The Korea Summit | Council on Foreign Relations

North Korea

Nuclear North Korea: The Trump-Kim Meeting

As part of the 2018 College and University Educators Workshop, Patricia M. Kim, Gary Samore, and Sheila A. Smith speak with Mitchel B. Wallerstein about the threats posed by a nuclear North Korea and prospects for a Trump-Kim summit meeting.

Event with Irina A. Faskianos , Patricia M. Kim, Gary Samore, Sheila A. Smith and Mitchel B. Wallerstein April 20, 2018 College and University Educators Workshops
North Korea

U.S.-North Korea Relations: Any Progress on Nonproliferation Efforts?

Mike Mullen and Victor Cha discuss the status of U.S.-North Korea relations, nuclear security, and non-proliferation one and a half year's after the task force report was released.

Event with Victor D. Cha, Mike G. Mullen and Ellen Laipson April 9, 2018 Paul C. Warnke Lecture
North Korea

Domain of Gains, Domain of Losses: Why Kim Jong-un’s Expectations Matter for the U.S.-North Korea Summit

Patrick McEachern is a Council on Foreign Relations international affairs fellow at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars. Views expressed do not necessarily reflect those of the U.S. government or Department of State. When North Korean leader Kim Jong-un reportedly offered a summit meeting with President Donald Trump, American and South Korean officials understandably and predictably credited the “maximum pressure” strategy. They reasoned that sanctions and pressure tactics brought Kim to the table, secured Pyongyang’s unilateral concession on refraining from nuclear and ballistic missile flight tests, and would allow the two leaders to discuss denuclearization. Notwithstanding skepticism about North Korea’s intentions, non-governmental analyses largely agree that Kim is coming to the table because sanctions are “beginning to bite.” However, observed data dispute the notion that North Korea’s economy has suffered recent setbacks. North Korea’s economy has grown following the regime’s domestic marketization and monetization efforts, and food prices and the exchange rate have remained stable. There have been sporadic reports of fuel shortages, but satellite data does not show any lines at the gas pumps. North Korea’s economy chronically underperforms, but it is not facing a current crisis. To be sure, both UN and U.S. sanctions have become more ambitious, and China has signaled a greater willingness to clamp down by signing onto the UN sanctions. China accounts for roughly ninety percent of North Korean licit trade with illicit and weapons-related trade providing additional sources of foreign currency. Though the Chinese and transnational criminal networks fail to report reliable trade data with North Korea, a confluence of anecdotal information supports the idea that North Korea’s foreign earnings have dropped significantly. How can the North Korean economy be doing just fine and sanctions have a biting effect simultaneously? One theory holds that North Korea is financing its trade deficit with reserves, which delays the economic hurt until the savings run out. Kim could worry about the unknown economic consequences of continuing down this path. Beyond economics, the Trump administration has raised the rhetorical pressure with more explicit public discussion of possible military options to come, providing Kim another potential worry about the future. While there are not observed consequences inside North Korea from the pressure campaign today, Kim may expect trouble ahead. The observed-expected distinction is important to understanding Kim’s motivations and psychology ahead of his summit with Trump. Is Kim desperate to make a deal with the Americans to relieve pressure, or is he looking proactively to advance gains? Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky, in research that would lead to a Nobel Prize, showed how people psychologically underweight in decision-making probable future consequences over the certainty of observed conditions today. When in the “domain of losses” of facing current problems, leaders are more likely to take desperate risks to reverse their fortunes. When in the forward-looking “domain of gains,” they are more likely to avoid risks to safeguard what they already have. In approaching the U.S.-North Korea summit, Kim Jong-un appears to be in the “domain of gains.” He may be trying to preemptively head off the expected—but probabilistic—consequences of the pressure campaign and test the waters of advancing his regime’s long-sought goals with the Americans. He is not defensively reacting to the certainty of a present problem he can see within his country today. That means he is more likely to be risk-averse in the negotiations and less eager to make just any deal with Trump to get some immediate pressure relief. Kim’s risk-accepting behavior is usually considered dangerous as it implies his greater willingness to use force, but Kim will have to take some risk in curtailing his nuclear program to make progress in diplomatic negotiations. The North Koreans are not close to surrender, but the United States should not negotiate with itself and water down its opening bid before sitting down with the North Koreans either. North Korea’s past negotiating behavior suggests they will initially outline their full wish list, and there is no reason the American should not go on record with the same. Opening bids are different from anticipated outcomes, and a realistic assessment of the other side’s material and psychological motivations can help set expectations to reduce the likelihood that the leaders speak past each other at the summit. It is tempting to look for a win-lose outcome where we get everything we want from the North Koreans and give nothing in return. However, Kim is not desperate, so we should not expect him to give away the farm for free. Looking for a long-term and sustainable win-win outcome that entails difficult and distasteful trade-offs on both sides should be the summit’s goal.

