Donald Trump and North Korea: What Could Possibly Go Wrong?

About a year and a half after Bill Clinton became President the U.S. discovered that North Korea had created a nuclear weapons programme.  Alarmed, President Clinton came within moments of ordering a military strike against those facilities.  Fortunately his advisors persuaded him to find another course of action.  Jimmy Carter was dispatched to Pyongyang as an evony of the president in an effort to engage Kim-Jong il in talks on dissuading them from their chosen course.  While not initially successful Jimmy Carter was able to have the North agree to talks with the U.S. and South Korea.    Those talks would become the Agreed Framework in which North Korea would cease its pursuit of nuclear weapons and decommission its heavy water reactor in exchange for a light water reactor built by South Korea to provide electricity to the country. 

While not perfect, the Agreed Framework did for, several years  halt North Korea's attempts to construct nuclear weapons. 

The election of 2000 brought in the Republican administration of George W. Bush and with him came the neocons. A group of conservative Republicans who were quite skeptical of the  Agreed Framework believing that the previous administration had acquiesced to the demands of North Korea and were looking for reason to scrape it.  The attacks on September 11, 2001 would give them the pretext for doing so.  It all came to halt following George W. Bush's axis of evil speech at the State of the Union.

George W. Bush would constitute the Six Party Talks which never managed to deter North Korea from its nuclear ambitions with their first test of a weapon in October of 2006. 

Six tests of these weapons have taken place in the intervening years and no progress has been made on halting the North's weapons programmes.

Donald Trump is now the occupant of the Oval Office and in March made a startling announcement agreeing to a summit with North Korea's Kim-Jong un as early as May of this year.  This is Donald Trump were speaking about. A man who will convey one policy message on Tuesday and by Thursday have a complete reversal.  He's done it on every major policy issue confronting his administration.  From immigration, to taxes, social programmes, health care and numerous other issues.  Just this week the U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley announced there would be new sanctions placed on Russia only to be undercut by Donald Trump who wants to be besties with Vladimir Putin.

One has to wonder given these conditions what will happen.
 He doesn't believe in diplomacy, has no ambassador to South Korea, no Under Secretary for Asian Affairs, the offical in charge of dealing with this issue resigned, the ambassador designate withdrew his name over comments he made about bombing North Korea and has been involved in twitter insult war with Kim-Jong un.  Given North Korea's record on such negotiations and how difficult those can be, one has to believe that Donald Trump, given his short attention span, lack of foreign policy experience, inability to make the difficult decisions and always listening to the last person in the room. These talks are a major recipe for disaster. 

To further elaborate on the issue of policy and advisors.  Remember John Bolton who was recently named Donald Trump's National Security Advisor.  He was nominated for the post of Ambassador to the UN by George W.  Bush and failed to be confirmed by the senate because of his extreme views on foreign policy.  He believes that foreign policy should be carried out through military  engagement rather than actual policy implementation.  John Bolton, in recent op-ed published in the New York Times advocated for a military  attack on North Korea and would like to see America use it armed forces against  Iran.

Donald Trump Will Handle North Korea All By Himself (Ha Ha Ha)

In the summer of 1994 the Clinton administration seriously considered attacking North Korea's nuclear facilities at Yongbyon to prevent the recovery of raw nuclear material for the development nuclear weapons.  Fortunately cooler heads prevailed and the military strike never came to fruition.   What happened next nearly succeeded in fully ending North Korea's nuclear weapons development. North Korea, South Korea and the United States started negotiations which became the Agreed Framework.  

Those talks resulted in an agreement which stated: South Korea would construct a light water reactor incapable of producing weapons grade plutonium, but provide much needed electricity to the North Koreans.  Just prior to the end of President Clinton's term in office it was discovered that the North Koreans had resumed their pursuit of building and deploying nuclear weapons and the agreement collapsed.   George W. Bush's election didn't lead to further talks with the North and were further soured when in his 2002 State of the Union address accused North Korea of being part of the axis of evil along with Iraq and Iran.

In August of 2003 the Six Party Talks began. With the United States, Russia, North and South Korea China and Japan.   From the start until their discontinuation in 2009.  Even though several agreements were reached, North Korea would violate the terms setting the negotiations back.  It was during these talks that North Korea tested their first nuclear weapon in October of 2006.  Several tests have taken place since then with the  last test in September of 2016.  Analysts believe that North Korea may have as many as eight nuclear devices but are unable to verify that number.


Now Donald Trump in an interview with the Financial Times where he intimated that he would go it alone against North Korea if China refused to influence Kim-Jong un in his pursuit  of nuclear weapons, especially ICBMs capable of reaching the U.S.   To believe that China would abandon North Korea for geopolitical reasons is foolish.  Why won't China harm its relations with North Korea?

Say China decided to fully enforce all the sanctions in place against the Kim's government the Chinese believe the following would happen: Ten's of thousands of refugees would cross the border into Northeast China, it would lose a buffer between it and American forces stationed in South Korea, the reunification of the two Koreas along an economic collapse.  China's Communist Party views this as unacceptable.  


Donald Trump bullying China? Like that's going to happen. Former President Bill Clinton came the closest to reaching an equitable agreement with North Korea over its nuclear weapons program through diplomatic interactions. Not by bluster and bullying.   Donald Trump is immature, narcissistic and lacks intellectual curiosity.  None of his senior advisors have foreign policy experience and none are Korean experts  yet he and they believe China can be bullied into accepting a policy that would act against their national interests.  That will never happen.      


 

North Korea, Nuclear Weapons, China And Why Nothing Will Change

On Friday September 9 North Korea conducted its fifth and largest nuclear weapons test to date.  This test follows the one in January.  In 1994 the Clinton administration discovered that North Korea was working towards the development and construction of a nuclear weapons arsenal.  President Clinton was given several options on best to proceed: One involved a military attack on the North's nuclear facilities and the other was finding a means which would lead to talks between the relevant countries.  What emerged was the Agreed Frame Work: North Korea would decommission its nuclear reactor capable of producing weapons grade material to be replaced with a reactor which would provide electrical power to be constructed by KEPCO

Dealings with North Korea while never easy, the Agreed Frame Work did achieve some semblance of stability on the Korean peninsula.  George W. Bush's election left uncertain the continuance of the last administrations policies or would they pursue their own policy.  In January of 2002 George W. Bush in his State of the Union speech which became as the Axis of Evil speech laid to rest any doubts on how his administration would deal with North Korea when in proclaimed a member of the axis of evil with Iraq and Iran.  With that, North Korea walked away from the talks and stayed away until the Six Party Talks.  These talks proceed in fits and starts finally ending in 2013 with very little achieved.

China was a party to these talks as it was thought, by being North Korea's main political backer they might have some influence over that governments negotiating parameters.  Even when China did apply political pressure it did so with little consequence as the North's government knew that Beijing wouldn't push so hard as to cause the government to collapse and that is the reason nothing will change.

China's communist leaders see a unified Korea as a direct threat to its national sovereignty believing correctly that the country would remain allied with the U.S. leaving  28,000 U.S. military personal on the peninsula.  Additionally any collapse would cause an immediate refugee crises with many North Koreans fleeing into Northeast China something that the government is loath to see that happen as they believe it would destabilize the wider region.    

Sure China's leaders are pissed off at that the North has once again gone the rabbit hole but they aren't going to push very hard to change the status quo.