New U.S. President, Same Old North Korea Rhetoric

David C. Kang

Security, Asia

Any solution to the North Korean problem that involves its capitulation is unrealistic.

New president, same tough talk on North Korea. Although US President Trump claims to be upending the way business is done in Washington, he still has the same limited set of policy options for dealing with North Korea. For over half a century, those options have been a narrow band of economic sanctions, rhetorical name-calling, and threats that the United States and South Korea will retaliate if attacked. Deterrence holds on the peninsula, but it holds both ways: it stops North Korea from attacking the South, but it also stops the United States and South Korea from attacking the North.

Pressure has not worked on North Korea in the past, and there is no evidence that more pressure will work today. China could pull the economic plug on North Korea and send the country into a tail-spin, but it won’t. The United States could start a war on the peninsula through pre-emptive strikes and devastate the regime, but it won’t. Neither China nor the United States will take such strong measures because the costs are far too high and far too obvious, while the unknowns of what would happen after remain too unknown.

Pyongyang can take out Seoul with its conventional weapons, and could even target Tokyo. Starting a war would put millions of lives at stake, and making the regime collapse would mean that potentially millions of refugees flood into Northeast Asia. Nuclear weapons and other weapons of mass destruction would potentially fall into the hands of whoever got hold of them in the ensuing chaos. Given that stark reality, the status quo — deterrence, tough talk, sanctions and perhaps a little engagement — has remained the North Korea policy of choice for successive US governments.

The international community has tried many ways to exert pressure on North Korea over the past 70 years. Given the extensive sanctions already imposed on the country, it’s hard to believe that even more pressure will somehow lead the country to choose a new direction. The regime has a history of successfully enduring pressure, weathering the economic dysfunction of the mid-1990s and surviving a merciless famine. Predictions that the new sanctions will elicit change in Pyongyang’s policies, if not cause a full collapse, rest on thin logic.

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