Blog Post by Guest Blogger for Asia Unbound April 3, 2018 Asia Unbound

North Korea

Kim Jong-un’s Invitation and Donald Trump’s Response

Kim Jong-un’s invitation to Donald Trump to meet, delivered through South Korean intermediaries, is both stunning and predictable. After all, Trump has telegraphed his desire for a meeting with Kim ever since he suggested a hamburger summit with Kim as a candidate for president in 2016. Now that Trump has his invitation, the question is whether he can exploit it to bring a runaway North Korean nuclear and missile threat under control without being advanced by an accompanying intensive negotiation process that would inevitably rely on specialized expertise within the U.S. government to craft the level of agreement and verification measures necessary to pin Kim down. At a minimum, a prospective summit should provide momentum to secure the release of three Americans currently detained in Pyongyang. Historically, the American president has been the “closer” of such deals, but an early meeting between Trump and Kim would sacrifice that role in favor of a reshaping of the relationship with the North Korean leader by setting the tone surrounding the U.S.-North Korea relationship without an accompanying (decades-long) process and verification of North Korea’s implementation of denuclearization. Past denuclearization efforts have foundered on a combination of failures to secure verification and North Korean subterfuge, but have never gone so far in giving the Kim family the prestige or treating North Korea with the strategic weight that it has sought for decades. Trump’s strongest argument for such an approach: everything else has failed, and a U.S.-North Korea summit has never been tried. Oddly, Trump’s own threats to annihilate North Korea, while challenging North Korean assumptions about how the United States would respond to its nuclear advances, has generated political space for Trump: even a bad deal with Kim may be perceived as a better outcome than a catastrophic conflict with North Korea. But why would Kim reach out now and offer a meeting with Trump? Speculation on the range of possible motives for Kim will range from desperation to uncanny strategic intuition. But the most interesting aspect of Kim’s outreach and its timing is that it combines a high personal propensity to take risk with a strong desire to actively manage uncertainties generated by the growing risks to North Korea’s regime survival. Alongside the Kim family’s desire to assert independence and centrality as narratives that undergird and reinforce its control over the regime is a deep desire for external affirmation that can only come from improving North Korea’s relationship with the United States. That is why North Korea has consistently asserted that it would only abandon its nuclear program if the United States were to drop its “hostile policy”—normalization and acceptance of the regime by the United States as an alternative regime survival guarantee to that provided by nuclear weapons. In essence, the Kim family has always wanted Washington to impute to Pyongyang the same strategic weight that Richard Nixon gave to Beijing when he used the China card to balance the Soviet Union. At the same time, Kim’s move smacks of both desperation and an astute recognition that international economic pressure, political isolation, and the threat of military conflict could eventually checkmate the regime. Instead of furthering regime survival, North Korea’s pursuit of the capability to strike the United States with nuclear weapons raised the risks of accidental conflict and preventive war. For Kim, the prospect of an early summit with Trump provides the best prospect of removing international sanctions pressure while giving Kim room for maneuver to possibly keep his nuclear deterrent in place. Moreover, a prospective nuclear deal with Trump provides Kim with an opportunity to secure external symbols of regime legitimacy without having to address North Korea’s atrocious human rights record. (After all, only Trump can offer a Trump-branded hotel in Pyongyang, payable in fissile material.) Given the stakes, risks, and blowback that inevitably will accompany a Trump-Kim hamburger summit, a safer course, if indeed a summit is inevitable, would be to retain South Korean involvement by securing an invitation for Trump to join the inter-Korean summit already announced for the end of April at Panmunjom. South Korea shares with the United States an existential interest in denuclearization, but only the United States has the standing in North Korean eyes as a counterpart in that discussion. But South Korean involvement would help address American staffing deficiencies while keeping denuclearization front and center, all the while blunting North Korean efforts to drive a wedge in the U.S.-South Korea alliance. Scott Snyder is senior fellow for Korea studies at the Council on Foreign Relations and author of South Korea at the Crossroads: Autonomy and Alliance in an Era of Rival Powers.

Blog Post by Scott A. Snyder March 9, 2018 Asia Unbound
North Korea

The Future of North Korean Provocations

Patrick McEachern is an international affairs fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations and public policy fellow at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars. Views expressed do not necessarily reflect those of the U.S. government or Department of State. North Korea's nuclear and missile provocations to date have resulted from its developmental mission to produce a nuclear deterrent. While lethal conventional provocations remain a tragic component of North Korea's approach to the South, Pyongyang has focused its security response to Washington over the last quarter century on its nuclear program. North Korea could catch the world's attention and provoke through (re-)starting fissile material production facilities, missile flight tests, or nuclear tests. As Pyongyang declares victory in its nuclear development and shifts to an operational focus for its nuclear arsenal, the nature of North Korean provocations will change–and get more dangerous. In line with North Korea's stated nuclear doctrine and precedent from previous new nuclear powers, Pyongyang is more likely to brandish its nuclear assets to intimidate and coerce. In November 2017, after a North Korean inter-continental ballistic missile (ICBM) flight test, Kim Jong-un claimed his country had completed the development of its nuclear force. He repeated the sentiment in his 2018 New Year's address, adding that the regime had successfully achieved a nuclear deterrent to check American invasion. Kim’s claims are pre-mature, but North Korea's technical barriers to a reliable nuclear arsenal that can threaten the U.S. mainland are winnowing. Whether it takes Kim Jong-un “a handful of months,” as the CIA Director predicted, or a handful of years to gain genuine confidence in his ability to deter the United States, it is worth considering now the implications. North Korea's nuclear doctrine articulates two purposes for its arsenal: deterrence and coercion. The deterrent goal appears to be the bulk of the strategy. Pyongyang repeatedly cited the U.S. invasion of Iraq and intervention in Libya as justification for its nuclear development. The United States will intervene militarily in a smaller state unless it invests in equalizing nuclear weapons to deter, they argued. However, Kim Jong-un has also directed the development of his nation's nuclear program to coerce. In 2013, Kim's first major speech on nuclear issues stressed the importance of nuclear development for national defense and economic development. This “byungjin,” or dual-track, approach remains, but Kim has expressed broader purposes more recently for his regime's nuclear weapons as the program has developed. At the 2016 Korean Workers Party Congress, he reaffirmed the byungjin line, stressed deterrence, and claimed a diversified nuclear force should be a useable element of national power. Nuclear weapons, he said, provide North Korea more influence in foreign affairs on the Korean Peninsula and throughout the region. In a series of field guidance visits, Kim ordered a nuclear arsenal that can deter and coerce. North Korea cannot strike targets with its nuclear weapons without risking regime-ending retaliation, so it begs the question how Kim may hope to use nuclear weapons to coerce. Early in the Cold War, Nobel laureate Thomas Schelling identified how states sought to leverage nuclear weapon not only as a last ditch protection against invasion but to shape proactively an adversary's actions. The record of success in rattling the nuclear saber is mixed, but most nuclear states have tried: In 1958-59, the Soviets moved nuclear weapons into East Germany during the Berlin Crisis to urge U.S. withdrawal from the city. In 1962, the United States alerted its nuclear forces and both Kennedy and Khrushchev struggled to maintain effective nuclear launch authority amid the Cuban missile crisis. In 1973, Israel made initial moves to arm its nuclear-capable Jericho missiles to unlock reluctant American military support during the Yom Kippur War. In 1999, Pakistan moved out of storage its nuclear-capable missiles during the Kargil crisis. In 2002, India tested its nuclear-capable Agni missile amid Operation Parakram that mobilized 800,000 Indian troops and saw tough nuclear rhetoric following Pakistani-backed militants’ attack on the Indian parliament. Beyond the historical record of other states rattling the nuclear saber, Kim fits the mold of a leader more likely to use brinkmanship and risk-accepting behavior. He lacks conventional military superiority over the U.S.-ROK alliance that would render nuclear threats redundant, and he does not have the same reputational risks associated with nuclear bluster given past nuclear statements. A credible North Korean nuclear deterrent injects a new dynamic into North Korean brinkmanship. North Korea's conventional forces have long raised their alert status during U.S.-ROK military exercises, noting that the U.S. military build-up could be a precursor to invasion. How would the U.S.-ROK alliance respond if North Korea noted in advance that it would alert its nuclear forces to defend against the possibility of military exercises turning into an invasion? In the Cuban missile crisis, the nuclear alert jeopardized civilian control over nuclear launch decisions. How would the alliance respond if Kim claimed he would pre-delegate launch decisions to field commanders if military exercises practiced “decapitation strikes” against North Korean leadership targets? Neither a nuclear alert nor pre-delegating launch authority involves using nuclear weapons, but it rattles the saber and increases the risk of accidents and unauthorized nuclear use. If North Korea's ballistic missile-carrying submarine, currently under construction, later appears off South Korea's coast ahead of an election or international sporting event, how will South Korea and the United States respond? It has been routine to return to the UN Security Council following North Korean missile launches and nuclear tests, but thinking through how to deter and respond to new types of North Korean provocations based on an operational nuclear capability is necessary to get ahead of the threat curve and avoid policymaking amid crisis. Strategic provocations require more than military planners' attention, and whole-of-government and bilateral and trilateral (including Japan) responses are necessary to ensure a thoughtful and coordinated approach. The first step is recognizing that the future of North Korean provocations is likely to be different than its current playbook.

