5 Ways Trump Could Stumble into a War with North Korea
Yes, it could happen. Here's how.
Notwithstanding Donald Trump’s immediate acceptance of Kim Jong-un’s invitation to meet this May, the Korean Peninsula is still one of the more volatile areas of the world. The inter-Korean summit set to take place this April at Panmunjom and the Trump-Kim sit-down a month later will no doubt cools the temperature briefly. It’s easy to look at all of the smiles, handshakes, and positivity surrounding the Winter Olympic Games in South Korea and imagine for a moment that Pyongyang and Seoul are on the cusp of a new sunshine policy.
But reality has a tendency to snap us out of our self-induced happiness coma. The prospect of an armed confrontation between the United States with its Northeast Asian allies against a nuclear North Korea remains. We are talking about North Korea after all; nothing is simple and there is plenty that can still go wrong.
Here are five ways a war on the Korean Peninsula could get that much closer.
1. John Bolton Gets Appointed National Security Adviser
According to a March 16 article in the Washington Post, President Trump has made the decision to fire Lt. Gen. H. R. McMaster as national security adviser. Former State Department nonproliferation official, U.S. ambassador, and uber-hawk John Bolton is apparently in the running to be McMaster’s replacement. McMaster is definitely no dove on North Korea, having insisted—without evidence—that Kim Jong-un is too nuts to be deterred. But he is no Bolton either, whose version of compassionate diplomacy is dropping two 500-pound guided bombs on a target rather than four.
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Were Bolton to have access to Trump in the Oval Office and chair weekly meetings of the National Security Council, the preventive use of U.S. military force to disarm North Korea’s nuclear weapons program—the same disastrous policy he advocated against Saddam Hussein earlier in the century—would not just be one option among many in the drawer. It would be one of the only options he offers to the president.
Bolton has been relishing conflict with the North Koreans since Bill Clinton’s tenure, and he has not changed his stripes in the two decades since. In one of his more bizarre columns in the Wall Street Journal last month, he used an nineteenth-century steamboat analogy to make the case of a preemptive American attack on Pyongyang. The only problem, of course, is that steamboats don’t have the power to kill millions of people in retaliation.
“It is perfectly legitimate,” Bolton writes, “for the United States to respond to the current “necessity” posed by North Korea’s nuclear weapons by striking first.” Right now, this recommendation is just the harmless ranting of a former official who likes to hear himself talk on TV—and doesn’t recognize how frightening he sounds to most Americans. But if he were in the Oval Office giving that same advice, the rantings wouldn't be so harmless anymore.
2. Trump Leaves the Kim Summit Angry
President Trump desperately wants to be the guy who makes history and succeeds where every other president has failed: resolve the North Korea nuclear issue permanently. He was ecstatic when the South Korean delegation came to the White House and delivered a message of peace from Kim Jong-un, and he has been quite confident since then of his ability to go into the summit and leave with a full denuclearization of Kim’s regime. Pressed by a reporter on whether he believed Kim was actually interested in trading away his nuclear arsenal, Trump said that he thought the North Koreans were “sincere” in their offer.
Trump has set a high bar for himself going into his discussions with the North Korean leader. When those expectations aren’t met—when the infamous peace summit Trump is harping on turns out to be a meet-and-greet photo opportunity with an hour of small talk rather than the diplomatic triumph he was hoping for—the president could fly back to Washington livid that Kim refused to grant concessions. He will blame Kim Jong-un’s defiance and stubbornness instead of his own misplaced expectations. “See,” he may ask, “I was right. Talking with the North Koreans is a waste of time that will get is nowhere. They are stringing us along. It’s time to stop treating them so nicely. General Mattis, give me some war plans.”
3. Pyongyang Breaks Its Missile Testing Moratorium
The Kim regime has committed to a nuclear and missile testing freeze before the May summit as long as diplomatic talks show progress. This is a concession the Trump administration deserves credit for, even if this freeze still permits Pyongyang’s scientists to continue producing nuclear warheads, researching missile re-entry technology, operating their plutonium reactors and enriching uranium.
But it’s not like the Kim family has not dangled this carrot before. Kim Jong-il committed to a suspension of long-range missile launches in 1998, only to break it in 2006 when the Six Party talks were at a stalemate. Kim Jong-un agreed to a similar concession during the 2012 Leap Day Agreement, only to send a satellite into space a few weeks later—using the very same ballistic missile technology he promised to park. President Trump does not seem like the kind of person who would be as understanding about broken promises from the North Koreans. In fact, because the president internalizes everything, he would probably view such a violation as an affront to him personally. No one is saying Trump would order B1-B bombers into North Korean airspace as a reprisal, but no one can say with absolute assurance that he wouldn’t either.
4. Talks Collapse and Kim Rejects Trump's Ultimatum
If the Trump-Kim summit ends in disaster or the administration concludes that the North Koreans aren’t serious and walks away from the table, Trump could give Pyongyang one last chance to comply with UN Security Council resolutions. Much like Presidents Bill Clinton and George W. Bush demanded Saddam Hussein’s unconditional cooperation with the UN’s nuclear inspectors to avoid U.S. military action, Trump could hold a theatrical prime time news conference and deliver Kim Jong-un an ultimatum: re-admit IAEA inspectors into your country and begin the process of verifiable denuclearization, or face the consequences.
Were Pyongyang to let that deadline pass, Trump would be put into a box of his own making. He can either stand down and experience his own red line fiasco for weeks on end, or he could distinguish himself from Barack Obama and carry out his threat. The former would be s political embarrassment. The latter would spark a conflict more costly than any war since World War II.
5. A Deal Is Reached, and Kim Is Caught Cheating
When the Clinton administration signed the Agreed Framework with Pyongyang in 1994, it was touted by the president himself as a landmark accord that would help lead to a nuclear-free Korean Peninsula and the phased normalization of relations between the United States and North Korea. Clinton’s predictions obviously didn’t come to pass; confronted with evidence of a secret uranium enrichment program, Pyongyang admitted it was working on a covert pathway to a bomb and the Agreed Framework died.
The North Koreans are experts in wiggling their way out of agreements when it suits their needs. They did in 2002. They did in 2008, when they slow rolled the Bush administration’s attempt to settle on a verification plan. And they did it in 2012 when a satellite was launched weeks after Pyongyang agreed on a launching moratorium. Assuming a denuclearization deal does get done, precedent tells us that the regime would cheat again or at least try to exploit any loopholes that may exist in a prospective deal. And when the CIA discovers that the North is backtracking on its commitments and provides a report to Trump that his buddy Kim has been playing him for a fool, the president’s response may very well be ugly, forceful and uncompromising.
Daniel R. DePetris is a world affairs columnist for Reuters, a frequent contributor to the American Conservative and the National Interest, and a foreign-policy analyst based in New York, NY.
Image: Flickr
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