OPINION:
The recent summit of President Trump and South Korean President Lee Jae-myung further solidified a special relationship. It goes back to June 1950, when North Korea invaded South Korea, mistakenly thinking that the U.S. was not interested in defending South Korea from an attack by the North.
North Korea’s leader, Kim Il-sung, was wrong. The U.S. came to the defense of South Korea, and after three years of bloody fighting, with tens of thousands of casualties, an armistice was signed in July 1953 to halt the fighting, but the Korean War continues.
Given this legacy, the Trump-Lee summit had deliverables — tariffs, trade investments — but what understandably got the most enthusiastic attention was the prospect of Mr. Trump reengaging with Kim Jong-un, the leader of North Korea. Frankly, our goal should be to reengage with North Korea and get Mr. Kim to realize that a normal relationship with the U.S., and hopefully with South Korea, is in North Korea’s interest. Indeed, it would provide North Korea with international legitimacy and access to international financial institutions and economic assistance for economic development purposes. It would be the beginning of a new era for North Korea and the Korean Peninsula.
No doubt Mr. Kim was impressed with China’s Sept. 3 victory day parade celebrating the 80th anniversary of the end of World War II. Standing next to Chinese President Xi Jinping as he and Russian President Vladimir Putin reviewed the military parade exhibiting China’s modernized military must have pleased Mr. Kim. The parade and the camaraderie among Messrs Xi, Putin and Kim were on display for the world to see. The additional 26 world leaders all heard Mr. Xi’s veiled criticism of the U.S. and his pronouncement that the world faces a choice between “peace and war, or dialogue or confrontation.”
The Shanghai Cooperation Organization meeting in Tianjin, China, on Aug. 31 was another convenient venue for Mr. Xi — in the presence of Mr. Putin, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi and 20 other world leaders — to prioritize the “Global South,” a veiled criticism of the U.S. and its tariff policies. Mr. Xi announced a $1.3 billion fund for the Shanghai Cooperation Organization development bank with a message: “We must continue to take a clear stand against hegemonism and power politics, and practice true multilateralism.”
The message from China from these two major events — the Shanghai Cooperation Organization summit and military parade — in one week was that China is a global power and Mr. Xi is an alternative global leader for a new world order with its own rules, independent from Western standards.
Unfortunately, the Trump-Putin summit in Alaska on Aug.15 was a failure. Despite the outreach from Mr. Trump, Mr. Putin continued to escalate the bombing of Ukraine, with continued civilian casualties. Mr. Putin then proceeded to China for the Shanghai Cooperation Organization Summit and the 80th anniversary military parade to meet and confer with Messrs. Xi and Kim and Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian, members of the axis of authoritarian states.
Mr. Xi’s comments in Tianjin and at the military parade in Beijing made his ultimatum plain: There will either be a new world order that condones Russia’s invasion of a sovereign state, Ukraine, despite 1994 security assurances to Ukraine in the Budapest memorandum, or a world order that continues to abide by the rule of law and respects the sovereign rights of all countries.
Mr. Kim’s father and grandfather wanted a normal relationship with the U.S., as did Mr. Kim in his meetings with Mr. Trump in Singapore in 2018 and Hanoi in 2019. The talks between our countries should resume soon, knowing that North Korea’s future is with a normal relationship with the U.S. and South Korea. The details can and will be addressed.
• The author is the former special envoy for the six-party talks with North Korea and the former director of the National Counterproliferation Center. All statements of fact, opinion or analysis expressed are those of the author and do not reflect the official positions or views of the U.S. government. Nothing in the contents should be construed as asserting or implying U.S. government authentication of information or endorsement of the author’s views.