Talk of another North Korea-US summit is expanding. Much of the discussion, however, revolves around what US President Donald Trump has said and what he might offer. One important question is often missing: What does North Korea actually want, and how does Pyongyang calculate its strategic interests?
This omission is not new. Washington has repeatedly misread North Korea at critical moments over the past three decades. Understanding North Korea does not mean trusting or defending it. Three episodes illustrate the problem.
The first came during the nuclear crisis of 1993-94.
At the time, expectations of North Korea's imminent collapse were widespread in Washington. The Soviet collapse, North Korea's economic crisis and Kim Il-sung's death reinforced expectations that the regime might not survive.
Against this background, Washington and Pyongyang signed the Agreed Framework in October 1994. North Korea agreed to freeze and eventually dismantle its nuclear facilities, while the US undertook to organize the provision of two light-water reactors and alternative energy supplies.
The agreement froze key parts of North Korea's plutonium program for years, but implementation became increasingly troubled. One of the reasons for the trouble was a widespread expectation that the regime would collapse sooner or later. And the expectation weakened Washington's planning for long-term implementation. Ironically, North Korea did not collapse, and the agreement eventually did.
A second case emerged around 2002.
After the North Korea-US Joint Communique was adopted in October 2000, Pyongyang showed signs of exploring a different path. In July 2002, it introduced significant economic management measures incorporating limited market-oriented elements in prices, wages and enterprise management. Pyongyang also showed interest in negotiations over nuclear and missile issues. Yet Washington paid little attention to whether these developments represented an opportunity for engagement. For many officials in the George W. Bush administration, North Korea was simply a member of the “axis of evil.”
The second nuclear crisis erupted in late 2002.
Negotiations eventually produced the September 2005 Joint Statement of the Six-Party Talks, but implementation quickly ran into another crisis following US financial sanctions involving Banco Delta Asia. The diplomatic process deteriorated, and North Korea conducted its first nuclear test in October 2006.
This does not mean Washington caused North Korea's nuclear program. But it is worth asking whether history might have developed differently had Washington paid greater attention to the economic and diplomatic changes taking place in North Korea.
The third case was the Hanoi summit in February 2019.
Trump and Kim arrived with the genuine possibility of a deal. North Korea offered to dismantle the nuclear facilities at Yongbyon in return for substantial sanctions relief. Washington wanted broader denuclearization measures. The gap was real, and North Korea's offer was incomplete. But an incomplete deal is not necessarily a bad deal.
Washington judged the proposed arrangement against the requirements of a final settlement rather than asking whether it could serve as the beginning of a longer denuclearization process. Trump walked away. Kim returned to Pyongyang, and North Korea subsequently resumed strengthening its nuclear and missile capabilities. An interim agreement would not have guaranteed denuclearization, but it might have sustained nuclear restraint, sanctions relief and economic engagement. Trump might even have emerged as a serious candidate for the Nobel Peace Prize he has long coveted.
Why does Washington keep making such mistakes?
The first problem is small-state blindness.
Mainstream US foreign-policy thinking is heavily oriented toward great-power politics. Smaller states are often analyzed primarily in terms of how they respond to larger powers rather than as strategic actors pursuing their own survival strategies.
North Korea is an extreme example. Its behavior is easily reduced to familiar descriptions: provocation, deception and blackmail. Those descriptions are often justified but insufficient. Even a small state calculates costs and benefits and adjusts to changing circumstances.
The second problem is an asymmetry of stakes.
For Washington, an unresolved North Korean nuclear problem is dangerous and costly, but tolerable. For Seoul, however, it is an existential security problem. As long as North Korea can be deterred and contained, Washington does not necessarily face an urgent need to accept political risks or make difficult compromises to resolve the problem.
The third problem is an asymmetry of accountability.
When diplomacy with North Korea fails, US policymakers rarely pay a serious political price. North Korea can usually be blamed, often with good reason. When Pyongyang breaks an agreement, launches a missile or conducts a nuclear test, it is easy to conclude that engagement was doomed from the beginning.
What tends to disappear is a different question: Was there anything Washington could have done differently? Such misjudgments are no longer affordable.
First, North Korea's nuclear program is not simply a distant problem. Its continued expansion threatens the credibility of the global nuclear nonproliferation regime. The longer the problem remains unresolved, the greater the danger that other countries will conclude that nuclear weapons ultimately bring security, bargaining power and international leverage.
Second, the US remains the global hegemon and the principal guarantor of the international security order it helped build. Managing that order requires understanding not only China, Russia and other major powers but also smaller states when their behavior can affect regional or global stability. Dismissing a country as weak, irrational or rogue is not a substitute for understanding its strategy.
Finally, America's global leadership has economic as well as security consequences. The international order Washington helped construct has provided the US with enormous economic and institutional advantages. If repeated failures to manage international security problems erode confidence in American leadership, those advantages cannot be assumed to last forever.
The US can no longer afford to treat North Korea as a minor problem that can simply be contained, postponed or blamed on Pyongyang. If Trump truly wants another summit with Kim, Washington must first understand what Pyongyang wants and what might bring it back to the negotiating table. Understanding an adversary is not a concession. It is the beginning of strategy.
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Wang Son-taek
Wang Son-taek is an adjunct professor at Sogang University. He is a former diplomatic correspondent at YTN and a former research associate at Yeosijae. The views expressed here are the writer’s own. — Ed.
khnews@heraldcorp.com
