{"id":40825,"date":"2018-07-20T11:00:35","date_gmt":"2018-07-20T01:00:35","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/?p=40825"},"modified":"2018-07-20T10:43:52","modified_gmt":"2018-07-20T00:43:52","slug":"trump-is-in-denial-about-north-korea","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/trump-is-in-denial-about-north-korea\/","title":{"rendered":"Trump is in denial about North Korea"},"content":{"rendered":"
<\/figure>\n

No one yet knows what deals US President Donald Trump may have struck with Russian President Vladimir Putin during their private two-hour meeting in Helsinki. But it is already clear that Trump\u2019s self-congratulations for striking a deal to \u2018denuclearize\u2019 the Korean peninsula during his Singapore summit with Kim Jong-un are ringing hollow. In addition to backsliding in its working-level negotiations with the United States, the Kim regime has continued to solidify its position as a nuclear-weapons state. The master of the Kremlin is sure to have taken note of this.<\/p>\n

North Korea specialists have long been skeptical that Kim would ever give up his nuclear arsenal, and recent evidence supports their judgement. Reports<\/a> citing US intelligence officials indicate that the North is pressing ahead with its nuclear-weapons program, by ramping up missile and enriched-uranium production and concealing the size of its nuclear inventory.<\/p>\n

Anyone who has followed affairs on the Korean peninsula has seen this movie before. After all, Kim\u2019s father and grandfather wrote the script decades ago. Since the 1970s, the Kims\u2019 regime has repeatedly expressed its desire for a nuclear-free Korean peninsula, signed non-proliferation agreements, and negotiated with the US and South Korea\u2014all while pursuing its nuclear-weapons program. In this latest rerun, Kim has even reused his father\u2019s special effects. In May, he blew up a nuclear test site<\/a> with the same cinematic flair that Kim Jong-il displayed when he dynamited<\/a> a nuclear reactor\u2019s cooling tower 10 years ago.<\/p>\n

Compared to Kim\u2019s well-rehearsed theatrics, the Trump administration\u2019s performance has been a flop. After threatening North Korea with total destruction last year, Trump made a major concession to Kim by agreeing to attend the summit in June. While there, he demonstrated that neither he nor his administration had a strategy for getting Kim to make good on any deal. Making matters worse, Trump has continued to insist<\/a> that follow-up talks with the North are \u2018going well\u2019, even though US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo\u2019s last visit to Pyongyang ended with a round of mutual recrimination.<\/p>\n

Behind the crumbling fa\u00e7ade of Trump\u2019s misrepresentations is an administration that remains divided on its primary policy goals. In light of the intelligence community\u2019s latest assessment about the North\u2019s continued enrichment activities, those divisions are likely to have deepened. For his part, Pompeo has already backpedaled on earlier US demands, by softening his language on the fraught issue of inspections and verification. And US officials have hinted<\/a> that a further softening in the administration\u2019s position is on the way.<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, other White House officials have taken<\/a> a harder line. Trump\u2019s national security adviser, John Bolton, has called for not only denuclearisation, but also rapid disarmament of all of North Korea\u2019s unconventional weapons. This month, Bolton even claimed<\/a> to have a plan for dismantling all of North Korea\u2019s nuclear-, chemical- and biological-weapons programs within a year.<\/p>\n

Trump prefers top-down decision-making, so it remains to be seen how he will respond to intelligence reports about the North\u2019s duplicity. At any rate, now that the US has shared its \u2014intelligence with Japan, South Korea and other allies, political leaders and military officials in those countries have reason to be anxious. For Japan and South Korea, in particular, the contradictions between Trump\u2019s rhetoric and his own intelligence services\u2019 findings are becoming a source of serious concern.<\/p>\n

Equally worrying is Trump\u2019s unpredictable behaviour towards US allies. Officials in Tokyo and Seoul closely followed Trump\u2019s blustering appearance at a NATO meeting<\/a> this month, because they, too, have been on the receiving end of his attacks over military spending. Trump has pushed both governments to boost their military budgets<\/a>, and he has long mused<\/a> about withdrawing US forces from South Korea. At the Singapore summit, he even agreed to suspend US military exercises with South Korea\u2014another major concession to the North\u2014further unsettling America\u2019s Asian allies.<\/p>\n

Trump\u2019s silence on the latest North Korea intelligence\u2014to say nothing of his siding with Putin over his own intelligence agencies on charges of Russian meddling in the 2016 US election\u2014will further deepen allies\u2019 anxieties. Ignoring North Korea\u2019s deceptions directly undermines the security of Japan and South Korea. Though the Kim regime is still working towards nuclear-armed intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs) capable of reaching the continental US, it already has fully operational medium-range missiles<\/a> that can strike its neighbours. And, because Japan and South Korea both host US military bases, they are at the top of the North\u2019s nuclear target list.<\/p>\n

Trump may not like it, but he must call out Kim\u2019s duplicity, especially given the latest intelligence. Among other things, the North is accelerating production of solid-fuel rocket engines and an ICBM-armed submarine<\/a>. Both technologies would bolster the North\u2019s ability to launch a surprise attack, by making its nuclear arsenal more durable, mobile and easily concealed. The Kim regime\u2019s ongoing efforts in this area make clear that it has no intention of scrapping its nuclear program.<\/p>\n

White House officials are now suggesting<\/a> that Trump could use the United Nations General Assembly meeting in September to hold another meeting with Kim, as if rekindling the two leaders\u2019 \u2018bromance\u2019 will lead to serious negotiations. It won\u2019t. Instead, Trump needs to put substance before spectacle, above all by confronting Kim with the latest intelligence findings. Platitudes about denuclearisation are one thing; serious arms-control efforts to reduce the risks on the Korean peninsula are quite another. The Trump administration must think very carefully about its next steps.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

No one yet knows what deals US President Donald Trump may have struck with Russian President Vladimir Putin during their private two-hour meeting in Helsinki. But it is already clear that Trump\u2019s self-congratulations for striking …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":668,"featured_media":40827,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mi_skip_tracking":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[2225,1428,170,86],"class_list":["post-40825","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-general","tag-denuclearisation","tag-donald-trump","tag-intelligence","tag-north-korea"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nTrump is in denial about North Korea | The Strategist<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/trump-is-in-denial-about-north-korea\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Trump is in denial about North Korea | The Strategist\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"No one yet knows what deals US President Donald Trump may have struck with Russian President Vladimir Putin during their private two-hour meeting in Helsinki. 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