The Trump administration’s recently released National Defense Strategy (NDS) and the December National Security Strategy (NSS) displayed an unusual pattern on North Korea. Neither document mentioned “North Korean denuclearization,” which has been a core U.S. objective on North Korea since the early 1990s. While the NDS simply highlighted the need to deter North Korea’s evolving nuclear threat, the NSS did not mention North Korea at all. Traditionally, both documents have identified North Korean denuclearization as an important U.S. security goal.
This trend was further underscored by the U.S. Under Secretary of War for Policy Elbridge Colby, whose speech during his recent trip to South Korea entirely skipped North Korea and denuclearization. In the past, any such speech would have strongly condemned North Korea’s nuclear development and urged it to denuclearize.
However, it appears that the Trump administration has not “abandoned” North Korean denuclearization as a goal per se. Last week, Secretary of State Marco Rubio reaffirmed the U.S. commitment to denuclearizing North Korea during his meeting with South Korean Foreign Minister Cho Hyun. If Washington is still committed to North Korean denuclearization as Rubio suggests, then why has the language been taken out of both the NDS and the NSS? It remains to be seen, but there are two possible motives.
One is strategic deprioritization. The Trump administration may regard North Korean denuclearization as a low priority that does not warrant a serious commitment. This is possible given the administration’s narrow perception of global security priorities and persistent U.S. fatigue toward North Korea. Facing an array of immediate issues in the Middle East, Europe, other parts of Asia, and now even the Western Hemisphere, the Trump administration may believe it cannot afford to waste energy on North Korean denuclearization, which seems distant and infeasible. Therefore, although denuclearization remains a goal in principle, the administration may intend to approach North Korea primarily as a deterrence problem, as the NDS suggests.
Another possible motive is the wish to accommodate North Korea. The Trump administration may have chosen to deemphasize denuclearization to avoid provoking Pyongyang and signal an accommodating gesture. This is a plausible motive because, while President Donald Trump has a desire to resume talks with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, Kim has explicitly ruled out any such possibility unless “the U.S. drops its hollow obsession with denuclearization.”
Whatever rationale influenced the Trump administration to exclude denuclearization language from the NDS and the NSS, it is a step in the right direction. Rubio’s attempt to reassure his South Korean counterpart was understandable, but the candid conversation Washington and Seoul should be having is about what replaces denuclearization on the agenda for negotiations with North Korea, not about pursuing denuclearization.
The harsh reality is that denuclearizing North Korea has become unrealistic. Pyongyang is known to already possess at least 50—possibly over a hundred—nuclear warheads and enough fissile material to build many more, while rapidly enhancing missile capabilities to credibly threaten nuclear use against South Korea, Japan, and even the American mainland. Meanwhile, the threshold of North Korean nuclear use has also gone down. Pyongyang’s nuclear doctrine has become markedly more aggressive in recent years, declaring possible preemptive use to deter perceived imminent threats on the horizon against the regime. In the event of a crisis on the Korean Peninsula, one can only hope that the North Korean leadership will exercise rational judgment to avoid nuclear escalation.
Geopolitical factors also make pursuing North Korean denuclearization less feasible. Compelling Pyongyang to participate in negotiations through sanctions and geopolitical pressure may have been possible in the past, but that system now appears virtually broken. Russia and China once opposed North Korea’s nuclear buildup and cooperated on U.S.-driven sanctions against Pyongyang. But now, Russia has formed a strategic alliance with North Korea and actively helps the regime evade sanctions. As U.S.–China relations have turned hostile, Beijing has also eased pressure on North Korea and sought to improve its relationship with the regime, in an effort to strengthen its alliance network. Pyongyang’s ties with Moscow and Beijing may be at their most stable since the Cold War years, and its resilience against U.S. pressure has grown significantly as a result.
Ultimately, if Washington wishes to re-engage Pyongyang in talks to mitigate—and deter more effectively—the dangers posed by a nuclear North Korea, there seems no alternative but to accept Pyongyang’s “no denuclearization” baseline for negotiations.
From North Korea’s perspective, the U.S. pursuit of denuclearization is inherently hostile because it fundamentally rejects the state of mutual deterrence. North Korea has every incentive to resist denuclearization, even at the risk of dangerous escalation. By giving up the demand for denuclearization and thereby essentially accepting a mutual deterrence relationship with North Korea, Washington can more credibly signal to Pyongyang that its intent is coexistence rather than subjugation. This paradigm shift toward mutual deterrence could eventually produce more incentives for Pyongyang to engage in security talks.
