U.S. pledge of no preemptive strike needed to deal with Kim Jong Un
Tensions are so high on the Korean Peninsula that a nuclear horror — once called an “apocalyptic danger” — is no longer rationally comprehensible.
More serious still is the sober realization that the power to prevent the military option of using hydrogen bombs is in the hands of two narcissistic heads of state. It would be foolish to minimize the lunacy and selfinduced paranoia of Kim Jong Un, whose publicly announced endgame is the rapid development and testing of intercontinental ballistic missiles now proceeding at an alarming rate.
President Trump has intensified the confrontation by declaring we are in a war and that “things will happen to them (North Korea) they never thought possible” if North Korea continues to use purposeful and inflammatory verbal threats against us and our allies.
Some observers have been thinking creatively about a diplomatic way out of this seemingly intractable problem. Endorsing a plan proposed by Thomas Friedman, a New York Times columnist, they would pledge publicly to North Korea and the entire world that the United States never will be the first nation to launch a unilateral preemptive strike against another country. This would be rejected by Kim with yet another round of denunciations of American aggression. But around the world, America’s willingness to abandon its first-strike capacity to use nuclear weapons would be seen as a serious step toward a peaceful resolution of a menacing problem.
This is a bold plan, far superior to any others that have been proposed. However, it is based on a major condition that neither strengthens our position against North Korea nor deters that country’s military leaders from solidifying their single goal of remaining an increasingly expanding nuclear power.
Kim knows an attack on the United States or any other allied nation, by design or by mistake, would lead to a massive military assault on his country. Nevertheless, he has stated repeatedly and unequivocally that he will not negotiate any plan with the United States that would require him to demilitarize and dismantle his missile program. Any such plan, he has insisted, is nonnegotiable.
What else can be done to avert the unimaginable? We need a new beginning.
I would start by telling North Korea’s leaders that they may continue to build their nuclear state without any military interference from the United States — no conditions attached. If that is the society they want, then they can have it. We will not try to stop them. They need only be fully aware of the consequences if their plans go awry.
Many will immediately call this weakness or appeasement on our part. We must destroy North Korea’s nuclear arsenal before it is in a position to attack us wherever and whenever it chooses, they would say. The truth is, North Korea already has more than enough destructive power to do irreparable damage to us.
While President Trump cannot stop North Korea solely for its continued bluster and verbal fits of anger, he can take the political and diplomatic initiative by working closely with China and South Korea and announce that the United States will implement a policy of patient deterrence and containment that is least likely to lead to the loss of life. He should declare — again — that we have no interest in regime change, and restate our readiness to take the first-strike military option off the table — unless we are attacked first, in which case we would immediately assess the situation and retaliate appropriately. He should then urge Kim to work with us in an open-ended, step-by-step process that would be nonthreatening to either nation.
It is a virtually impossible task for us to offer North Korea a plan that it would agree to negotiate. A major reason the differences are especially difficult to settle is because there are no democratic politics in North Korea. Having disallowed any dissent or disagreement at all, Kim has substituted one-man, top-down reign for democratic leadership. Only in such a closed society, where the people are accustomed to being told what is good for them, is the distinctive context of politics totally missing. There are no doubts, only certitude. There are no partial answers, just total solutions.
Not so here at home. Politics in a free society deals with the contingent and the unknown.
Politics, as Americans have experienced, is the civilizing process of conciliation and compromise. North Koreans are not free — and will not be free — until they and their differing interests can claim a share of political power. That is what democratic politics is all about.
In ruling out the use of military force, we are saying to Kim: Keep your nuclear-based society if that is not open to negotiation, but join us in trying to turn unreconciled differences into some kind of agreement that might persist for some period of time. He will turn us down, of course, but in doing so he will only have further isolated his country from the rest of the world.
I support Friedman and others who want to bombard the people of North Korea with millions of pro-democracy flyers or leaflets that will give them some idea of how an open democracy differs from their closed society. I would especially target young people who cannot express publicly their own views but — as we know from the little intelligence we have — are privately looking for every possibly way to learn how a free society works.
The most difficult problem between the United States and North Korea is this: President Trump wants to stop Kim Jong Un from making any provocative statement that could lead to war. Trump needs to let that go — Kim has the right to express his views.
Trump needs to be convinced that the worst possible outcome is having North Korea become a failed state. To date, however, nothing he has said would lead anyone to believe he thinks this to be true. Quite the opposite; he talks as if only “might is right.” But China and South Korea both have warned that first-strike military action would quickly turn the Korean Peninsula into a horrific war zone. They strongly believe that what is urgently needed is deterrence and containment, along with tougher sanctions on North Korea and a vigorous diplomatic peace initiative, which they have long maintained is the only realistic option.
Like it or not, Trump is the key player in keeping the Korean Peninsula free of nuclear war. We made him our president, and now he must act like a political leader who can be a bargainer, a negotiator and a conciliator who understands the relationship of means to ends, where violation of the former becomes an act of political death — and the inability to fulfill the latter can cause political extinction.
Trump has often said he relies on his “gut instinct” to do the right thing. Who knows — does he know? — where his gut would lead us?