Blog Post by Guest Blogger for Asia Unbound March 5, 2018 Asia Unbound
South Korea

Will South Korea’s Olympic Diplomacy Last?

South Korea must capitalize on its diplomatic push to bridge the divide between its longtime ally and its combative neighbor.

Expert Brief by Scott A. Snyder March 2, 2018
South Korea

Can South Korea Save Itself?

For much of its recent history, Korea has been caught in conflicts between powerful neighbors—an experience that provides sobering lessons for South Korean leaders grappling with their country’s vulnerabilities today. Since its independence following World War II, South Korea has recovered from war, overcome poverty, democratized, and developed into the 11th-largest economy in the world. Yet sitting astride Northeast Asia’s major geopolitical fault lines, it remains existentially vulnerable: the North Korean nuclear threat continues to grow, and the war of words between U.S. President Donald Trump and North Korean Supreme Leader Kim Jong Un continues to escalate. There is no ready historical template to help South Korean leaders sidestep tragedy should words turn into military action. It is no wonder, then, that South Korean President Moon Jae-in so eagerly grasped Kim’s New Year’s olive branch and invited North Korean athletes to participate in the Winter Olympics in Pyeongchang as an insurance policy against disruption during the games—and with the hope that the Olympic goodwill generated would avert a return to confrontation. But with the Olympic flame extinguished at the end of the February 25 closing ceremony and the Paralympics to follow, the question is whether Moon can extend the spirit of inter-Korean reconciliation beyond a limited-time-only easing of tensions on the Korean Peninsula. Making his gambit succeed, and forestalling a return to dangerous escalation, will require more than just diplomacy between the two Koreas. Moon must find a way to bridge the divide between Washington and Pyongyang. MISSED CONNECTION For Moon, brokering the Olympic truce proved surprisingly easy with a big assist from Kim. He failed, however, to connect his North Korean and American guests. The perceived overeagerness of his administration to roll out the red carpet for the North Koreans generated pushback domestically and internationally. Moon’s domestic critics charged that he had turned the Pyeongchang Olympics into the Pyongyang Olympics by allowing not only North Korean athletes and officials but also an orchestra, a cheering squad, and a tae kwon do demonstration team to come for the games. Those feelings were reinforced by the novelty of hosting Kim’s sister both at the opening ceremonies and at the Blue House, South Korea’s presidential headquarters. The symbolism of the fielding of a unified women’s hockey team also proved controversial among South Koreans: they could accept athletes marching together under a unified flag but were reluctant to sacrifice South Korean competitiveness on the altar of political symbolism. Read more on ForeignAffairs.com.

Blog Post by Scott A. Snyder February 26, 2018 Asia Unbound
U.S. Foreign Policy

The State of the Union and the Dangerous Turn in the United States’ North Korea Policy

President Trump’s State of the Union speech signaled the White House’s dangerous and growing fixation on using maximum pressure alone to denuclearize North Korea. But the soundest way to resolve the nuclear crisis lies in the simultaneous application of both maximum pressure and diplomatic engagement.

Blog Post by Patricia M. Kim February 1, 2018 Asia Unbound
North Korea

Kim Jong-un’s Dialogue Offer and South Korea’s Choice

With about five weeks to go until the Winter Olympics in South Korea, North Korea’s Kim Jong-un suddenly appeared to reverse course. Having focused on nuclear and missile testing while rejecting conciliatory calls from the South to open dialogue, Kim in a New Year’s speech made his own offer for talks on how to create a peaceful environment for the Olympics and the 70th anniversary of North Korea’s founding. The South quickly accepted, proposing to hold talks next week. But it may not be an unalloyed success for South Korea’s progressive President Moon Jae-in, who has staked his political future on improving relations in the North. In reality, it is an attempt to put him in an impossible bind. Read more in The Atlantic.

