- North Korean leader Kim Jong Un is believed to have suggested he's willing to halt missile and nuclear tests in exchange for
- security guarantees.
- An agreement may even include eradicating the nation's
- Though President Donald Trump took credit for the positive development, the deal may exploit
- Trump's temper and rigid diplomacy.
- Kim's offer could weaken international sanctions by playing the Trump administration against itself.
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Kim Jong Un's remarkable peace offer may exploit Trump's weaknesses to benefit North Korea — here's how
North Korea is believed to have discussed halting its nuclear weapons program, but a key stipulation may play US President Donald Trump against himself.
North Korean leader Kim Jong Un and a group of South Korean diplomats dined for four hours on Monday night, emerging with a possible peace deal to stop the North's nuclear weapons and missile testing program.
The isolated nation said it may even be willing to abandon its nuclear weapons program in exchange for security guarantees from the US, according to The New York Times.
President Donald Trump claimed he was behind the potential diplomatic opening, given his administration's recent and deep-cutting economic sanctions against North Korea.
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Yet North Korea has a checkered history of adhering to anti-nuclear treaties, and the proposal may exploit President Trump's ire toward Kim Jong Un, not to mention his administration's rigid diplomatic stance toward North Korea.
"People are saying, 'They promised to stop nuclear tests and missile tests,'" Jeffrey Lewis, a nuclear-policy expert at the Middlebury Institute of International Studies at Monterey, told Business Insider. "What I saw was that they promised to stop those tests while they were negotiating with the United States."
To Lewis, who also publishes Arms Control Wonk, a requirement for direct US involvement in talks "sounds less like a promise to stop [testing] and more like a permission slip" to continue.
What's more, he added, Kim Jong Un's proposal is poised to significantly weaken economic sanctions that the Trump administration has leveraged against North Korea.
How the offer could help North Korea and undermine Trump, US interests
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President Trump has not been shy about his disdain for Kim Jong Un, often calling the leader "little rocket man" and threatening him with the size of his "nuclear button."
Trump has also flipped back-and-forth between rejecting negotiations with North Korea outright to — less frequently — expressing optimism about the possibility, should the nation be ready to rid itself of all intercontinental ballistic missiles, nuclear warheads, and reactors. (North Korea's ICBMs reportedly now have the ability strike US targets.)
Lewis said the Trump administration's sanctions are indeed painful to North Korea. But he noted Kim Jong Un is likely most concerned about ending joint military exercises around the Korean Peninsula between US forces and their allies, such as South Korea and Japan. Such activity heightens tensions and might lead to catastrophic miscalculations, Lewis previously told Business Insider.
"They've always wanted those military exercises shut off, because military exercise is how real wars start — that's the cover that everybody gives for amassing troops," Lewis said. "So basically they have to go on alert every time we do them. And we used to do them during the harvest [season], which was not nice."
Offering a peace deal could motivate South Korea to stall or cancel the next joint military exercise, which is scheduled for the spring.
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"From a North Korean perspective, they'd like to get the cancellation of the exercises. But this also helps them manage their sanctions problem," Lewis added. "If they're seen as saying, 'Look, we're willing to stop the missile tests, just as soon as the US shows up,' but then the US doesn't show up," then it's a potentially big win for Kim Jong Un.
All eyes on the Trump administration
Refusing to sit down with North Korea is a strong possibility, given the Trump administration's frequent and stern messaging about negotiating with the country. (Officials recently enacted more sanctions against North Korea over the assassination of Kim Jong Nam, who was Kim Jong Un's half-brother and possibly heir to his position.)
However, acting tough against Kim Jong Un's offer, or simply ignoring it, could backfire.
"If they then do another missile test, how does the sanctions fight play out?" Lewis said of North Korea. "The South Koreans and the Russians and the Chinese all refuse to back more sanctions because they'll say, 'Well, there's a standing offer from the North Koreans that you're not taking.' [...] At the end of the day, what they're really looking at doing is countering the US campaign of pressure."
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China and Russia might also spin a lack of US talks to weaken or ignore existing sanctions, since those countries "don't really owe us any favors," Lewis said. Even South Korea may join them as it pushes for an opportunity to make peace with its adversarial neighbor.
"This is generally how the sanctions game is played, and it's just that the Trump administration is really bad at it," Lewis said. "The whole point of sanctions is to get pressure on another country to do something."
He added: "You can't really convince other countries to go along with you unless you are seen as being reasonable — unless you're being seen as willing to take the sanctions off in exchange for good behavior, unless you are seen as trying to reach a diplomatic settlement."
Trump's appointees, such as Secretary of State Rex Tillerson and Secretary of Defense James Mattis, generally "say the right words" to keep the door open to possible negotiations with North Korea, Lewis said, but Trump often undermines their statements with his own. (Lewis noted, however, that the president's statements on Tuesday "were fine for Trump.")
Regardless, North Korea has thrown a large diplomatic ball into Trump's court, and the nations of the world await to see if, and how, the US responds in a meaningful way.
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The stakes are high, given the Trump administration push to expand America's nuclear-weapons arsenal, and as US military forces train to face a conflict on the Korean Peninsula.
This story was updated with new information.
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