It has been interesting watching the pre-summit maneuvering
between North Korea’s Kim and President Trump. The Kim family has been very
good at playing American and European leaders ever since the current Kim’s
grandfather, Kim Il-sung. But perhaps they have finally met their match in
Donald Trump. We will see.
What do both sides want, and can it be achieved? Kim wants (1) to survive as leader, and (2)
to get enough economic growth in his country to pacify the aristocracy around
him, so that he isn’t overthrown (see point 1). He also needs enough political
cover with his own populace to make an agreement. That is, whatever agreement
emerges (if one does) has to look to his own people enough like a victory for
him.
Trump (and the US generally) wants Kim to give up his
nuclear program, including allowing enough intrusive inspections to assure he isn’t
hiding stuff. We would also like to limit his ballistic missile program, though
that may be harder because Korea may want to retain the ability to put its own
satellites into orbit, which takes the same kind of rocket. And again, Trump
needs something he can spin as a victory to the US voters.
Both Koreas talk about unification, but that really isn’t on
the table anytime soon. China doesn’t want a unified (and American-oriented)
Korea on its border. Japan doesn’t want a powerful, unified Korea as a
neighbor. Kim certainly doesn’t want to “infect” his private country with unsettling
liberal ideas from the West, and South Korea, if push comes to shove, probably doesn’t
want to pick up the enormous expense of absorbing its medieval neighbor.
In the end, Trump has more leverage than Kim, and he knows
it (that was the point of walking away from the talks last week). Kim has his nuclear weapons, but really they don’t
do him any good outside of domestic propaganda. If he ever used one of them,
North Korea would be turned to radioactive glass by the US, or perhaps by
China. On the other hand, the sanctions are biting Kim very hard, and they are
discomforting the aristocracy around him. If things get bad enough, they might
depose him, and I am sure he worries about that. So he badly needs relief from
the sanctions.
A possible deal would see Kim give up his nuclear program,
with intrusive inspections, in return for relief from the sanctions, a peace
treaty with the US (we are still technically just in a truce from the Korean
War) and perhaps some sort of international or UN guarantee of no invasion. Kim
still needs to keep his military happy even without nuclear weapons, so perhaps
he could follow the Iranian model and allow the military to get into the
business of running all the new enterprises and skimming the profits.
It will be interesting to see how this plays out. Trump and
Kim are both tough-minded negotiators, and this is a high-stakes game for both
of them.
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