Kim Jong-un is not about to start a war

The next year should not be spent dreaming up new ways to accommodate Pyongyang in reaction to Kim Jong-un’s latest rhetorical excesses. Instead, the focus should be on reinforcing the capabilities and political support for the U.S.-ROK alliance.

Michael GreenThe author is CEO of the U.S. Studies Centre at the University of Sydney and Henry A. Kissinger Chair at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS). Former State Department official Robert Carlin and Monterrey Institute scholar Siegfried Hecker made big news when they wrote in Foreign Affairs at the end of January that they “believe that like his grandfather Kim Il Sung, Kim Jong-un has made a strategic decision to go to war.” Their conclusion was so shocking that it was briefed to senior levels in the White House.

The Korean Central News Agency, North Korea’s mouthpiece, reported Friday that North Korean leader Kim Jong-un, center, and his daughter Kim Ju-ae, to his left, attended a party in Pyongyang on Thursday to celebrate the founding of its armed forces 76 years ago. [KCNA/YONHAP]

The two authors point to Kim Jong-un’s bellicose rhetoric and abandonment of unification as well as the growing geopolitical tension among the great powers for evidence — but they largely put the blame on the Trump administration for not giving Kim a better deal in Hanoi in 2019 and the Yoon Suk Yeol government in Seoul for returning to a hard line. In that sense, this is not a new argument at all. The two authors have been calling for accommodating North Korea for decades. Kim’s latest speech has given them a chance to reframe the argument.

Hecker has always been the most compelling advocate of greater accommodation of North Korea. He was director of the Los Alamos National Laboratory and has been involved in both nuclear weapons development and non-proliferation efforts. He argues that diplomacy and deterrence have failed to stop Pyongyang from jumping from provocation to provocation towards a self-sustaining uranium enrichment capacity for nuclear weapons. His logic is that we would all be better off acknowledging this fact and negotiating arms control agreements with the North to at least put a cap on their program.

This would be a compelling argument if North Korea had ever demonstrated a willingness to comply with previous agreements. Instead, Pyongyang has an almost perfect three-decade record of cheating on everything from the North-South Nuclear Agreement to the Six Party Talks. We also know from that history that the North would use the détente of a faux arms control agreement to increase its access to money and technology to enhance its weapons programs. We would once again be setting ourselves up for the expansion of Pyongyang’s military threat and demands for new concessions. And finally, Western governments are unlikely to take this risk with North Korea since it could lower non-proliferation norms and encourage other states to follow suit. Hecker presents his argument with technical authority, but the politics do not add up.

While the White House was briefed on the Carlin-Hecker imminent war argument, numerous senior U.S. officials I spoke with dismissed the idea. “I’m not sleeping under my bed at night,” as one put it. If national security officials did believe Carlin and Hecker, there would be a push for significantly enhanced deterrence measures, the flow of military assets to the peninsula, and possibly even discussion of military pre-emption before an attack takes place. There is none of that.

Most analysts have other explanations for Kim Jong-un’s changed rhetoric. His recasting of the South as the “invariable principal enemy” is consistent with past threats against conservative governments in Seoul. Kim’s abandonment of reunification is significant but reflects reality rather than war-planning. Threatening belligerence and grabbing headlines in a U.S. Presidential election year is also predictable, particularly since Donald Trump is more likely to react to Kim Jong-un’s overtures if the public is paying attention. Kim certainly achieved that.

But even if Carlin and Hecker are wrong in their predictions, they do remind us that North Korea is a very dangerous place. As I have written in this column, Pyongyang has achieved much greater freedom of maneuver thanks to the re-correlation of international power politics. The Ukraine War, Gaza, the Red Sea, and China’s friction with the United States have all given Kim Jong-un latitude to test and provoke the South and the international with greater impunity. While the U.S.-ROK-Japan trilateral consolidation since the August Camp David Summit has enhanced deterrence and readiness, Moscow and Beijing are simultaneously less inclined to try to restrain North Korea.

U.S. Presidential politics also inject an uncertainty. History suggests that Pyongyang is highly attuned to American political dynamics even if North Korean analysts mistakenly interpret every development as related to North Korea. Nevertheless, Trump’s ideas and rhetoric are disastrous. His “love affair” with Kim Jong-un and his fixation on withdrawing U.S. troops from the Korean peninsula have not gone away. They are mostly vanity projects and not real strategy, and the Congress and Trump’s own advisors were able to curtail him fairly easily. There is a debate about whether it would be as easy in a second Trump administration. Biden’s own political struggles are also a problem. The White House has no incentive to put North Korea in the headlines since it would likely lead voters to think the world is getting out of control on Biden’s watch. So where Trump is inclined towards excesses, Biden is inclined to set aside the North Korea problem. That is also a problem.

Fortunately, the U.S.-ROK alliance remains strong at a structural level. Public support for the alliance is very high in both Korea and the United States. The overwhelming military power of the Combined Forces Command continues to deter North Korea and has the strong support of Congress. These are the fundamentals of stability on the peninsula.

The next year should not be spent dreaming up new ways to accommodate Pyongyang in reaction to Kim Jong-un’s latest rhetorical excesses. Instead, the focus should be on reinforcing the capabilities and political support for the U.S.-ROK alliance.