Then, what should replace denuclearization? The Trump administration’s prime objective toward North Korea should be to promote more stable deterrence through arms control. Although not as satisfying as denuclearization, arms control can still meaningfully improve U.S. and allied security interests on the Korean Peninsula. For example, getting Pyongyang to reactivate its hotlines and recommit to the 2018 Comprehensive Military Agreement, which banned military activities and deployments along the tense Korean border area, would establish much-needed guardrails for basic crisis management. Getting Pyongyang to agree on nuclear arms control measures, such as freezing and capping further nuclear development, suspending ballistic missile testing, and rolling back the doctrine of preemptive use, would not eliminate but still mitigate North Korean nuclear threats considerably.
Pyongyang may be interested in arms control talks for several reasons. First, as much as North Korea cares about maintaining firm deterrence, it also cares about avoiding an inadvertent conflict on the Korean Peninsula that can spiral into a potentially existential war. Second, though Pyongyang now enjoys deepened ties with Moscow and Beijing, it also recognizes that those ties may not endure. Historically, Pyongyang has mistrusted both Moscow and Beijing and sought to avoid overdependence on them. So, engagement with Washington still has geopolitical appeal for Pyongyang. Third, while arms control is a sensitive issue, Pyongyang has not ruled out the possibility. If arms control can reduce military threats posed by U.S.–South Korean forces against North Korea, Pyongyang could find such talks worthwhile.
To get Pyongyang on board with negotiations, Washington would, of course, have to be willing to meaningfully accommodate Pyongyang’s security concerns and interests, which could involve sensitive issues—such as easing sanctions, scaling back U.S.–South Korea joint military exercises, and downsizing the U.S. military presence in Korea. Such concessions may seem like too much to give up, but they might be more manageable than one would assume.
Sanctions against North Korea may once have been a valuable bargaining chip not to be used in the early stage of negotiations. Nevertheless, the value has now diminished in the absence of Russian and Chinese support. There is a case to be made that relaxing sanctions gradually as a form of diplomatic reassurance—in accordance with North Korean constructive participation in negotiations—could be a more productive use of sanctions than merely maintaining them for their own sake, especially under current geopolitical circumstances.
A reduced U.S. military presence in Korea—and the subsequent reduction in the scale and scope of U.S.–South Korea joint exercises—also would not jeopardize deterrence against North Korea. The South Korean military alone is sophisticated enough to maintain superior conventional deterrence against North Korea without relying on a large U.S. ground force presence. As some South Korean strategists observe, Seoul’s essential deterrence needs from Washington are a U.S. military presence in Korea just enough to serve as a tripwire, alongside the U.S. nuclear umbrella and surveillance capabilities.
Furthermore, calibrated downscaling of the U.S. force posture in Korea could be consistent with the trajectory of the alliance that both administrations in Washington and Seoul may envision. The Trump administration is keen to shift a greater burden of collective defense to U.S. allies, particularly those dealing with low-priority threats. In this context, a partial U.S. withdrawal from Korea would make sense. The Trump administration already appears to be considering this possibility, noting in the NDS that South Korea is capable of leading collective defense against North Korea with “critical but more limited U.S. support.”
The Lee Jae-myung administration in Seoul also has a keen interest in achieving a more autonomous national defense, including the transfer of the wartime operational control (OPCON) in Korea from the United States to South Korea. Potential U.S. force reductions in Korea could accelerate the OPCON transfer and create greater room for South Korean military self-reliance and strategic autonomy.
Critics may argue that abandoning efforts to denuclearize North Korea risks the so-called “nuclear domino effect,” potentially driving South Korea and Japan to seek their own nuclear arsenal. This assumption may underestimate Japanese reluctance toward nuclear armament. Over 60 percent of Japanese people continue to oppose nuclear armament despite their country’s intensifying military tensions with China, which is the world’s third-largest nuclear power and has an active territorial dispute with Japan.
The risk is higher in South Korea, where public support for nuclear armament is relatively strong. However, within the South Korean policy community, the option remains rather unpopular. There are potential serious ramifications that Seoul would have to consider, including the breakup of its alliance with the United States and conflict with China. A study also found that when properly informed about the ramifications, South Korean public support for nuclearization would shrink. Furthermore, the vast majority of South Koreans, as well as the government, recognize that North Korean denuclearization has become unrealistic. Therefore, the likelihood that Seoul will run toward nuclear weapons if Washington chooses to put denuclearization on the back burner and settle for arms control with Pyongyang does not seem incredibly high.
In the final analysis, dropping the demand for denuclearization and pursuing diplomacy with Pyongyang focused on arms control would increase the chance of new negotiations. The Trump administration should actively pursue this course this year, while consulting with Seoul and Tokyo to ensure they understand the necessity and benefits of the new approach. Both Seoul and Tokyo should support arms control diplomacy because it can actually enhance the credibility of U.S. extended deterrence for them. Washington would be more confident in its defense commitment if at least some guardrails and arms control were in place to constrain a nuclear North Korea.
Read the full article here