Blog Post by Scott A. Snyder January 2, 2018 Asia Unbound
North Korea

The Challenge From North Korea

This Global Governance Working Paper is a new feature of the Council of Councils (CoC), an initiative of the Council on Foreign Relations. Targeting critical global problems where new, creative thinking is needed, the working papers identify new principles, rules, or institutional arrangements that can improve international cooperation in addressing long-standing or emerging global problems. The views and recommendations are the opinion of the authors only, do not necessarily represent a consensus of the CoC members, and are not the positions of the supporting institutions. The Council on Foreign Relations takes no institutional positions on policy issues and has no affiliation with the U.S. government. The Challenge A nuclear-armed North Korea is a threat to the fragile strategic equilibrium on the Korean Peninsula and to international security at large. Emboldened by a nuclear arsenal, the highly militarized regime of President Kim Jong-un could be tempted to embark on aggressive acts. Meanwhile, the United States could opt for preventive military action. Even if neither party seeks a military confrontation, conflict could ensue due to miscalculation or simple misreading of each other’s intentions. Limited military exchanges could spiral out of control, eventually involving not only North Korea, the United States, and its allies in the region—Japan and South Korea—but also China. The repercussions of North Korea’s nuclear challenge may not be limited to Northeast Asia, not least because the nonproliferation regime, a pillar of international security, would be dealt a serious, if not fatal, blow if regional adversaries sought to meet it by acquiring their own nuclear arsenals. The destabilizing effects of North Korea’s nuclear and ballistic programs on regional and international security cannot be overestimated. In devising a response to the North Korean challenge, regional actors should remain committed to the denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula, but they should also implement security measures with observable results short of full denuclearization. Specifically, the United States and its allies should concentrate on sanctioning North Korea and on diplomatic action, actively seeking the involvement of China and Russia, while employing a strategy of deterrence and containment. North Korea’s Objectives According to President Kim, North Korea’s nuclear and ballistic programs are meant to establish “equilibrium” with U.S. forces. Kim craves the ultimate deterrent: a nuclear-armed intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) capable of reaching the United States. In his eyes, this option is a necessary guarantee for his and his party’s continued rule—indeed, their survival. The brisk increase in number and scope of missile and nuclear tests in 2016 and 2017 is consistent with this goal. Kim may also be indulging in more daring thoughts, like taking advantage of North Korea’s nuclear and ballistic programs to militarily pursue unification with the South. Recommendations To minimize the risks of a regional conflict, strategic miscalculation, or North Korean adventurism, the United States and its allies should pursue the following recommendations. Avoid a preventive military strike. It is tempting to handle North Korea the way Alexander the Great used to untie knots, namely by swinging a sword at them. Yet, there is no Gordian knot solution to North Korea. The notion that U.S. bombing of North Korea’s nuclear and ballistic facilities holds the promise of a quick and definitive fix should be put aside. U.S. forces may be unable to find or destroy all nuclear and missile-related targets and would probably only slow down the North’s progress, at the cost, however, of a military confrontation that could escalate into a full-fledged regional war. The North’s arsenal of conventional capabilities and chemical and biological weapons has the capacity to inflict tremendous pain on South Korea, and no one should rule out the possibility of Kim using nuclear weapons. Nor can the eventuality of a reluctant China entering the fray to prevent the loss of a useful buffer between its own border and the U.S.-South Korean border be dismissed. Unsurprisingly, neither U.S. allies in the region nor China or Russia are in favor of preventive military action. Pursue a multipronged policy response. Containment and crisis management, not war, are the least bad ways to handle North Korea, and both warrant coordination among the regional powers. The wisest way to address this challenge is a policy mix involving defense and deterrence, sanctions, and diplomacy. While these different types of action can unfold independently, all actors involved should do their best to prevent actions in one area from undermining what can be done in another. The United States, Japan, and South Korea should work to improve their defense and deterrence assets while making an effort to coordinate with Russia and China, both bilaterally and in the United Nations, on sanctions and diplomacy. Strengthen U.S. and allied defenses. Strong defense and deterrence assets are essential to persuade the North that its opponents have the capacity to minimize the damage of an artillery or missile attack and respond to it effectively. Given the North’s growing ballistic capabilities, missile defense is an obvious starting point. The United States can bolster South Korea’s nationally operated missile defense assets, both on land (Patriots) and at sea (Aegis). Critically, U.S. and South Korean defense planners will have to work on overcoming technical and political impediments to the interoperability of the South’s system with the U.S.-built Terminal High Altitude Air Defense (THAAD), currently being deployed to the South. With the North having amplified its missile threat, and in the absence of any arms control arrangement, opposition to THAAD in South Korea has actually collapsed, with President Moon Jae-in, until recently a vocal opponent, now supporting it. However, China and Russia have fiercely opposed THAAD deployment for fear that its X-band radar would be used to track their own ballistic capabilities. Beijing, in particular, will likely continue its efforts to drive a wedge between Seoul and Washington on the deployment of missile defense systems in South Korean territory. More generally, China’s ability to exert pressure on South Korea to influence the latter’s decision-making on security matters should not be underestimated. In view of that, Washington and Seoul should make clear that THAAD is exclusively tailored to North Korea’s ballistic threat, even going as far as to issue a declaration that they may remove it if that threat eventually vanishes. These are opportune steps to assuage Chinese and Russian concerns. There may also be room for confidence-building measures to assure China that THAAD radars have only limited abilities to detect and track Chinese missile launches. Establish more credible deterrence. Bolstering deterrence will involve a delicate balancing act between dissuading North Korea and not alarming China or Russia. Potentially harmful side effects on the global nonproliferation regime should also be avoided. The latter point is critical. Cold military logic would suggest that Japan and South Korea, in agreement with the United States, should build their own arsenals. This step would contribute to making Tokyo and Seoul masters of their own destinies and reduce the risk that U.S. territory becomes the target of a nuclear attack. Northeast Asia does not