{"id":50487,"date":"2019-09-11T11:00:00","date_gmt":"2019-09-11T01:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/?p=50487"},"modified":"2019-09-11T10:59:06","modified_gmt":"2019-09-11T00:59:06","slug":"trumps-appeasement-of-north-korea-is-really-about-his-own-re-election","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/trumps-appeasement-of-north-korea-is-really-about-his-own-re-election\/","title":{"rendered":"Trump\u2019s appeasement of North Korea is really about his own re-election"},"content":{"rendered":"<figure><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"900\" height=\"600\" class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-50489\" src=\"https:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/09\/GettyImages-1167271772-e1568160942231.jpg\" \/><\/figure>\n<p>Having met with North Korean leader Kim Jong-un three times\u2014all to great fanfare\u2014US President Donald Trump may still believe that denuclearisation is underway in the hermit kingdom. If so, he\u2019s probably the only one who does, given North Korea\u2019s frequent missile tests and upgrades to its weapons.<\/p>\n<p>It is anyone\u2019s guess what the Trump administration\u2019s North Korea policy will look like a year from now, but, for now, both sides seem to have what they want. Trump has wrangled a loose stalemate that could hold through the November 2020 US presidential election, and Kim has secured a suspension of US \u2013 South Korean military exercises in exchange for freezing his nuclear tests.<\/p>\n<p>The summits with Kim never should have led to the current freeze-for-freeze arrangement, which weakens the US \u2013 South Korea alliance. Yet when first meeting Kim in Singapore in June 2018, Trump decided simply to follow his instincts. He has been taking US policy on North Korea in the wrong direction ever since.<\/p>\n<p>Thinking like a New York real-estate developer, Trump assumed that North Korea wanted economic relief. But he also listened carefully to Kim\u2019s explanation of why North Korea pursued nuclear weapons in the first place: to deter a supposedly hostile United States from attacking it. If Trump found that argument plausible, it may have been because his own (<a href=\"https:\/\/www.pbs.org\/newshour\/nation\/john-bolton-out-as-national-security-advisor\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">now former<\/a>) national security adviser, John Bolton, was a living, breathing validation of North Korean fears.<\/p>\n<p>And so, at the press conference following the Singapore summit, Trump openly considered curtailing the \u2018expensive\u2019 US \u2013 South Korean military exercises, which he described using Kim\u2019s own terminology (\u2018wargames\u2019). Between freezing joint exercises and making his always eager secretary of state, Mike Pompeo, available for peace-treaty negotiations, Trump assumed that he had addressed North Korea\u2019s chronic trust issues. He need only maintain his avuncular relationship with Kim and he would be a shoo-in for the Nobel Peace Prize.<\/p>\n<p>It has now been 15 months, and the North Korean regime is still not even remotely interested in considering denuclearisation. Trump\u2019s team\u2014if one can call it that\u2014is in disarray, cognisant of the imminent policy failure, but reluctant to admit that their leader may be in over his head. Steve Biegun, the US special representative for North Korea, continues to consult with relevant third parties, maintaining the fiction that denuclearisation is still on the table. But he doesn\u2019t appear to be receiving any support from Trump, who seems to have convinced himself that progress depends on his personal intervention.<\/p>\n<p>The North Koreans would agree with Trump on that, albeit not for the same reasons. Unlike Biegun or Pompeo\u2014who speak of denuclearisation with a sense of urgency\u2014Trump seems to agree with the North Koreans that there\u2019s plenty of time. After all, he is primarily concerned with protecting his signature diplomatic achievement until the 2020 election. Accordingly, he need only maintain the appearance of progress through periodic feel-good summits.<\/p>\n<p>Moreover, the Trump administration and the Kim regime share a disinterest in developing a broader diplomatic architecture. North Korea has always preferred a bilateral process with the US, because that format enhances its own prestige, and, unlike the moribund six-party talks, avoids the appearance that it is being ganged up on. To be sure, dealing directly with Trump can be risky (he did, after all, walk out of the Hanoi summit in February). But, overall, the process of summits and love letters has created a warm relationship between Kim and Trump, thereby softening the latter\u2019s position.<\/p>\n<p>The US, meanwhile, has been happy to brief interested third countries on the process, while keeping them on the sidelines and out of the negotiating room. Other members of the six-party process\u2014South Korea, Japan, Russia and China\u2014have seen little reason to believe that progress is at hand. But they might as well let the US shoulder the burden and reputational risks of managing North Korea on its own.<\/p>\n<p>There\u2019s never any guarantee that the North Koreans will play the role set for them. As matters stand, the benefits of the current stalemate probably exceed the costs of the sanctions regime, which has grown increasingly leaky. But the intensity of the North Koreans\u2019 response to any mention of US \u2013 South Korean exercises suggests that they may see an opportunity in the current standoff\u2014and in this president\u2014to undermine US regional engagement more broadly.<\/p>\n<p>The Kim regime\u2019s recent missile tests and behaviour towards South Korea may be meant as a warning to Trump. If so, the message is clear: unless you placate us, we will cause problems for you before November 2020.<\/p>\n<p>Trump might like the world to think that he\u2019s maintaining strategic patience with North Korea. But it\u2019s now clear that his administration\u2019s policy is one of appeasement. Whether it will work for him remains to be seen. November 2020 is still a long way off.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Having met with North Korean leader Kim Jong-un three times\u2014all to great fanfare\u2014US President Donald Trump may still believe that denuclearisation is underway in the hermit kingdom. If so, he\u2019s probably the only one who &#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":507,"featured_media":50489,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mi_skip_tracking":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[2225,1428,702,86],"class_list":["post-50487","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-general","tag-denuclearisation","tag-donald-trump","tag-kim-jong-un","tag-north-korea"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v19.3 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Trump\u2019s appeasement of North Korea is really about his own re-election | 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\/trumps-appeasement-of-north-korea-is-really-about-his-own-re-election\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Trump\u2019s appeasement of North Korea is really about his own re-election | The Strategist\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Having met with North Korean leader Kim Jong-un three times\u2014all to great fanfare\u2014US President Donald Trump may still believe that denuclearisation is underway in the hermit kingdom. 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