The Foreign Service Journal, October 2019

THE FOREIGN SERVICE JOURNAL | OCTOBER 2019 23 Strategic Aim: National Security North Korean leaders have stressed that the country’s nuclear program is targeted at what Pyongyang views as the American existential threat to its existence. North Korea learned from the 1991 Persian Gulf War that numerical superiority of military personnel would not prevail against superior American military technology. They likewise note that the 2003 Iraq War showed them that only an actual nuclear weapons capability can deter the conventionally superior American military from pursuing regime change. More recently, North Korean state media has stated explicitly that sanctions relief is the near-term ask, but national security is the ultimate goal. From North Korea’s perspective, nuclear weapons do a good job of deterring a more technologically advanced military’s ability to oust the Kim regime. For more sub- stantial North Korean denuclearization concessions beyond the initial offer, the United States would have to go beyond sanctions relief and address North Korea’s security fears in a tangible way. Amid the summit diplomacy the Trump administration has made a significant concession to ease the country’s security fears. North Korea has long complained about the semiannual U.S.–South Korea military exercises, which they see as a security threat. The United States suspended these exercises twice since the first U.S.-DPRK summit in Singapore, though the administra- tion resumed the exercises in August. The North Koreans must utilize scarce resources like fuel to mobilize forces while height- ened U.S. military assets and personnel are in the region for the exercises. If the United States were to launch a preemptive strike on North Korea, they reason, a military exercise would be the perfect cover to plus-up for an invasion. The United States and the ROK have repeatedly noted that the exercises are defensive, meaning they allow the two mili- taries to drill to respond more effectively to possible North Korean provocations or invasion. Suspending the exercises limits U.S.-ROK military readiness. It is not a cost-free move, but alternative training arrangements can mitigate some of the downside risk for the United States and South Korea. North Korea had refrained from long-range ballistic missile flight tests and nuclear testing amid the exercise freeze, but predictably expanded shorter-range ballistic missile launches after the exer- cises resumed. The pause to create room for diplomacy had not produced more tangible results in the intervening months. While North Korea finds the U.S. military presence on the Korean Peninsula threatening, it is less clear exactly what it would require of the United States to feel secure enough to per- manently dismantle the nuclear program. Pyongyang has called for a peace treaty to end the Korean War. Declassified records from Kim Il Sung’s conversations with his socialist counterparts as late as the 1970s show the North Koreans understood a peace treaty as a pretext to end the permanent stationing of U.S. troops in South Korea. More recent Track 2 engagements (nongovernmental dis- cussions) provide contradictory interpretations of what Kim Jong Un today may seek from a peace arrangement, and it is by no means clear whether he has envisioned a neatly laid out endgame. However, North Korea’s demand regarding military exercises during the U.S.-DPRK summitry shows that Kim Jong Un considers that chipping away at U.S. Forces Korea’s capabili- ties in exchange for incremental limitations on its own nuclear capabilities is part of the equation. While it is possible to imagine Kim Jong Un wanting to achieve what his father and grandfather never could—removal of all foreign troops from Korean soil—it remains to be seen whether such an arrangement would be ultimately achievable or desirable for U.S. interests in Korea and the region. In the context of long-standing U.S.-DPRK distrust, Kim Jong Un has not prioritized a transformed relationship with the United States where it counts most, among his top diplomatic demands. Presi- dent Trump has fashioned himself a different type of American leader, so one may reason that Pyongyang would be naturally suspicious that any deal with himmay not survive into the fol- lowing administration—or his own second term. Where Do We Go from Here? Kim’s offers to date suggest he is focused first and foremost on a transactional deal to reduce immediate economic pain andmake incremental security advances. In general terms, his demands are not that much different from those articulated by his father since the early 1990s, and President Trump’s pursuit of a denuclearized The U.N. Security Council banner is important to urge other countries to cut off sanctioned trade with North Korea, but the most important element was Chinese enforcement.