Talks won’t stop North Korea’s nuclear plans

There are no good policy options that can force the Kim Jong-un regime to put a brake on its reckless policy pursuit

hen North Korea tested an intercontinental ballistic missile last week, the response from the administration of United States President Donald Trump was fairly conventional. US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson correctly called it an escalation. He announced America’s intention to bring the matter before the United Nations Security Council. And he assured: “We will never accept a nuclear-armed North Korea.”

If that sounds familiar, it’s because not tolerating a nuclear North Korea has been a pillar of US policy since the peninsula’s first nuclear crisis in the early 1990s. Keeping nuclear weapons out of the hands of this regime is an admirable goal; a government is hardly a model of restraint if its prisons are so vast they can be seen from space. And a few years ago, it might have even been an achievable goal. But in 2017, it is at best quaint and at worst delusional. The sad truth is that North Korea is dangerously close to going nuclear, and almost every expert who has studied the problem understands there is nothing the US can do about it.

The North Koreans are much closer to going nuclear now than they were when the US negotiated a flawed interim deal in 1994, known as the Joint Framework Agreement, to halt their progress. Pyongyang has already detonated nuclear devices on five occasions. The first of these tests was in 2006, and the last two were in the final year of the administration of former US president Barack Obama. The North also has continued to make progress on ballistic missiles. The latest test went farther and higher than previous ones had. It’s only a matter of time until the regime of Kim Jong-un will perfect this technology.

North Korea will arm itself with nuclear weapons, because the regime knows that its survival depends on it. In the first round of nuclear negotiations, there was a credible threat of force against North Korea. The deal offered for the last quarter century was essentially: We let you survive if you give up your nuclear ambitions. Today, that offer is no longer credible. North Koreans delivered this message as recently as last month to a group of western experts who met with them in Sweden in what is known as Track 2 diplomacy.

Uranium enrichment facility

Despite all the carrots, the regime has cheated on the commitments it has already made. The administration of former US president George W. Bush discovered this in its first term when it learned of North Korean work on a uranium enrichment facility. In 2002, an envoy for the regime acknowledged it in talks, and the Bush administration pulled out of the 1994 joint framework negotiated by Clinton.

The truth is there are no good policy options today for North Korea. US President Donald Trump acknowledged on Wednesday in a tweet that his desire for China to apply more pressure on North Korea has not worked. “There is no good existential answer to North Korea. It’s not just about negotiations. It’s about the entire set of political, economic, social, security threats we face.

That’s not the kind of thing Americans like to hear. They dream big. But in foreign policy, it’s important to be realistic. The Trump administration has an opportunity to level with the public in a way prior administrations did not. If you want to stop North Korea from getting a nuke, that requires war. If you’re not prepared to go that far, stop pretending the US can achieve its goals with more talking. It won’t work.