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North Korea is unlikely to give up its nuclear deterrent without a change in ‘hostile’ US policy
John Barry Kotch says Washington must consider concrete steps that would convince North Korea to denuclearise, such as gradual sanctions relief, removal of the UN Command or working towards diplomatic relations
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Nearly four months after the much-hyped Trump-Kim Singapore summit on June 12, denuclearisation remains as elusive as ever. While US President Donald Trump touts the great relationship he has established with North Korean leader Kim Jong-un, and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo – who is scheduled to fly to Pyongyang on Sunday to lay the groundwork for a second Trump-Kim summit – has heralded “the dawn of a new day”, the bloom is off the rose.
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Trump’s relationship with Kim is not of central concern except in so far as it results in what the international community is eagerly waiting for: facts, figures and locations of nuclear and missile assets, which Pyongyang is not yet ready to provide. And even if testing has ended, without a freeze in production of fissile material, North Korea’s arsenal continues to expand.
While not quite a charade, it’s time to call a spade a spade. The president has remarked, “He wants to make a deal. I want to make a deal” and “if it takes two years, three years or five months, it doesn’t matter.” But it does matter and time is running out.
In June, the administration had said it hoped to achieve “major disarmament” of North Korea’s nuclear arsenal during his first term in office. More recently, Trump’s advisers circled early 2021 – the end of his first term and a little more than two years away – as the drop-dead date for reaching an agreement on complete, verifiable and irreversible dismantlement. Still, the president has taken issue with his advisers, such as when they unanimously recommended against withdrawing from the Iran nuclear deal, to no avail.
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