NK— Trump’s 9/11
The Donald Trump administration will probably be as chaotic as his transition has been during the past 25 days. No president or candidate in memory has had less preparation, less experience, less intellectual and managerial capability, and less emotional maturity for the job. On national security the well-established Republican distrust of diplomats will lead to attempts to destroy the Iran and Cuba deals. Trump appointees will almost certainly embrace Barack Obama’s and George Bush’s dangerous fantasies regarding North Korea. Christopher Nelson of the Nelson Report notes that, so far, not one has expertise in Asia.
The most likely result of all this ongoing confusion will be a higher level of corruption and a lower level of strategic cohesion. Many foreign governments are already planning ways to influence the president-elect by providing gifts or business to the Trump organization. Since one cannot trust what Trump says, lobbying various officials will become a key activity of friendly and unfriendly governments. For better and for worse, U.S. policy will always be unclear.
Trump and two Koreas
According to Siegfried S. Hecker of Stanford University, we can always speculate that the DPRK’s Kim Jong-un would someday field “tactical nuclear weapons” which would put Japan, South Korea, and U.S. assets in the Pacific under threat. A chorus of experts expects that DPRK capabilities will become “unacceptable” during Trump’s first term. One former White House official warns darkly that North Korea could be “Trump’s 9/11.”
Other experts claim that the coming collapse of President Park Geun-hye’s government, and its possible replace- ment with a progressive president, would be Trump’s first “foreign policy crisis.” If that would be a crisis, we can only hope for it. But it is not yet clear that Korea’s democrats can pull such a thing off. Jockeying for real political power underlies all the maneuvering by parties at this time, and it is deadly serious for Koreans. For American officials, journalists and scholars, Park is primarily seen as “pro-American,” while her disastrous strategic blunders, 1970s political ideology and policy ignorance have been largely ignored. Even today, with millions of Koreans, from all walks of life, spending Saturdays righteously demonstrating in downtown Seoul, many can only explain that Park’s “style” and secret friendship have been embarrassing.
There is not likely to be any growth in the U.S.’s sophistication about Korea when the new team takes over. Policy toward Korea will still be treated as a sub-set of perceived U.S. strategic interests wrapped up in Japan and China. How that will work out is anyone’s guess at this time, but progress on security, nuclear nonproliferation and stability in Northeast Asia cannot be expected. In this sense America will have stepped back from leadership in the region, thus accelerating a trend that was not inevitable.
A deal with North Korea?
As I noted in the last OpEd, the flurry of proposals by specialists who hope to get Trump’s attention by describing “deals” which The Art of the Deal author could make in the region are often not grounded in logic and practicality. The reasons are the same ones that made an expensive failure of the destruction of the Agreed Framework by the George Bush administration and have fatally undermined the “Pivot to Asia” under Barack Obama.
These deals share two problems. One is that widely understood national interests of China, North Korea, and South Korea are not accounted for. For instance, China has resisted the Bush/Obama view that pressure toward capitulation by the DPRK is the right course, because they would bear terrible consequences if that regime collapsed. New deals suggest that the Chinese would finally agree to the U.S. approach in exchange for an almost meaningless gift: delaying or mothballing the THAAD deployment to South Korea. Other proposals trade similarly illusory leverage for Chinese agreement with the U.S. approach. As Donald Trump might say, “Not going to happen.”
The other problem with deals being proposed is that policies that worked in the past — that actually capped DPRK nuclear and missile programs — are carefully ignored, along with the group of former experts and officials who know what they are talking about. Former Senator Sam Nunn and former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Mike Mullen recently suggested, “New and genuine incentives should be offered for North Korea to participate in substantive talks.”
Deal on nukes, development and U.N. role might work
And yet, despite all the roadblocks — and perhaps because of them — there is one deal that might work. The approach would have to be regional. It would involve China, the two Koreas, Japan and Russia. If such a deal were to have a chance at success, each part should reinforce the others. To be realistic, it would revolve around two principles: cap and then roll back North Korea’s nuclear and missile programs, and center actions around infrastructure and mutual development. All governments like economic development, particularly eastern China, eastern Russia and a North Korea that needs everything.
Four developments would have to be harnessed together in order for such a breakthrough to happen. First, Antonio Guterres will become U.N. Secretary-General at the end of this month. He will need to use the U.N. far more skillfully than his predecessor did on the issues surrounding North Korea. Second, President-Elect Trump has selected Governor Nikki Haley, with little foreign affairs experience, to be the new U.S. ambassador to the U.N. She too will need successes to show that she can manage the U.N.’s unique role in the service of denuclearization and U.S. interests in Northeast Asia.
Three, infrastructure projects connecting and developing Chinese and Russian Far East provinces, and linking Japan to South Korea, have been stalled for decades only due to political considerations. Four, if South Korean President Park leaves office early and is replaced by a progressive administration — my colleague’s “crisis” for President Trump — the ROK could return to the flexible broker role in the region that it once before exercised so well. It is ideally placed to facilitate such a win-win-win deal.