On Thursday, a South Korean envoy came to the White House to bring the news that North Korean dictator Kim Jong-Un wanted to meet with Donald Trump. Kim offered a freeze on North Korea’s nuclear and missile tests in exchange for this sit-down. Trump accepted immediately, announcing that there would be a meeting “by May.”
What does all this mean? It could be a terrifically good thing or a horribly bad thing, though odds are it will turn out to be a completely non-thing. But there is one thing already clear: It’s a win for North Korea.
The biggest surprise of the day wasn’t that Kim made an offer, but that Trump immediately accepted. After all, what Kim put on the table was … pretty much nothing. It’s clear now that North Korea has developed the technology to build both nuclear weapons and long range missiles. They’ve demonstrated this repeatedly. They may still lack the ability to miniaturize the nuclear weapon to fit on their existing missiles, but that’s not something easily demonstrable. So, as far as public displays go, it doesn’t matter. North Korea has proved their point sufficiently to generate the desired level of fear among other nations. If you have any doubt about that, ask the good citizens of Hawaii.
While from an American perspective, it may seem as if Kim has been brought to the table by heated rhetoric from Trump, from the perspective of North Korea, Trump has been brought to the table by something much more substantial: Repeated demonstrations that North Korea represents a genuine threat to South Korea, Japan and the United States.
American media may be leading off the morning with the idea that this represents a “win” for Trump’s anti-diplomacy-by-Twitter, the truth is that Trump appears to be giving Kim Jong-Un exactly what North Korea has always wanted—a meeting as equals with few or no preconditions. Following on the heels of North Korea being feted at the Winter Olympics, complete with round-the-world broadcasts of Kim’s sister, Kim Yo-Jong looming above Mike Pence, Trump’s agreement completes not just the normalization of North Korea, but the elevation of the rogue state to major player on the world stage.
And there was another factor on clear display yesterday that contributed tremendously to this event. Donald Trump’s erratic, bombastic behavior toward the situation on the Korean peninsula has scared the ever-loving sh#t out of the South Korean people and leaders, making them much more eager to bring Kim Jong-Un in from the cold—and much more likely that Kim will come out of this thing with a win, no matter what happens next.
At the end of the day, whether it’s in 2020 or, God help us, in 2024, Donald Trump will go back to his gold-toileted tower. But Kim is just in his early 30s. He expects to remain in power as the absolute dictator of his personal pleasure kingdom for another three or four decades, at a minimum. To do so, he’s extremely unlikely to surrender the one thing that’s kept his family at the top of their prison camp/state since the armistice: Fear.
In general, that fear has been that any attempt to roust the North Korean leadership from its hardened bunkers would result in a rain of artillery on Seoul, just 35 miles south of the DMZ. And, barring some technological breakthrough, it’s hard to think of a military approach that doesn’t result in hundreds of thousands of deaths in the South, at a minimum. It’s also worth remembering that the great majority of North Koreans are innocent prisoners in this game, even those in the military, where service is mandatory. So treating them as targets to give Kim a lesson isn’t something that has a great deal of moral authority.
North Koreans may have been reduced to scouring fields for kernels of uncooked corn, as is apparently true of the most recent military member to escape from the North, but there’s no evidence that, should anyone try to “bloody their nose,” they can’t still extract a good amount of blood in exchange. South Korea does not want Trump demonstrating how big his hands are by punching at Kim, for very good reasons.
But if fear has what has kept Kim’s family in power, Kim Jong-Un has extended that fear to include states outside the range of even the largest gun. That his missiles overflew Japan at least twice was no accident. He was simply extending the idea that has worked so well in the past. He has rasised the magnitude of threat. And that increased threat got him something that no other North Korean leader has ever enjoyed: A one-on-one summit with the president of the United States.
It’s extremely likely that’s the end-game for Kim. He’s made his point. Trump has given him his meeting. If he sits through the visit and says nice things about Trump’s chocolate cake, he might even go back to Pyongyang with some reductions in sanctions that make it possible to feed his people slightly better, and make it easier for Kim to get on the short list for the next Ferrari.
It’s extremely unlikely that Kim agrees to give up his nuclear weapons. To do so would put him back in the position of being a regional threat, one that can be ignored most of the time. Or, as ably demonstrated by Saddam Hussein, swatted when some American president needs a ratings boost. Yes, a lot of people on both sides of the DMZ would likely die if America attacked North Korea, but feel free to check in with the people of Iraq or Afghanistan to see how much effect local casualties have on American action.
It’s also possible that a meeting between Trump and Kim ends disastrously. Trump says something about haircuts. Kim says something about haircuts. And it’s off to the races. In which case, Kim goes back to North Korea, resumes testing and—looses absolutely nothing, after gaining the recognition of a Brezhnev-level summit.
There’s a slim chance that something good can come of this. Maybe Trump really will offer up such a deal that Kim is willing to at least sign a test-ban treaty and provide some kind of inspection regime for his nuclear sites. After all, North Korea has agreed to such arrangements in the past. Then promptly broken them when they felt it was to their advantage.
But make no mistake: If nothing at all happens, Kim has already won this. Bigly. No American president in history has agreed to sit down with a North Korean leader, for a whole collection of very good reasons. What Trump has achieved isn’t scaring North Korea. It’s making South Korea so terrified of what America might do, that they’re willing to give the North something for nothing.
That’s not a “diplomatic achievement.” That’s a disaster we can only hope doesn’t go any further.