Summit chance for negotiation
On a scale of one to 10, what are the chances the meeting between North Korea leader Kim Jong-Un and United States President Donald Trump in Vietnam this week, or any subsequent meeting, will end with a clear and irreversible commitment to the ‘‘denuclearisation’’ of North Korea? Zero.
What are the chances this summit, plus lots of further negotiations, could substantially reduce the threat of war between the two participants in this week’s meeting in Hanoi, and also between the two Koreas? Quite good, actually.
Kim Jong-Un and his father and grandfather before him have devoted enormous time and money to providing North Korea with an effective nuclear deterrent against the US, which requires the ability to strike the American homeland. He may make all sorts of other deals, but he will never give that up.
North Korea doesn’t need to match US nuclear capabilities – the ability to deliver only a few nuclear weapons on American soil would be a sufficient deterrent – but Kim will be well aware of what happened to Muammar Gaddafi and Saddam Hussein, heads of state who both died precisely because they didn’t have nuclear weapons.
There is no deal available that would protect North Korea from US nuclear weapons, since they can reach the North directly from the US. No amount of local disarmament – the withdrawal of American troops from South Korea, even the withdrawal of American nuclear weapons from all of East Asia – could change that reality and the US is not planning to abolish its nuclear deterrent. The only safe road to the future, therefore, is a political deal that greatly reduces tensions between the two countries while acknowledging a state of mutual nuclear deterrence will henceforward prevail between them.
Mutual deterrence has been maintained for a long time between the US and its two peer rivals, Russia and China. The huge asymmetry between the power of the US and North Korea does not lead to a different conclusion. Nuclear weapons are the great leveller: In practical terms, just a few are enough to deter, even if the other side has hundreds of times as many, which the US does. It’s going to be a long negotiation, because few Americans are ready yet to accept that this is the logic of the situation. Many would even reject it on the grounds Kim Jong-Un is crazy and might make a first strike against the US, although there is no evidence to support that belief. Being a cruel dictator is not at all the same as being suicidal, and a nuclear attack on the US would be suicide. Trump almost certainly does not understand that the only successful outcome of this negotiation must be mutual deterrence. Indeed, most senior American officials, although far wiser and better informed than Trump, still do not accept that fact. But they will probably get there in the end and the negotiations will lead them along the path.
A much better relationship, not unilateral North Korean nuclear disarmament, is the right goal to aim for. The kind of concessions that could help include a gradual relaxation of the sanctions that stifle the North Korean economy and a formal peace treaty ending the 1950-53 Korean War, perhaps in return for very big cuts in North Korea’s huge army.
Later on, there could be talks about permanently capping the number of North Korean nuclear weapons and intercontinental missiles in return for withdrawing some or all US troops from South Korea.
Holding this summit in Vietnam was a good move, since it will show Kim a country that has built a prosperous economy without ceasing to be a Communist-ruled dictatorship. He will be much more flexible if he believes, rightly or wrongly, he can open up the North Korean economy without being overthrown.