With Joe Biden in charge, no more flashy Kim Jong-un summits
The president-elect will be the first to enter office with a North Korea that has shown an ability to hit the US mainland with a missile.
US president-elect Joe Biden is expected to revert to a more conventional approach to negotiating with North Korea — one that mixes pressure with what he calls “principled diplomacy.”
The core problem for Biden will be moving the needle on a thorny foreign policy challenge that has stumped multiple American administrations — including US president Barack Obama for eight years and President Donald Trump, who met North Korean leader Kim Jong-un three times.
Pyongyang is now in possession of an arsenal that is more advanced than ever before. Biden will be the first American president to enter office since North Korea demonstrated it has a missile capable of hitting the US mainland.
“Denuclearisation is the appropriate long-term strategic goal and should be maintained,” says Markus Garlauskas, a former US intelligence official and current senior fellow at the Atlantic Council. “But you also need realistic short-term goals.”
Biden, who has said a denuclearised North Korea is the goal, has rejected Trump’s approach, declaring an end to the unconditional summits that he said amounted to embracing a thug. He would sit down with the North Korean leader, Biden said on the campaign trail, though only if Pyongyang was sincere and pledged to reduce its nuclear arsenal.
As part of this emphasis on lower-level talks, Biden’s advisers have said they would like to invite other countries to the talks, including South Korea and China. US president George W. Bush pursued a similar multilateral approach in the 2000s.
But North Korea, via reports in its state media, has often admonished other countries from trying to involve themselves with the Kim regime’s bilateral relationship with the US
Biden may not be afforded a lengthy period of time to formulate a strategy. Since 2005, North Korea has welcomed new American administrations — or second-term presidents — with a weapons test within a few weeks or months after inaugurations in January. For Trump, the North test-fired a ballistic missile just three weeks after Inauguration Day. For Obama, it conducted two weapons tests within four months into his first term — and just weeks into his second.
The Kim regime won’t move immediately, though it will be watching for clues on Biden’s North Korea policy, says Jean H. Lee, director of the Korea program at the Wilson Centre, a nonpartisan Washington think tank.
But if Pyongyang doesn’t like what it sees, Lee says, “that’s when we see them resort to provocation to get back on the US administration’s radar”.
Kim began 2020 by promising to unveil a new strategic weapon, while declaring he no longer felt bound to a years-old moratorium on testing long-range or nuclear weapons. Without those types of tests, the North only has the potential — but not the certainty — of hitting the US, as the regime has yet to demonstrate all the steps required for a successful nuclear attack.
For now, Pyongyang is brandishing, rather than launching, more advanced weaponry. At a military parade last month, Kim unveiled a new long-range weapon, believed to be the world’s largest mobilised ICBM that is big enough to carry multiple warheads.
In the run-up to the November election, Kim had little reason to unleash a major provocation that could upset Trump, who promised if re-elected to broker a quick deal with Pyongyang. But Pyongyang’s calculations change with a Biden administration, security experts say.
North Korea has yet to comment on the US election results. But it singled out Biden in state-media reports last year, calling the former US vice-president a “fool of low IQ”. The North also compared him to a rabid dog that “must be beaten to death”.
Some of Biden’s advisers have argued it is too late to persuade the Kim regime to surrender its nuclear arsenal, says Evans Revere, a former US diplomat who has recently spoken to several Biden advisers about North Korea.
“Some in the Biden camp would love to begin an ‘arms-control dialogue’ with Pyongyang to ‘manage’ the problem,” Revere says. This policy would aim to put a cap on North Korea’s weapons, he says.
Sceptics of this approach, including Revere, believe such a tactic may eventually lead the US to treat North Korea as a nuclear state. Doing so potentially gives incentive to countries like Iran to press forward with their own nuclear ambitions. It could also set off an unwanted arms race among American allies, says Ralph Cossa, the president emeritus of the Hawaii-based Pacific Forum, a think tank.
“The real downside is it will encourage Seoul, if not Tokyo and Taipei, to pursue the nuclear option and undermine the nonproliferation regime,” Cossa says.
But a nuclear freeze or cap would help provide immediate and tangible security benefits like undermining North Korea’s ability to produce more nuclear materials or missiles, says Adam Mount, a senior fellow at the Federation of American Scientists, a Washington think tank.
“The ultimate objective will remain the same — a nuclear-free North Korea,” Mount says.
The Wall Street Journal
More Coverage
A weakened Iran still has a major deterrent: the nuclear option
With Hezbollah reeling and its missiles so far failing to do much damage, attention turns to threat posed by Tehran’s nuclear program
IDF takes out Hezbollah HQ commander
Assaults on Tel Aviv came as Israel launched strikes in Gaza and added troops in Lebanon.