exist in a vacuum, though. It is part of an international security system of which the nonproliferation regime based on the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty (NPT) is a fundamental component. The NPT would be severely, if not fatally, damaged by a withdrawal of Japan and South Korea, two of its staunchest supporters. With the treaty weakened or gone, power politics would be a greater factor—or perhaps the only factor—shaping nonproliferation dynamics, which would be a far weaker guarantee that countries such as Egypt, Iran, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, and many others (as varied as Argentina, Brazil, Indonesia, and Vietnam) would stick to nonproliferation commitments. The security benefits that Japan and South Korea would gain by going nuclear should be weighed against the risk of generalized, uncontrolled proliferation. A nuclear-armed Japan and South Korea would also change the regional power structure, probably leading China and Russia to adjust their deterrence policies. This would likely reduce any chance of regional cooperation on North Korea. Deterrence should therefore unfold along more traditional patterns—extended nuclear deterrence (by the United States) and conventional deterrence. Reassurance should go both ways. Mechanisms to ensure extended nuclear deterrence should be put in place incrementally to avoid or minimize frictions with Russia and China. Thus far, the United States has refrained from committing permanent deployments of strategic assets—bombers or dual capable aircraft, nuclear-armed submarines, and carrier groups—to land bases and ports in South Korea. Increasing their periodic deployment through more intensive rotations is the wisest choice. For the same reason, redeploying U.S. tactical nuclear weapons to South Korea (which were removed in the early 1990s) is not advisable. Such a move would carry a high risk of escalating tensions with the North—but also with China—while bringing no strategic benefits not already provided by U.S. nuclear-armed submarines and nuclear-capable bombers. South Korea will need to bolster the credibility of its so-called massive retaliation and punishment plan, involving assets to destroy North Korea’s heavy artillery along the thirty-eighth parallel in the shortest timeframe possible and beefed-up strike capabilities—all matters on which assistance from the U.S. government and coordination with U.S. forces are essential. To that end, the United States and South Korea should increase cooperation on target acquisition, while also coordinating more with Japan on intelligence gathering. Enhanced cooperation will also be needed to strengthen digital defenses and exploit the North’s cyber vulnerabilities. Coordinate sanctions with regional powers. The purpose of sanctions is to punish and deter flagrant breaches of nonproliferation commitments—an important message also sent to any other potential proliferator. Targeted sanctions can also contribute to containing the Kim regime by denying it access to resources that could be crucial for the advancement of its nuclear and ballistic programs. These secondary functions of sanctions against North Korea remain important even if it continues its nuclear weapons program. Recent developments show that it is possible to build and keep a united diplomatic front involving such major powers as China and Russia around a robust package of sanctions. The UN Security Council (with resolutions 2371 and 2375) has prohibited North Korean exports of coal and textiles, banned natural gas imports, capped oil imports, curtailed financial transactions, and forbade arrangements that would result in additional North Korean citizens working abroad. The United States has gone much further with an executive order that threatens the freezing of assets held in the United States by foreign companies and individuals engaging in any financial or trade transactions with North Korean entities. These measures have the potential to inflict heavy pain on North Korea. Revenue from coal and textile exports and remittances are Pyongyang’s only significant remaining licit sources of foreign funding. North Korea’s heavy reliance on China for oil (and food) is also an important vulnerability, while targeting financial transactions is meant to curtail the North’s ability to get foreign currency, often through front companies set up abroad. With China apparently willing to play along with U.S. sanctions, North Korea may soon be under economic siege. Whether this will be enough to induce a change of course, however, remains open to question. The Kim regime has the luxury of not having to worry about the effects of sanctions on the population, widely subdued by years of propaganda and ruthless repression. In addition, thanks to some modest domestic reforms, the North’s economy has performed decently recently, which provides the regime with some slack. Moreover, China, frustrated as it may be by North Korea’s nuclear bravado, will refrain from taking steps that could lead to its collapse. China’s cooperation with the United States has increased lately, but Beijing’s fundamental strategic calculus—that a nuclear-armed North Korea would be better than a unified U.S.-allied Korea at its border—has not changed. Washington should bear this in mind, particularly when it comes to applying secondary sanctions. It is an open secret that China, like Russia (and many other countries), opposes such measures because they give the United States de facto extraterritorial jurisdiction. The United States would be wise to apply the new sanctions only against companies in violation of UN Security Council resolutions. Explore options for realistic diplomacy. Sanctions can, and should, be used as bargaining chips in negotiations. Ideally, the dormant Six Party Talks should be resumed, although direct contact between the United States and North Korea and between the North and the South will be needed too. Even if the lifting of sanctions should be linked to denuclearization, limited exemptions and waivers could be promised in return for de-escalating measures by the North. In exchange for a moratorium on nuclear and missile tests, the United States could also offer not to increase its military activities and presence on the peninsula. Perhaps even more critically, the parties could agree on mechanisms to prevent accidental escalation, including hotlines, military-to-military contacts, and regular exchanges of information. There are also a number of incentives unrelated to sanctions that the regional powers can put on the table in order to persuade the North to exert self-restraint. South Korea could envisage the reopening of the Kaesong industrial complex and discuss the disputed maritime demarcation line in the Yellow Sea; Russia could be allowed to develop infrastructure projects in the North; and the United States, China, and South Korea could signal their readiness to start talks on a formal peace treaty. Conclusion North Korea’s nuclear and ballistic weapons development is a threat to international security and imperils the global nonproliferation regime. This strategy of deterrence and containment combined with regional power coordination would defuse the risk of events spiraling out of control. The most that can be reasonably hoped for in the current circumstances is not a resolution of the North Korea crisis, but injecting a higher degree of predictability into regional relations. For as long as all parties know where the trip wire triggering a major conflagration is, the risk they will deliberately walk or accidentally stumble into it will be far lower than it is now.

