On the heels of his historic summit with Kim Jon-un, President Trump declared this week that DPRK no longer poses an existential nuclear threat. Trump’s proclamation has been met with applause in some political quarters, and suspicion in others. Sputnik spoke to Andrew Leung, an international and independent China strategist, to get to the facts.
I think that he’s no fool; he knows that the North Koreans are not going to give up all of his nuclear insurance policy, all at once. So, he now changes his rhetoric to acceptance of a gradual process. A gradual process means long enough for him to show a gradual progress by this critical juncture, i.e. the mid-term elections and further on because even he admitted that it would take something like two years, two and a half years, if not longer to have a meaningful denuclearisation. Now as far as Kim is concerned, obviously why should he trust the United States?
Why should he trust Trump? After all Trump has just torn up the deal with Iran and if you look at the past US administrations, it’s not the first time the US has changed sides or changed strategy from one president to the next. So obviously having worked so hard to secure his insurance policy, the capability of developing long distance ICBMs capable of a nuclear strike on the US homeland, that’s his insurance policy, and he’s unlikely to give it all up.
On the other hand, he must show faith, he must show kind of verifiable results, but how’s he going to do it? Obviously all of his nuclear weapons, and his arsenal, are hidden all over the place. Now when it comes to the crunch, the US negotiators, those experts, are going to want first of all, a concrete laundry list, of where his missiles are, so he’s likely to come and say ‘here it is,’ and that’s all. But how is that going to be verified? You can’t just roam around the entire country looking in every nook and corner and cave, if Kim says that’s all of them, then that’s all. Somehow that has to be accepted.
So I think even after this laundry list has eventually been produced it would take a long time to inspect these things so I think that they’re going to take a long time, but over that period the world will see that there’s a thawing of relations; they’re going to see a warming up of relationships between North and South Korea, and then there will be a more peaceful environment. So I think that it’s likely to be accepted as a historic moment, and it’s likely to be a game changer, so if it satisfies Trump, then it satisfies Kim, but whether or not we’re going to see a completely denuclearised North Korea, that’s a moot point.
Now let’s face it, at the heart of it all, the North Koreans and not going to attack the United States just like that, out of nowhere, because the reason why the North Koreans want to possess nuclear weapons and ICBM is against the threat from the United States. If the United States doesn’t threaten North Korea, why should North Korea start a nuclear war with the United States?
So again, this sits at the heart of it all, if the North Koreans keep something hidden in secret places, they’re not going to use it to swipe neighbours and the United States left, right and centre. So again there are many nuclear states, least of all there are some states that still deny that they have nuclear weapons, when it’s clear as day that they do. I’m referring of course to Israel, and of course China, and Russia and Pakistan and India, so are they going to strike neighbours if they are not being threatened? No. For North Korea it is a good thing for this de-escalation and the thawing of relationship between North Korea and the US. Now let me say that I don’t think that there will be reunification on the peninsula not least because the two systems, and two regions, are entirely different, and the Kim dynasty depends on maintaining this kind of authoritarian regime, so I don’t think that there will be unification. But it’s a good thing for the two peoples to get together, for the economy, and for the North Koreans to be accepted into the global, international and economic community. Indeed there are many other states, communist states, China for example is a very different regime but of course it’s part of the world economy, so why should not North Korea be? And even Saudi Arabia is an authoritarian state, but it’s part of the world economy. So I think’ it’s a good think in that context.
