President Trump is making a big mistake in thinking North Korea is behaving any differently than they always have.
North Korea’s goals for developing nuclear capabilities have been consistently three-fold: to provide a smokescreen for their human rights violations, to create leverage for pushing American interests off the peninsula, and to gain legitimacy in the international community by forcing recognized powers like the United States to deal with them face to face.
North Korea is voicing a willingness to suspend their nuclear program in exchange for summit meetings, the possibility of lifting sanctions solely based on nuclear detente with no mention of their human rights violations, and the possibility of American troops leaving the peninsula. This does not suggest anything other than that an American president has approached them with the willingness to give them what they have wanted all along.
The ultimate goal of Kim Jong Un remains the ultimate goal of his predecessors: to perpetuate their regime’s absolute dominance of the North Korean people and to set the stage for reunification with South Korea under their terms and their banner.
All the same reasons which made the Iran deal a horrible idea, all the same reasons which made the thawing of relations with Cuba an awful development, and all the same reasons which have made the general policies of appeasement devastatingly consequential mistakes also make the suddenly squishy relationship between Trump and North Korea a very horrible development.
I wish President Trump’s advisers could be more effective at carefully explaining to him that Kim Jong Un has offered nothing he has not offered before, though it appears unlikely Trump will listen to them regardless of the approach. The President will likely refuse to understand that a willingness to meet even a single North Korean demand without immense and verifiable action on behalf of Kim’s regime is tantamount to surrender. The President is determined to believe he’s making great strides towards ending the threat of a nuclear-armed North Korea, but the reality is that Kim Jong Un is playing him for a sucker.
Above all else, I wish President Trump’s supporters would speak up and not allow him to make the same mistake in North Korea that President Obama made in Iran.