Donald Trump’s critics were last week too quick to lambast him for his dramatic and public cancellation of the planned summit with Kim Jong-un. Trump’s abrupt move was designed to bring the North Korean leader to the table in a more constructive atmosphere than the rhetoric of recent weeks had allowed for, and it might have succeeded. It now seems that the June 12 meeting in Singapore could be happening after all, possibly with a mutual understanding that hostile statements in advance are to be avoided.
Analysts and critics have been spending too much time attacking the president for his tactics in bringing about such an extraordinary summit — when his deal-making mentality makes him good at that — and too little focusing on what he will do if he gets there. It is time the rest of the world started thinking clearly about what would happen when Trump and Kim leave Singapore, rather than just whether they will go, for this is when a deal can get dangerous.
Trump’s objective is clear: to end the nuclear threat from North Korea to the US, and to show he is a peacemaker as part of a compelling case for re-election. The trouble is he might not mind what else he ditches to achieve those goals, including maintenance of a strong system of alliances and military commitments.
Leader for life
Kim’s objective is to stay in power for life, and to retain the means to do so while dividing the solid alliance against him of the US, South Korea, Japan and much of the world. Since 1953 this has been the main objective of Pyongyang’s foreign policy. Having attained enough progress on nuclear warheads and long-range missiles to make America feel threatened, he has started to charm the South Koreans with Olympic unity, warm meetings and the theatrical destruction of a nuclear testing site that had in any case partly collapsed.
To go on to a summit with the US president on an equal footing will be a further success in itself. However despicable his regime may be, this shows that what we used to call the leader of the free world will sit down with him. Once there, there are three possible outcomes, and Kim will have calculated that he can have a win-win-win strategy in which he comes out well from any of them.
The first possibility is that it all breaks down and ends in acrimony. Kim will want to open the talks with an offer that sounds generous and attractive to world opinion while falling short of satisfying the US. That way, he can say he did his best, divide his opponents including the South Koreans, and relieve the pressure on him from sanctions and at the UN while keeping all his warheads. He leaves no worse off — but with Trump getting the blame.
Allies worse off
The second is that a measured or staggered agreement is made to reduce threats and tensions. This would need a lot of detailed work but the summit could agree it in principle. Kim reduces the range and power of his arsenal; the US and allies scale back their military presence and exercises; both sides promise peaceful intentions; economic cooperation is increased. Kim leaves with a US attack off the table, some hope of raising living-standards for North Koreans, and de facto recognition of the weapons he retains. Americans feel safe, but countries closer to the peninsula are still threatened. Again, he’s better off.
You only have to think briefly about these options to see why previous US presidents have not sought a bilateral summit with the North Korean dictator. The enthusiasm of Trump and his team to try to reach a deal therefore suggests they see a real chance of securing something bolder.
The third outcome is the radical one: denuclearisation. Kim agrees to dismantle his nuclear force, but argues that this entails all US forces leaving the peninsula for good. A peace treaty would formally end the Korean War. Each side would implement this over several years, to build confidence in stages. All sanctions would end, economic activity would be opened up and North Korea would aim to be more like China — still ruled by an individual and a party but far richer than before.
Iron-clad guarantee
Could Kim possibly make this offer? He is much less likely to do so after Trump’s forsaking of the Iran deal, but could insist on a formal treaty ratified by the US Senate. He would receive a security guarantee and a closer alliance with China to save himself from the fate of Muammar Gaddafi and Saddam Hussain. He would maintain all his conventional forces, currently comprising the fourth-largest army in the world (although far from technologically advanced). The massive military power of the US, with troops in the front line of any war in Korea, would be gone. And the nuclear know-how he has now acquired could never be erased.
Trump is the one American leader of recent decades who could agree to that. For him, the permanent presence of US forces thousands of miles from home is a curse and a burden, and it is time other countries looked after their own security. Disadvantages that would have stopped other presidents — that North Korea would be left with nominally much stronger forces than the South, that China would be the long-term beneficiary of a US withdrawal from north-east Asia, that other allies around the world including in Europe would feel undermined — will not necessarily halt Trump.
In 1986, Ronald Reagan and Mikhail Gorbachev sensationally emerged from their private session in Reykjavik close to agreement that all their ballistic missiles be scrapped in their entirety. A frantic Margaret Thatcher spent much energy explaining to Reagan how this “zero option” would fracture the western alliance and leave the USSR in a stronger position.
America’s allies might soon be faced with a new scenario in which a president fond of snap decisions emerges with a deal that is uncomfortable for them, showing that the US can make deals and go home. If this summit happens and fails it could suit Kim, and if it succeeds it could change the world far more dramatically than they have been expecting.
— The Telegraph Group Limited, London 2018
William Hague is a former British foreign secretary.
