Kim Jong Un gives Donald Trump a lesson in diplomacy
Strip out the noise, and the North Korean leader has outsmarted his opponent at every turn
Philip Stephens
He is a madman, a crazed dictator who cannot be allowed a finger on the nuclear button. Talk of containment and deterrence is meaningless. These strategies only work when the adversary is a rational actor. Who could say that of North Korea’s Kim Jong Un?
So has run the story in Washington. Few would dispute that Mr Kim presides over one of the most repressive and inhumane regimes on earth. By most measures it is probably the worst — witness millions left to starve for the sake of the nuclear obsession and the brutal suppression of the slightest hint of dissent.
For all that, the US has made a mistake. It has confused ruthlessness with mental instability. Mr Kim knows what he is doing. So do those around him.
Last autumn a delegation of North Korean officials met with western foreign policy and defence experts at a closed gathering in Switzerland — the latest of several secret and thus deniable attempts over the years to explore prospects for ending the nuclear stand-off between Pyongyang and the international community.
The North Koreans were implacable. Mr Kim was going to put a nuclear warhead on an intercontinental ballistic missile. There was no other way to deflect US “aggression”. Pyongyang would never bow to international sanctions, a subject on which its diplomats had some choice words for Russia and China as well as for the US. This latest meeting broke up in gloomy deadlock, though not before the westerners had noted how the bearing of their interlocutors defied familiar stereotypes. These were smart people.
Unfortunately, Donald Trump is more comfortable with cartoon caricatures of his adversaries.
The US president eschews diplomacy for Twitter fusillades. “Little Rocket Man” is his description of the North Korean leader. “My button is bigger than your button,” is the playground boast about the two countries’ nuclear arsenals. More recently. Mr Trump has called Mr Kim a “sick puppy”. Pyongyang fires its own salvos — the US president is a “dotard”. Strip out this noise, though, and Mr Kim has outsmarted his opponent at every turn.
The louder Mr Trump shouts, the more plausible becomes North Korea’s claim that its nuclear programme is a necessary insurance policy against a US plan for regime change. Even before Mr Trump reached the White House, America — and the world — were still paying for former president George W Bush’s “axis of evil” speech.
The North Korean despot’s decision to send a high-level delegation, complete with cheerleaders, to the Winter Olympics in South Korea’s Pyeongchang has been widely acknowledged as a coup. It was more than that. It was a masterclass in international diplomacy that at once made the US look weak and, by buying time, advanced Mr Kim’s quest for long-range nuclear missiles.
The purpose was transparent — to drive a wedge between Washington and Seoul and to present a more humane picture of North Korea to the wider world. By despatching his sister Kim Yo Jong alongside ceremonial head of state Kim Yong Nam, the North Korean leader guaranteed wall-to-wall coverage in the international media. Ms Kim said nothing publicly, but smiled at the right moments — in striking contrast to the sulking presence of Mike Pence, the US vice-president.
Kim Jong Un wants recognition as a nuclear weapons state before he is willing seriously to negotiate © AP
The White House had offered an open goal. Mr Pence arrived in Seoul insisting that Washington would open negotiations only if Pyongyang halted its nuclear programme. He left saying that the US would sit down for talks without preconditions. Not so long ago Mr Trump was promising to rain “fire and fury” on Pyongyang. Now, South Korean president, Moon Jae-in, is pondering whether to accept an invitation to a summit with Mr Kim in the north.
Seoul is under no illusions about the nature of the regime in the North. South Koreans will not be fooled by the Olympic gambit. But they also know that Mr Kim has the capacity, in Mr Trump’s words, to rain fire and fury on the South.
Pyongyang’s diplomacy, wholly cynical though it may be, has blurred some of the lines. As long the two sides are talking, Mr Trump faces intense regional and international pressure to keep his finger off the button.
North Korea scarcely has friends among America’s allies, but Mr Trump has squandered whatever slight international support he might have had for a military strike.North Korea, for its part, has been creating facts on the ground. Mr Kim wants recognition as a nuclear weapons state before he is willing seriously to negotiate. A few months during which South Korea and Washington are at odds may well give him the time he needs.
Mr Trump could still launch a pre-emptive attack, and Mr Kim may overplay his hand. But there are no good military options. Experts with access to the Pentagon’s planning say that the only certain way to avoid North Korean retaliation against the South would be a massive US nuclear first strike. That is unthinkable; anything less is dangerous.
There is no good ending to this story. China is unwilling to risk the collapse of the regime through sanctions. So the odds must be that Pyongyang will get its missile, with all the risks that entails of further proliferation. The US would be left with containment and deterrence. That Mr Kim is not a madman would be the smallest of consolations.
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