No United States leader has handled relations with North Korea quite like Donald Trump. <\/p>\n
The former president went from threatening Kim Jong Un with \u201cfire and fury\u201d if the North Korean leader continued testing missiles, to becoming his pen pal, meeting him in a series of unprecedented summits, and boasting that the two had fallen \u201cin love.\u201d <\/p>\n
Now, that unlikely friendship will be put to the test. The former president is set to return to the White House at a moment of acute alarm among the US and its allies about Kim and the threat posed by his regime. <\/p>\n
Pyongyang is believed to have sent thousands of troops and tons of munitions to Russia as Moscow wages war on Ukraine, in what Western leaders see as a major escalation. Days before Trump won the US presidential election, it lobbed another threat \u2013 testing an intercontinental ballistic missile with the range to strike anywhere in the United States. <\/p>\n
On the campaign trail, Trump said Kim \u201cmisses\u201d him and implied the country would not be \u201cacting up\u201d when he returns to office. <\/p>\n
But the second Trump administration will face an emboldened and arguably more dangerous North Korean leader. <\/p>\n
Kim \u2013 and potentially his arsenal \u2013 are now bolstered by burgeoning ties with Moscow, and he has hardened his stance toward the US and its ally South Korea after the failed diplomacy of the last Trump era. <\/p>\n
That makes reaching an agreement between the two to rein in North Korea\u2019s weapons program all the more challenging \u2013 and raises questions of whether Trump, known for his impulsive foreign policy, might seek to shift the goal posts on what the US wants to see from North Korea, experts say. <\/p>\n
A series of 2018-19 meetings between Trump and Kim in Singapore, Hanoi and the demilitarized zone between North and South Korea created unprecedented optics for both leaders. <\/p>\n
Then, the president of the world\u2019s democratic superpower was pictured smiling and posing for photos alongside a typically isolated autocrat known for his ruthless rule over his people and drive to build sanctions-defying weapons as a means of preserving his regime. <\/p>\n
For Trump, the meetings were a bid to accomplish what US presidents have repeatedly sought to do in other ways \u2013 curb Pyongyang\u2019s rogue nuclear program. For Kim, they were both a chance to try to get relief from heavy international sanctions \u2013 and a rare opportunity to be granted such prestige on the world stage. <\/p>\n
But talks ended without any breakthrough \u2013 with an abrupt ending to a 2019 summit in Hanoi amounting to what experts say was a huge loss of face for Kim. <\/p>\n
Though the leaders met once more that year, Pyongyang has since refused to reengage with the US, experts say, and restarted weapons testing it had appeared to pause alongside that dialogue. While it has yet to initiate a nuclear test since 2017, Kim has recently vowed to increase the country\u2019s number of nuclear weapons \u201cexponentially.\u201d <\/p>\n
\u201cThe circumstances in which we must deal with North Korea have changed fundamentally compared to five years ago,\u201d said Rachel Minyoung Lee, a senior fellow at the Stimson Center think tank in Washington. <\/p>\n
She pointed to the \u201chigher price tag\u201d on North Korea\u2019s nuclear and missile programs due to further advancements since Hanoi, as well as North Korea\u2019s \u201cforeign policy reorientation\u201d after the collapse of that summit \u201cset off a fundamental skepticism within the North Korean leadership circle about the strategic value of the United States.\u201d <\/p>\n
Kim over the past year has raised international concern by breaking with decades of policy toward South Korea \u2013 classifying it as a \u201cpermanent enemy.\u201d He\u2019s called on his army to accelerate war preparations in response to \u201cconfrontation moves\u201d by the US \u2013 actions that came as the Biden administration strengthened ties and increased military drills with South Korea and Japan. <\/p>\n
And then there\u2019s the <\/strong>deepening of ties with <\/strong>Russia. The North Korean leader has met with his \u201cclosest comrade\u201d Russian President Vladimir Putin twice since last September and inked a major defense pact in June. <\/p>\n Western officials have also warned of what they see as an emerging anti-West \u2018axis\u2019 of China, North Korea and Iran with Russia \u2013 a trope that, whether actualized or not, is likely to be welcomed by Kim as he seeks to reduce isolation and gain international clout. <\/p>\n \u201cFrom Kim\u2019s point of view, he has a lot more to gain economically, militarily, and diplomatically by aligning (North Korea) with China and Russia than by reengaging with the United States when the returns are so uncertain,\u201d said Lee. <\/p>\n All that raises the stakes for how Trump would engage Kim \u2013 and calls into question whether the autocrat would even be willing to sit down again \u2013 were Trump looking to rekindle the bromance. <\/p>\n But it was \u201cunclear\u201d how Kim would respond to new talks and if he would \u201cget back to the pledge of denuclearization,\u201d O\u2019Brien said, referring to past pledges that