Thermonuclear weapons that can destroy entire cities. Intercontinental ballistic missiles capable of reaching the United States. And all controlled by a supposedly irrational leader spouting apocalyptic threats at the helm of a country dedicated to the destruction of the United States.
Sounds a lot like North Korea these days, but this description is just as much a summary of the threat the United States faced from the Soviet Union for more than four decades. During the Cold War, a steady combination of deterrence, pressure and diplomacy enabled the United States to protect the homeland and U.S. allies until the Soviet Union ceased to exist.
Despite the headlines that seem to foreshadow nuclear war today, the same strategy that worked with the Soviet Union can work with North Korea. In fact, this strategy has already been working for decades by preventing another Korean war.
The strategy consists of three parts.
First, focus on deterrence and reassuring allies. The backbone of U.S. policy is the deterrent threat: If North Korea attacks the United States or its allies, the U.S. will destroy the North Korean regime. Kim Jong-un and the North Korean leadership are evil, but rational, and know that an attack would take away what they prize most — their power. America’s military posture in northeast Asia is calibrated to ensure that the United States and its allies can defend against an attack and deter provocations.
This deterrent, however, cannot be taken for granted. It rests on strong alliances with South Korea and Japan, and careful and consistent messaging to North Korea. A rift between allies provides an opening to North Korea to provoke, while confusing messages from the United States can raise the chances of miscalculation and an accidental conflict. The United States has much work to do on a daily basis to maintain a robust deterrent.
Second, pressure North Korea. While extensive sanctions on North Korea already exist, the United States still has tremendous leverage to impose further sanctions, including against China for its blatant violations of U.N. sanctions against North Korea. The United States won’t know how effective sanctions can be until China fully implements them — and the United States won’t know if China will implement the sanctions until the United States hits China with an extensive range of secondary sanctions aimed at banks and financial entities doing business with North Korea.
Third, the United States needs to stop treating talks like a concession to give away, and learn how to use them to its advantage. Diplomacy shouldn’t be a dirty word. No progress will be possible — on denuclearization, easing tensions or anything — without diplomacy. During the Cold War the United States and the Soviet Union had plenty of communication channels — including embassies in both countries — that could reduce the chances of a conflict during a crisis. Today, the United States and North Korea have almost no contact. As journalist Evan Osnos put it after a recent trip to North Korea, “To go between Washington and Pyongyang at this nuclear moment is to be struck, most of all, by how little the two understand each other.”
Diplomacy is no guarantee of progress, but the lack of diplomacy will guarantee a perpetuation of the status quo, or worse. At the very least, regular diplomacy could open up lines of crisis communications to mitigate the chances of a miscalculation during a crisis. Over time, diplomacy could yield agreements that reduce tensions, and perhaps open a path to solutions to the big issues — denuclearization and a peace treaty.
For diplomacy to work, however, the United States needs to know what it wants, what it can live with, and what it is willing to give up. And the United States needs to be on the same page about all of those questions with South Korea and Japan.
Unfortunately, President Trump is undermining all three parts of this strategy. Trump has picked an unnecessary fight with South Korea, and in the process achieved a major North Korean (and Chinese) goal. Trump sends wildly erratic messages to China — including by indicating that progress on trade disagreements and North Korea can be traded for one another — leaving Beijing unlikely to take Trump seriously. And with weakened deterrence and confusing messages, the Trump administration is ill prepared for diplomacy.
The strategy for confronting the North Korean threat is clear, but Trump seems intent on doing his best to bungle it.