Report by Riccardo Alcaro and Ettore Greco November 29, 2017 International Institutions and Global Governance Program
North Korea

America First or U.S.-South Korea Alliance First in Dealing with North Korea?

As President Donald Trump was kicking off the first state visit under the progressive administration of Moon Jae-in, the life-or-death question in South Korean minds was whether Trump intended to take an America-first or an alliance-first approach in response to the growing North Korean threat. How Trump views American alliance commitments to defend South Korea from North Korean aggression has become an urgent question as North Korea has expanded the range of its missiles and the yield of its nuclear explosions. When the North Korean foreign minister threatened an above ground thermonuclear test in response to President Trump’s threat at the United Nations in September to destroy the country, there was every reason for South Koreans to worry that the war of words might trigger a military conflict, with potentially catastrophic consequences for South Korea. They may have been reassured somewhat when Trump, at a joint press conference with Moon in Seoul, urged the North Koreans to “come to the table and make a deal,” stating that military options are a last resort and that the current strategy remains one of economic pressure and political isolation. Yet despite what Trump called “movement” on the issue, denuclearization remains a distant goal—and Trump’s ultimate strategy an open question. North Korean leaders believe that the ability to strike the United States with nuclear weapons will finally even the nuclear playing field, after it has lived under what it sees as the threat of American nuclear attacks for decades. Trump has stated that the United States will not tolerate vulnerability to a North Korean nuclear strike capability—which is getting ever-closer as the North approaches the means to fit a nuclear warhead on an intercontinental ballistic missile—and that “Rocket Man” is on a suicide mission. But the South Korean capital city of Seoul is only a few dozen miles south of the Demilitarized Zone (DMZ) and has lived with the risk of destruction from North Korean artillery and rocket launchers for decades, making redundant the threat from North Korea’s nuclear weapons that Koreans have lived with following North Korea’s first nuclear test in 2006. Kim Jong-un has stated that an “equilibrium” with the United States will remove the risk of an American attack on Pyongyang, despite worrisome evidence to the contrary. Both statements reveal misplaced assumptions that raise the risk of miscalculation and pose new tests for a U.S.-South Korean security alliance that has helped deter renewal of war with North Korea for decades. South Korea’s embrace of the security alliance with the United States has proven to be the country’s best strategy for securing its stability and prosperity, even at the cost of South Korean aspirations for autonomy. The clash between the need for an alliance protector and the desire for autonomy has evolved as a result of South Korea’s democratic transformation and as South Korea has become the dominant power on the peninsula, surpassing the North in the 1970s. South Korea’s dependency on the United States has remained critical in facing down North Korea’s nuclear threat, as well as managing China’s rise—not least because South Korea’s embrace of global trade interdependence relies on rules made by the United States. But South Korean domestic debates about America’s reliability have grown in recent years on issues such as how to balance relations between Beijing and Washington. More recently, South Korean debates have centered on whether to request a return of U.S. tactical nuclear weapons to South Korean soil, or even whether South Korea should develop its own nuclear weapons to balance the North. Just last week, the Moon administration started walking the high wire in Moon’s diplomacy with Trump and Xi Jinping as it launched what it calls “balanced diplomacy,” the goal of which is to pursue a diplomatic rapprochement with China following over a year of friction over the U.S. deployment of the Terminal High Altitude Air Defense (THAAD) missile-defense system in South Korea. While emphasizing the importance of joint U.S.-South Korean defense and deterrence against North Korea, Moon reiterated the importance of balanced diplomacy as a way of diversifying South Korea’s diplomatic relations at his joint press conference with President Trump. But this effort has generated debate about whether Moon is sacrificing potential for strengthened trilateral U.S.-Japan-South Korean security cooperation for the sake of better relations with Beijing. Still, given the effectiveness of the U.S.-South Korean security alliance in deterring conventional aggression from a far weaker North Korean adversary, Pyongyang, using its classic guerrilla mindset and tactics, has been testing the alliance with unconventional challenges. One end of the spectrum involves unconventional provocations short of war, as when the North Korean sinking of a Korean naval vessel and shelling of a South Korean-controlled island near the North Korean mainland in 2010 raised the risk of South Korean unilateral retaliation. In those cases, U.S. Forces in Korea counseled restraint. On the opposite end of the spectrum, of course, is the nuclear threat on the U.S. mainland, which has reversed this dynamic, with South Korean president Moon insisting in a speech to the National Assembly days prior to President Trump’s arrival in Seoul that “no military action on the Korean peninsula will be taken without the prior consent of the Republic of Korea.” In both instances, a primary source of tension is whether an America-first approach involving unilateral U.S. action, or an alliance-based approach, is likely to be a more effective solution to the problem. The America-first approach to North Korea runs the risk of playing into Kim Jong-un’s hands. North Korea’s quest for the capability to strike the United States allows it to test the credibility of American security commitments—would the U.S. president really risk Los Angeles to save Seoul if North Korea invaded the South?—demand withdrawal of U.S. forces from South Korea, and pursue North Korean-led unification of the Korean peninsula. On the one hand, South Koreans worry about the risk of American abandonment of South Korea under threat of North Korean blackmail. On the other hand, they worry that a premature American strike on North Korea will entrap South Korea in a conflict that could potentially cost millions of Korean lives and threaten the economic base of one of the top 15 economies in the world. North Korea’s pressure on the alliance, combined with America’s own mixed signals—for instance Trump’s suggestion that South Korea and Japan should pursue their own nuclear arms during the election campaign—may together give Kim Jong-un hope that Trump might cave in and bring U.S. Forces in Korea home. From an America first perspective, the Trump administration will want to examine every measure available to prevent North Korea from expanding its power to extort respect and resources from the rest of the world. In this view, the idea of nuclear vulnerability to Kim Jong-un is intolerable and must be stopped at all costs, including preventive war. But a premature unilateral strike on North Korea will most probably break both the U.S.-South Korea alliance, by precipitating a South Korean domestic backlash over whether conflict was necessary, and endanger the U.S.-led security architecture in Asia—in addition to forcing the United States to bear disproportionate costs for a protracted post-conflict stabilization process on the Korean peninsula. On the other hand, an alliance-first approach to countering North Korea supports the continuation of the Trump administration’s maximum pressure and engagement campaign against North Korea. It holds the line on North Korean dreams of coercing the South into Korean unification while countering North Korean threats with certain knowledge in Pyongyang that crisis escalation would prevent Kim Jong-un from achieving his essential objective of regime survival, a solid form of restraint against North Korean adventurism. It should buy the time necessary to fully implement the Trump administration’s efforts to squeeze North Korea by building ever-greater coercive pressure in support of a diplomatic solution to the current crisis. Significantly, the strategy uses economic coercion in a fashion that more fairly distributes costs to all the concerned parties, including China, by forcing China to accept the necessity of sanctions enforcement. Most importantly, the U.S.-South Korea alliance serves as an important brake on premature military action through preventive war without compromising U.S. capability to take actions in its own self-defense—actions which ultimately would be understandable to American allies—in the event that North Korea were to launch an attack on the United States. This post originally appeared in The Atlantic.

Blog Post by Scott A. Snyder November 7, 2017 Asia Unbound
North Korea

Can the United States, China, and South Korea Cooperate on North Korea?

This post is co-authored by Sungtae "Jacky" Park, research associate for Korea Studies at the Council on Foreign Relations. Yet again, Asia watchers are pondering how China might be able to help with the North Korean crisis. The vast majority in the Washington DC policy community is skeptical that Beijing has the will or the intent to reign in Pyongyang by seriously enforcing the existing sanctions against the regime. However, Kim Heung-kyu, director of the China Policy Institute and professor at Ajou University in South Korea, argues in a new CFR discussion paper, China and the U.S.-ROK Alliance: Promoting a Trilateral Dialogue, that the Chinese discourse toward North Korea has greatly shifted under Xi Jinping and that time is rife to seek U.S.-China-South Korea trilateral cooperation on North Korea. According to Kim, two major schools of foreign policy thought, the developing country school and the traditional geopolitics school, competed for dominance in China under Hu Jintao. The developing country school, which was the mainstream, considered China as a developing country that needed to focus on economic development above all other goals. Based on this thinking, China’s Korea policy was rather passive and focused on stability and status quo. Under Xi, especially after North Korea’s third nuclear test in 2013, China has forged a closer relationship with South Korea. Moreover, calls for tougher sanctions and Chinese support for Korean unification on South Korean terms have also increased in the Chinese discourse. At the same time, the China-North Korea relationship has entered one of the worst periods in its history. Under Xi Jinping, China has adopted an increasingly active and vocal stance on Korea-related issues. For example, on February 17, 2016, Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi suggested pursuing parallel negotiations for denuclearization on the Korean Peninsula on one hand and a peace treaty on the other hand. In March 2017, Wang suggested a dual suspension of North Korea’s nuclear and missile programs and of U.S.-South Korea joint military drills. Both suggestions did not lead to any breakthrough. But Kim argues that the Chinese have also become more open to embracing various mini- and multilateral talks to deal with North Korea–related issues. Kim Heung-kyu argues that, given this shift, China now could be willing to join a trilateral dialogue with the United States and South Korea on North Korea at track 1.7 level, which would include government officials on the U.S. and South Korean sides and nongovernmental experts authorized to discuss sensitive matters by the government on the Chinese side. With enough trust-building, such dialogues could eventually make way for official government-to-government talks on North Korea. To create room for such possibilities, Kim argues that South Korea should intensify diplomacy with China and reach a consensus on stability and the end state on the Korean Peninsula. South Korea should also avoid creating the perception that it is becoming part of any effort to isolate or contain China, particularly on issues such as the Terminal High-Altitude Area Defense system. The Americans and South Koreans should assure the Chinese that the U.S.-Korea alliance is not aimed at seeking regime change in North Korea and that a unified Korea would not be adversarial to Chinese interests. Given that Kim is deeply familiar with the scholarly opinion in China, his paper should be an insightful read at a time when the United States and South Korea need to understand China’s policy toward North Korea better than ever.