never came to fruition. For the US, asking for anything less than denuclearization would be a \u201chard position\u201d to take, he added. <\/p>\n In response to Trump\u2019s comments that Kim missed him, North Korean state media over the summer said that they \u201cdo not care\u201d who takes office in the US. The official position from Pyongyang appears to be that, regardless of what happens in the US, Kim\u2019s nuclear weapons policy will continue. <\/p>\n Still, Kim\u2019s fundamental goals \u2013 recognition by the United States as a de facto nuclear power and sanctions relief for economic development \u2013 are seen by many observers to remain. <\/p>\n That means the North Korean leader may look for benefit in Trump\u2019s return. <\/p>\n Despite the Pyongyang leader seeing the US as untrustworthy, \u201cTrump\u2019s reelection is likely to encourage Kim Jong Un considerably \u2013 at the very least, it would allow him to reassert his personal friendship with Trump \u2026 and communicate with him,\u201d said Eul-Chul Lim, director of the North Korea Research Center at Kyungnam University\u2019s Institute for Far Eastern Studies (IFES) in Seoul. <\/p>\n Kim \u201cis likely to capitalize on the fact that a stronger North Korea-Russia alliance would be beneficial to his bargaining power with the United States,\u201d he said. <\/p>\n Whether Trump is interested in deal-making \u2013 and what kind of deal \u2013 is another question. <\/p>\n Some observers have raised concern that he may seek to water down US demands in favor of getting a coveted deal \u2013 or else could ramp up tensions again. <\/p>\n \u201cTrump can be unpredictable\u2026 and his style during his first term is not an entirely accurate indicator of future behavior. We will have to see if Trump 2.0 still wants to cap and eventually roll back North Korea\u2019s nuclear weapons program,\u201d said Duyeon Kim, a Seoul-based adjunct senior fellow at the Center for a New American Security. <\/p>\n \u201cThe worst scenario is if Kim convinces Trump 2.0 to scrap denuclearization and even be okay with North Korea advancing its nuclear weapons capability indefinitely,\u201d she said. <\/p>\n But hardening geopolitical fault lines since Trump\u2019s last term in office have also fundamentally changed the ground upon which any US-North Korea engagement could be laid. <\/p>\n Putin\u2019s war in Ukraine has driven Russia closer not only to North Korea but also to China \u2013 the US\u2019 main geopolitical rival. <\/p>\n Even as Trump has expressed admiration for Putin \u2013 and a skeptical view of US alliances such as those with NATO, Japan and South Korea \u2013 there are likely to be limits to how far he can reshape those relationships if he seeks to counter Beijing. <\/p>\n Trump will also be dealing with a very different South Korea, where a conservative Yoon Suk Yeol government has emerged as a strong US partner in ramping up deterrence against North Korea \u2013 and is unlikely to encourage Trump to meet with Kim without a clear path to Pyongyang\u2019s denuclearization. <\/p>\n \u201cThe likelihood of the US abandoning South Korea is low, not least given the gravity of the threat from North Korea, Russia, and, of course, China,\u201d said Edward Howell, a lecturer in politics at the University of Oxford in the United Kingdom, who focuses on the Korean Peninsula. <\/p>\n And \u201ceven if leader-to-leader dialogue may catalyze some very short-term reduction in tensions \u2013 it is difficult to believe that Pyongyang will make any significant concessions on the \u2018treasured sword\u2019 of its nuclear program,\u201d he said. <\/p>\n<\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" No United States leader has handled relations with North Korea quite like Donald Trump. The…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":9970,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[23],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-9969","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-world"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailywashingtoninsider.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9969","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailywashingtoninsider.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailywashingtoninsider.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailywashingtoninsider.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailywashingtoninsider.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9969"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dailywashingtoninsider.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9969\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailywashingtoninsider.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/9970"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailywashingtoninsider.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9969"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailywashingtoninsider.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9969"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailywashingtoninsider.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9969"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}} New breakthrough<\/h2>\n
Geopolitical fault lines<\/h2>\n