{"id":25245,"date":"2017-01-06T09:01:22","date_gmt":"2017-01-06T17:01:22","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/spijue.wpengine.com\/news\/outside-editorial-trumps-north-korea-conundrum\/"},"modified":"2017-01-06T09:01:22","modified_gmt":"2017-01-06T17:01:22","slug":"outside-editorial-trumps-north-korea-conundrum","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/opinion\/outside-editorial-trumps-north-korea-conundrum\/","title":{"rendered":"Outside Editorial: Trump’s North Korea conundrum"},"content":{"rendered":"

The following editorial first appeared in the Chicago Tribune:<\/strong><\/p>\n

\u201cWe may have to go on an arduous march, a time when we will again have to eat the roots of grass.\u201d<\/em> \u2014 A March 2016 editorial in the official newspaper of the ruling Workers\u2019 Party of Korea, preparing North Koreans for worsening conditions after tougher sanctions were imposed<\/p>\n

Last year around this time, North Korea tapped the world on the shoulder with an underground nuclear test that drew the usual international diplomatic tut-tutting.<\/p>\n

This year, an encore: North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un announced on New Year\u2019s Day that his country is preparing to fire off its first test of an intercontinental ballistic missile. Such a missile could reach much of the U.S. mainland, possibly including Chicago.<\/p>\n

In response, President-elect Donald Trump tweeted: \u201cNorth Korea just stated that it is in the final stages of developing a nuclear weapon capable of reaching parts of the U.S. It won\u2019t happen!\u201d<\/p>\n

Why not? Trump didn\u2019t elaborate. Possible explanations include:<\/p>\n

\u2022 North Korea is lying about its capabilities to launch an ICBM. Some international weapons experts, however, say they believe North Korea\u2019s claim. However, many believe it will take several more years before Pyongyang has the technical skill to mount a nuclear warhead on a missile.<\/p>\n

\u2022 Trump will prevail on the only country that holds leverage against the North Koreans \u2014 China \u2014 to finally do more than jawbone its neighbors into standing down. That\u2019s probably far-fetched, though; the North Koreans haven\u2019t paid much attention to Chinese pleadings and threats. Kim Jong Un knows that Beijing doesn\u2019t want North Korea to collapse, sending thousands of refugees fleeing across its borders to China.<\/p>\n

\u2022 The United Nations Security Council will surely slap new economic sanctions on North Korea in response to an ICBM test. Please. A regime that warns its people that they may be eating grass to survive (see quote above) isn\u2019t likely to respond to further economic sanctions.<\/p>\n

\u2022 The U.S. plans to shoot down any ICBM missile launched by North Korea, to show its resolve to stop Kim\u2019s nuclear march. That would be satisfying but is unlikely because it could provoke a war on the Korean Peninsula. That said, we wouldn\u2019t be surprised to learn that Trump and President Barack Obama have privately agreed on an anti-missile strike if Kim tries to exploit the presidential transition with an ICBM test.<\/p>\n

\u2022 Trump persuades Kim to stand down in a diplomatic tour de force. After all, Trump said in June that he would be fine with hosting Kim for a visit (imagine the White House goody bag for the cognac-and-caviar tastes of Kim). \u201cWhat the hell is wrong with speaking?\u201d Trump said on the campaign trail. We haven\u2019t heard him mention it publicy again.<\/p>\n

The North Koreans have long demanded one-on-one talks with the U.S. But they\u2019ve also violated every agreement they\u2019ve made with American presidents, including Bill Clinton and George W. Bush. Moreover, Kim views his nuclear program as his hole-card for his regime to survive. He won\u2019t surrender it. \u201cAs long as Kim Jong Un is in power, North Korea will never give up its nuclear weapons, even if it\u2019s offered $1 trillion or $10 trillion in rewards,\u201d says Thae Yong Ho, a former top North Korean diplomat who defected to the West last year. It\u2019s not about economic incentives, Thae says. Instead, North Korea seeks to be recognized by the U.S. and the West as a nuclear power.<\/p>\n

Even without recognition, North Korea already is a de facto nuclear power. What can Trump do? He could try to negotiate a nuclear deal to slow or freeze North Korea\u2019s program, as the U.S. did with the (admittedly imperfect) Iran deal. But he also should know that Kim can\u2019t be trusted any more than previous leaders who violated past deals.<\/p>\n

Trump can also deliver a warning: If U.S. intelligence concludes that North Korea is shopping its nukes or technology to terrorists or other nations, America will strike North Korean nuclear facilities. That\u2019s a clear line in the sand that Obama couldn\u2019t deliver convincingly.<\/p>\n

The U.S. strategy of waiting out Kim and hoping to coax him back to the negotiating table \u2014 a stance the Obama administration dubbed \u201cstrategic patience\u201d \u2014 has yielded a growing North Korean nuclear arsenal. Trump needs a new approach. He can start with a single premise: Allowing North Korea to build its arsenal, to spread nuclear technology and weapons, won\u2019t happen on his watch. How he does that is negotiable.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The following editorial first appeared in the Chicago Tribune: \u201cWe may have to go on an arduous march, a time when we will again have to eat the roots of grass.\u201d \u2014 A March 2016 editorial in the official newspaper of the ruling Workers\u2019 Party of Korea, preparing North Koreans for worsening conditions after tougher […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":107,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_stopmodifiedupdate":false,"_modified_date":"","wds_primary_category":8,"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[],"yst_prominent_words":[],"class_list":["post-25245","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-opinion"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25245","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/107"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=25245"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25245\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=25245"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=25245"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=25245"},{"taxonomy":"yst_prominent_words","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/yst_prominent_words?post=25245"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}