North Korea’s leader Kim Jong Un has just unleashed a barrage of threats at the United States, greeting President Joe Biden with what is likely to be his biggest foreign policy dilemma, beginning shortly after his inauguration on January 20.
It was not simply that Kim engaged in familiar rhetorical flourishes, calling the United States the “main enemy” of the North. He also made it clear that his three meetings with outgoing President Donald Trump have largely failed to end his nuclear program – the club he maintains in the United States, South Korea and Japan.
Kim avoided any mention of Biden, who called him a “thug” and “dictator” in his 2020 campaign debate with Trump. He also did not mention Trump, who said he and Kim “fell in love” during their first summit in Singapore in June 2018, when they signed a brief statement proclaiming their desire for a “nuclear weapon-free” Korean peninsula.
All of these encounters were overlooked in his report to his Workers Party’s ongoing congress, in which he promised to produce “nuclear weapons” that were “smaller, lighter and tactical” on the way to “producing a super-large nuclear warhead. “
Kim, who is chairman of the party, did not make the obvious clear – that the hiatus in testing nuclear warheads and missiles to carry them to distant targets, including the United States, has ended. North Korea last tested a nuclear bomb in September 2017, an underground hydrogen explosion that blew up most of a small mountain and is believed to have killed 200 people. Two months later, he ordered the test of a long-range missile – the last display of its kind before the two Koreas and the United States began a lengthy summit process that culminated in the failure of the Trump-Kim summit in Hanoi in February. 2019.
Kim predicted any idea of firing a nuclear bomb that was not in defense, but said the North “started building nuclear force without interruption”. At stake, he said, embellishing the rhetoric, are “the well-being of the people, the destiny of the revolution, the existence and the independent development of the state”.
All of which suggested that he was challenging Biden, leaving the way open for further negotiations in which one thing was certain: his nuclear program is here to stay, and if someone is so stupid as to think otherwise, he could just do another nuclear test. and ordering more missile launches to prove it.
Analysts had no doubt that Kim was serious, despite the hopes sparked by a speech the day before at the party congress at which he spoke of “expanded external relations” – a suggestion perhaps of his desire to resume dialogue with South Korea. and perhaps the US on its own terms.
Forget any positive thoughts about Kim by softening his policies, offering realistic conditions for conversations or compromising while Biden’s team, led by Biden’s choice of secretary of state, Antony Blinken, and Jake Sullivan, designated national security adviser, reviews the options for policy.
Biden, said Victor Cha, who served on the National Security Council during the presidency of George W. Bush, may be “in the same position as when he was vice president, facing relentless testing after North Korea testing, destroying any opportunity for diplomacy. At the very least, Kim’s remarks constituted “a clear and unambiguous commitment to the full nine meters of nuclear weapons,” said Cha, now a professor in Georgetown.
Be careful, Cha warned menacingly, “more testing as they develop these features”.
Former diplomats at the United States Embassy in Seoul agreed. “For all those who waited for Kim Jong Un’s response to the results of the United States presidential election, we now have it,” said Evans Revere. “To the surprise of anyone who has followed North Korea’s continued development of nuclear weapons and ballistic missile delivery systems over the past four years, Kim has bluntly informed the new Biden government of his determination to continue on this path.”
Kim, he said, “has made it clearer than ever” that North Korea “will remain a nuclear power and that Pyongyang plans to develop an even more reliable and diverse nuclear arsenal”.
“With his threats, Kim whistles past the cemetery.“
David Straub saw Kim’s statement as “a reaffirmation of what the regime has been doing for decades”, beginning with the decision of the regime’s founder Kim Il Sung, Kim’s grandfather, to start a nuclear program, which gained full strength with his father Kim, Kim Jong Il, who ordered the first two nuclear tests from the North in 2006 and 2009. Kim Jong Un, taking over after his father’s death in 2011, accelerated the program by ordering a test in 2013, two in 2016 and again in 2017.
Straub sees Kim’s oratory as a sign of weakness. “With his threats, Kim is whistling in the cemetery,” said Straub. “Kim doesn’t need nuclear weapons to ‘stop’ the United States. The United States has never tried to attack in nearly seven decades. Kim wants nuclear weapons to reinforce his political position at home and intimidate the south. It will not work. “
Biden, he said, must “maintain and increase sanctions” against North Korea and “not be intimidated by Kim’s threats”, knowing that “Kim is not suicidal and will not attack the United States”
Bruce Bechtol, a former North Korean intelligence analyst at the Pentagon and author of several studies on North Korea’s leadership, agreed that “sanctioning” is necessary. “A long-range missile test or an underground nuclear test could be on the horizon in the coming weeks,” he said, “as Biden and his people take over.”
But these provocations are not the only options. “I would also be looking for violent provocations against the South,” said Bechtol, possibly along the demilitarized zone between the two Koreas or the North Boundary Line in the Yellow Sea, below which South Korea prohibits north fishing vessels. Koreans. The Yellow Sea has been the scene of several incidents in recent years, including the sinking of a South Korean corvette, the Cheonan, killing 46 South Korean sailors, and the bombing of Yeonpyeong Island, in which four people died, in 2010.
Kim’s rhetorical attack on the US puts South Korean President Moon Jae-in in an uncomfortable position to press for the reopening of dialogue with Kim, with whom he met four times in 2018 and 2019, while trying to maintain a decent relationship with the Americans . Instead of commenting directly on Kim’s harsh speech, a spokesman for the Southern Unification Ministry called for agreements reached between North and South, renewing efforts “for peace and prosperity on the Korean peninsula”.
North Korea bitterly criticized Moon, a center-left leader who maintained his alliance with the United States while taking a soft-line approach. Kim’s unhappiness with Moon’s ambivalent stance was most evident when North Korean soldiers in June blew up a liaison office that Moon had set up inside North Korea for officials to meet and resolve issues.
Any improvement in the policy, Kim told the party’s congress, would depend on “withdrawing the US from its hostile policy”. His policies, he said, would focus “on containing and subjugating the United States, the fundamental obstacle to the development of our revolution and our main enemy.”
“Kim appears to be intent on using continuous, uncontrolled military development as a lever to change the conversation with the United States from denuclearization to arms control,” said Scott Snyder, a Korean expert at the Council on Foreign Relations. This only “sharpens the dilemma for Biden between the need to maintain crisis communication with North Korea and the seemingly limited space for negotiated progress towards denuclearization”.
Kim “defines the end of hostile US policy as the end of the alliance, the removal of South Korean troops and the end of extended deterrence and the nuclear umbrella,” said David Maxwell, a former special forces colonel, now a senior member of the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies.
Still, Kim “appears to be willing to negotiate,” said Maxwell, “from an arms control perspective with the United States and North Korea as ‘equals'”. And, of course, Kim wants North Korea “treated as a nuclear power” with “no intention of giving up its nuclear weapons. “
Of course, Kim “says it will be a responsible nuclear power and will refrain from using it if it is not the target,” said Maxwell. The implication is simple: for Biden & co., It’s back to square one in the next installment of the endless drama about what to do with North Korea.