Obviously, Washington will not sacrifice Los Angeles or San Francisco to save Tokyo or Seoul. It may no longer be a question of whether—only when—Japan and South Korea will develop their own independent nuclear deterrents.. The inherent logic of their circumstances next to nuclear-armed China and North Korea will inexorably push them in this direction.
In South Korea, there is already considerable public support for acquiring nuclear weapons. For Japan, the only country ever to suffer a nuclear attack, the road to an independent nuclear deterrent will be more difficult.
But at least twice since the 19th century, Japan has shown itself capable of fundamentally changing direction when national survival was at stake. The alternative to an independent nuclear deterrent is subordination to China. This subordination would be such a painful redefinition of the core meaning of being Japanese that any other option becomes preferable. The late Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe already laid the groundwork by breaking decisively with the last vestiges of his country’s strictly pacifist post-World War II doctrine.
Regardless of their decisions on independent nuclear deterrents, Seoul and Tokyo would be well advised to open their own diplomatic channels to Pyongyang as well, rather than leaving that crucial relationship entirely in the hands of a more transactional and less predictable Washington. As the Europeans are learning with regards to Russia and Ukraine, U.S. interests on North Korea are different from Japan’s and South Korea’s.
This post is part of FP’s ongoing coverage of the Trump transition. Follow along here.