North Korea
While we hope for peace, Trump’s strategy rewards nuclear ambitions.
No, you’re not dreaming. You really did see President Donald Trump and North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un shaking hands in front of each other’s flags at a luxury hotel as Dennis Rodman offered commentary on cable news while promoting a marijuanathemed cryptocurrency. Bizarre spectacle aside, it’s hard not to be hopeful about what comes next, even though the agreement that the summit produced doesn’t seem to say much of anything at all.
The Korean War, which is technically at a ceasefire, has been running for some 68 years now. It’s old enough to expect mail from the AARP. Many people over the years, including hard-nosed hawks like Henry Kissinger, have floated the idea of normalizing diplomatic relations with the North and trying to end the war, but to no avail. North Korea’s isolation and bad behavior and the international community’s inertia have helped keep the war frozen in place. Now, just maybe, there’s a path out. While Trump seems to rush for the photo-op and quick declaration of mission accomplished, it falls on Congress to ensure that this path doesn’t end with an empowered despot in a nuclear North Korea or a weakened international presence for the United States. There’s already a reason to worry. For half a century, the international community has attempted to punish and ostracize states that attempt to develop nuclear weapons. Kim’s success in bringing America to the table is proof that nuclear weapons work. They made his country a threat, something to contend with, and for that he has been rewarded. For that reason, he is very unlikely to get rid of them.
The United States is sending a crystalclear message to every vulnerable dictator. Moammar Gaddafi gave up his nuclear program in 2003, and died after being dragged from a drainage pipe following a U.S. bombing campaign. Iran walled off its nuclear program in 2015 in exchange for concessions that the Trump administration recently reneged on. But North Korea, perhaps the most hated government in the world, finished its nuclear program, and it is now treated as a friendly and coequal power to the United States, its blood enemy for 68 years.
That points to a wider problem. The cornerstone of a good foreign policy is consistency — your friends and enemies alike need to be able to guess how you’re going to respond to new developments. It makes no moral or logical sense that we should cut ties with the governments of Cuba and Iran while partying with the North Koreans in Singapore, particularly because our agreements with the former two countries were delivering practical, concrete results, while it is questionable we’ll extract any meaningful concessions from the latter.
But it’s doubly strange that this week’s spectacle should come on the heels of the G-7 summit in Canada, where the president went out of his way to alienate and anger some of America’s closest allies. America ought be as least as friendly to Canada as it is to North Korea — a nation that runs gulags, tortures its own citizens and is responsible for the death of Otto Warmbier, the American college student who spent almost a year-and-a-half in North Korean custody. At the end of the G-7, Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau gave a mild press conference in which he advocated for his nation’s interests. One of Trump’s advisers responded by claiming there was “a special place in hell” for Trudeau, and another told The Atlantic that the essence of Trump’s diplomatic doctrine was “We’re America, bitch.”
In Singapore, by contrast, Trump said Kim had a “great personality” and was “very smart,” adding that “he loves his country very much.” Something doesn’t add up here. Maybe we’re dreaming after all.