Blog Post by Scott A. Snyder and Guest Blogger for Asia Unbound November 7, 2017 Asia Unbound
North Korea

Trump's Stepped Up Sanctions on North Korea

The Trump administration issued a new Executive Order on September 21 expanding the U.S. Treasury’s authority to block North Koreans, and those who do business with or on behalf of North Koreans, from accessing the U.S. financial system. It represents the broadest effort to date to use economic pressure to reverse Kim Jong-un’s decision to pursue a capability to threaten the United States with nuclear weapons. The U.S. Treasury now has the capacity to target North Korean financial transactions and overseas labor networks, any entity that trades with North Korea, to bar vessels or aircraft that have visited or interacted with North Koreans within the prior six months from entry into U.S. ports, and to block North Korean assets that flow through the U.S. financial network. A measure of the power of the new authorities is that China’s central bank immediately issued an advisory to Chinese banks to stop providing financial services to new North Korean customers and to wind down loans with existing North Korean customers. Essentially, the Executive Order enables secondary sanctions on Chinese entities and puts Chinese entities that do substantial business with the U.S. at risk of facing significant financial losses, providing a powerful incentive for Chinese compliance with Treasury rules. The breadth of the Executive Order should provide the United States with the capability to counter many of the sanction-evasion tactics North Korea has employed as part of a cat-and-mouse game. North Korean shell and front companies and dual ledgers kept with Chinese partners have enabled financial flows to and from the country that have enabled North Korea to safely embed its procurement activities in the global supply chain. Assistant Treasury Secretary Marshall Billingslea says his department engages “on a daily basis in ‘hand-to-hand’ financial combat with North Korea’s illicit networks.” As the U.S. Treasury detects entities that violate the new Executive Order, those partners of North Korea will be at risk of having their U.S.-based assets frozen and/or blocked from the U.S. financial system. If the U.S. Treasury applies its authorities aggressively and in concert with other financial authorities in Europe, Japan and South Korea, the isolating effect on flows to North Korea should be sufficient to impose serious economic hardship inside the country. The scope of the U.S. Treasury action is proportionate to the level and urgency of the threat from North Korea that the administration feels, in contrast to the UN Security Council resolutions, which are products of a consensus involving China and Russia as proponents of the lowest common denominator. It is still not clear that North Korea will yield to economic pressure in its pursuit of nuclear weapons. After all, North Korea’s nuclear project is ultimately about Kim Jong-un’s survival, which he regards as a higher priority than economic hardship. Moreover, Kim himself will be the last North Korean to suffer from economic sanctions; rather severe restrictions on North Korea’s trade with the outside world may generate a renewed humanitarian crisis that would put at risk millions of North Korean people. Thus, there is a risk that Kim Jong-un will see economic sanctions, in tandem with presidential threats of annihilation and continued shows-of-force along the demilitarized zone (DMZ) and on North Korea’s east coast, as a strategy for regime change. That is why it must be paired with efforts to strengthen channels of diplomatic communication to North Korea that gives credibility to Secretary of State Rex Tillerson’s rhetoric that the U.S. does not seek North Korea’s collapse, or, for that matter, to wipe North Korea off the face of the earth. While North Korea uses missile and nuclear tests as its main tools by which to convince the U.S. to acquiesce to the country’s nuclear capability, the new U.S. economic sanctions are designed to magnify the costs of North Korea’s nuclear acquisition and put the survival of the Kim Jong-un regime sufficiently at risk to convince him to reverse direction and denuclearize. Unless both sides can find space to reduce misunderstanding, both North Korea and the United States are on a trajectory through their respective actions toward not just hand-to-hand economic conflict, but also a much more costly military confrontation. This post originally appeared on Forbes.

Blog Post by Scott A. Snyder September 26, 2017 Asia Unbound
North Korea

North Korea’s Nuclear Defiance of Trump’s “Fire and Fury”

Following a public demonstration of a completely “homemade” nuclear device claimed to have “great destructive power,” North Korea conducted its sixth nuclear test, which the U.S. Geological Survey reported as generating a 6.3 magnitude explosion. The test, accompanied by a demand that the United States abandon its “hostile policy” toward North Korea, directly defies President Donald Trump’s warnings that North Korean threats would be met with “fire and fury, and frankly power that the world has never seen.” If the president follows through on his rhetoric, the United States will be involved in what Defense Secretary Mattis has characterized as a “catastrophic” military conflict to permanently end the North Korea threat. Such a conflict could consume Trump’s presidency and drastically transform the political landscape; it would probably not relieve Trump’s domestic political difficulties but compound them. Whatever doubts are openly circulating within Congress regarding Trump’s leadership could be magnified and underscored if Trump becomes a war president. But if the president does not follow through on his rhetoric, he will be seen as a paper tiger and his power to effectively use the bully pulpit of the presidency would be further reduced. The credibility of the president globally might take a hit, but in not following up on rhetorical threats toward North Korea, Trump would in reality be little different from Clinton or Bush. Trump will want to handle North Korea’s sixth nuclear test different from Obama, so a U.N. Security Council resolution will not be enough. On the other hand, the Trump administration must be careful to avoid escalating a crisis without adequate preparations to ensure that the administration is not entrapped by North Korea into an outcome unfavorable to U.S. interests. There has been growing Congressional interest in an expanded secondary sanctions regime against North Korea, especially against Chinese counterparts with business interests in North Korea. There is also support for utilizing unilateral financial measures more aggressively to cut off the money flow to North Korea, even though existing U.N. sanctions have virtually quarantined North Korea—on paper. China has less grounds to object to U.S. self-defensive measures following North Korea’s sixth nuclear test. But the task of applying those sanctions in practice requires cooperation from the Chinese, and to a lesser extent, the Russians, as well as other members of the international community. In addition to sectoral bans on coal and seafood products, China and Russia will be under great pressure to agree to an oil embargo and a cut-off of support for North Korean laborers working abroad. While these measures may bring additional financial pain and isolation to North Korea’s leadership, they will take time, and they occur against the backdrop of rumors that Kim Jong Un has stockpiled significant petroleum reserves in order to ride out likely repercussions of an international oil embargo on North Korea. But time is increasingly not on Trump’s side. Preparations for conventional military action against North Korea would run up against a variety of obstacles. Evacuation of expatriate civilians from and positioning of augmented U.S. forces in South Korea would take weeks if not months and could trigger North Korean preemptive measures. Plus, South Korean President Moon Jae In has insisted that no military action should take place on the peninsula without Seoul’s concurrence. North Korea is probably counting on South Korea to restrain the United States from unilateral military action against it given that up to one million South Korean casualties could result from a retaliation by Pyongyang. A preemptive decapitation strike would likely face the same risk of North Korean retaliation. Finally, Trump could talk to Kim, even at risk of acquiescing to the reality that North Korea is a nuclear state. Clearly, North Korea is using the tests to shape the strategic environment in its favor. But there is slim evidence that Kim is ready or willing to talk, given that he has to date had no interaction with any other international leader, and there are no indications that North Korea is willing to negotiate a compromise or make concessions. North Korea’s sixth test pushes the United States closer to a strategic choice between two unacceptable options : acquiescence to North Korea as a nuclear power, or “catastrophic” military conflict to permanently end the North Korea threat. Even if North Korea were to be recognized as a nuclear state, it is not clear that Kim’s sense of vulnerability would be reduced. Kim must not be allowed at all costs to export his vulnerability to the rest of the world: that should be Trump’s primary goal. This post originally appeared on Forbes.

Blog Post by Scott A. Snyder September 5, 2017 Asia Unbound
South Korea

Launch of the Trump-Moon Era in U.S.-Korea Relations

On 29 June 2017, South Korean President Moon Jae-in arrived in Washington for an early summit with his US counterpart Donald Trump. Despite dramatic contrasts in the circumstances, ideologies and style of these two unlikely partners, the convergence of national interests and common objectives concerning North Korea was sufficient to keep the US–South Korea alliance on track. Ironically, successful coordination on the issue of North Korea exposed differing views on trade and burden sharing that will keep diplomats from both countries busy. Prior to the summit, it was common to find analyses suggesting that the chemistry between Moon and Trump would be analogous to mixing oil and water. The progressive Moon has been an understated and personable domestic bridge-builder, elected on an anti-corruption platform following a presidential impeachment scandal. In contrast, the conservative Trump has pursued a brash and divisive approach to governance that takes no prisoners and has blurred ethical boundaries between government and business. An Asan Institute poll showed that South Korean support for the alliance remains high —despite Trump’s declining personal popularity compared to former president Barack Obama — with over half of South Koreans polled supporting the Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) deployment. Moon supporters expressed wariness that Trump and Moon would have no chemistry or that Trump would embarrass and humiliate Moon. But Moon’s strategy of alignment with Trump on security issues — forecast in public interviews in the weeks prior to the summit — took almost every security issue off the table before Moon arrived in Washington. Moon declared in those interviews that he was in agreement with Trump on the need to increase pressure on North Korea, while seeking opportunities for substantive dialogue. Moon also allayed fears surrounding his authorisation of an environmental assessment of THAAD, indicating it was intended to strengthen support for the system and the legitimacy of its deployment by following transparent and democratic procedures. By the time Moon arrived in Washington to meet Trump, no big picture security issues remained on the table that could spark disagreement. But the convergence on security issues left space for Trump to express his longstanding, personally-held views of South Korea as an economic free rider. Trump tweeted following dinner with Moon that he was already renegotiating the Korea–US Free Trade Agreement (KORUS FTA), an announcement that shocked South Korean communications officials accompanying Moon. Trump also placed discordant emphasis on the need for reciprocal trade and for South Korea’s cooperation to level the playing field for US auto exports and avoid facilitating unfair dumping of steel in US markets. The South Korean side defended itself by stating that economic differences expressed by Trump were not included in their Joint Statement. The Joint Statement itself underscored the extensive institutionalisation of US–South Korean cooperation within the alliance, while reflecting an evolution in views on some key issues. It also reflected important continuities with the 2009 and 2013 US–South Korea Joint Vision statements, including commitment to ‘conditions-based transfer of wartime operational control’, development of deterrence capabilities, ‘complete, verifiable, and irreversible denuclearisation of the Korean peninsula in a peaceful manner’, concern about North Korean human rights conditions, and the importance of maintaining US–Japan–South Korea trilateral cooperation. The joint commitment to ‘foster expanded and balanced trade while creating reciprocal benefits and fair treatment between the two countries’ synthesized efforts to address emerging US–South Korea gaps on trade relations and burden sharing. While it is too much to say that the KORUS FTA is being renegotiated, the terms and trade-offs underlying existing bilateral trade and security frameworks are clearly under pressure to adapt to new leadership priorities. Despite the media focus on the chemistry of Moon’s first meeting with Trump, three events surrounding the Moon–Trump summit appear more likely to influence future US–South Korea cooperation and regional dynamics. First, only days prior to the summit, the US treasury department announced the unilateral designation of the Bank of Dandong under Section 311 of the Patriot Act, the same provision of US law used to sanction the Banco Delta Asia in 2005 — a sanction that had significant reputational effects for financial institutions doing business with North Korea. It represents the first US unilateral effort since 2005 to use the Patriot Act for the purpose of applying secondary sanctions against Chinese entities doing business with North Korea. The new Bank of Dandong sanctions underscore that US patience for Chinese sanction enforcement failures is running out. The sanctions announcement was also perceived by some analysts as a blow to any South Korean effort to implement economic engagement strategies toward North Korea at the expense of pressure. Second, Trump and Moon also announced a trilateral dinner with Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe on the sidelines of the G20 summit. This dinner stands in stark contrast to the failure of Japan, China and South Korea to schedule their next trilateral summit meeting, reportedly as a result of Chinese frustration with Moon’s failure to reverse the THAAD deployment. Finally, North Korea’s successful intercontinental ballistic missile test on 4 July 2017 has provided a direct challenge to Trump’s tweet in January that such a test would not happen, generating even greater pressure on the President to force Kim Jong-un to reverse course. Trump and Moon may make an odd couple. The fact that they are getting along suggests a triumph of pragmatism over ideology, which marks a good start for the time being and will be crucial as the relationship faces even greater challenges ahead. This post originally appeared on East Asia Forum.

Blog Post by Scott A. Snyder July 12, 2017 Asia Unbound