Four perspectives on Trump's engagement with North Korea

Donald Trump . . . "Just a newcomer with no Asia experience."

By Emanuel Pastreich

The loose cannon, shoot-from-the-hip approach to politics that has set Donald Trump's administration apart from any previous administration in American history has had a profound impact on American policy in East Asia.

In many cases, Trump's open contempt for established diplomatic processes and conventions, not to mention international law, has increased distrust and created confusion as to exactly what the U.S. is trying to achieve. Many are concerned that putting off the visit of Secretary of State Mike Pompeo to Pyongyang as part of a larger effort to pressure China on trade issues has undermined U.S. credibility.

At the same time, Trump's independence from established diplomatic conventions has at times given him unexpected flexibility. He and his team have been willing to consider approaches that were beyond the pale for mainstream diplomats and policy makers.

Nowhere else has this unpredictable approach been more obvious than with North Korea.
To get a sense of how Trump's actions towards North Korea appear to those engaged in policy in South Korea, the U.S. and Japan, I asked for the insights of four people deeply involved in the policy process.

I spoke first with Dr. Changsu Kim, a Senior Research Fellow at the Center for Security and Strategy of the Korea Institute for Defense Analyses about how Trump's actions in Northeast Asia had been perceived. His response suggests that for all the immaturity of the Trump approach, South Korea has learned in the process how to deal with North Korea for the long-term and has grown more realistic.

He said: "There's a lot of confusion about what exactly Trump is trying to achieve in Asia. The rapid shifts in policy have produced considerable uncertainty. I don't think his so-called Art of the Deal will work in this context. They are underestimating the North Koreans as negotiators. Those guys have engaged in high stakes negotiations for decades.

"All the North Korean strategic thinkers have already read Trump's book. So, although Americans may be a bit unnerved by what Trump does, the North Koreans can see what he is doing. And they make it easy for Trump as well, flattering him and offering him opportunities to look good in the media.

"The North Korean officials handling the U.S. have extensive experience over years. They know all the details of denuclearization in which Trump is not interested. They know how to excite interest with proposals for a peace regime that can fool the inexperienced.

"Trump is just a newcomer in Washington D.C. with no Asia experience. He acts with confidence because he thinks he runs a superpower, but he will certainly face difficulties in the future.

"One positive result of the Singapore summit is that we've all become much more realistic. For all the show and domestic politics behind Trump's recent moves, there is potential for some sort of breakthrough to emerge in the 70-year deadlock on the Korean Peninsula.

"Realism means not throwing around terms like 'unification' after one or two meetings. Overplaying the developments has a negative impact. We can think about reunification in the long term, but we see now that the main topic is peace, meaning no state of war between North and South Korea, the establishment of diplomatic relationships. Even small steps in this direction imply immense institutional change."

For the Japanese perspective, I spoke with Koda Yoji, Commander in Chief, JMSDF (Japan Maritime Self Defense Forces) Fleet (Ret.) and Vice Admiral JMSDF (Ret.) about Trump in North Korea. Admiral Koda gave a rather mixed assessment:

"I do not think that Trump's approach to North Korea is very mature. At the same time, we must recognize that Trump is trying to do something. Trump is pretending that his meeting with Kim Jong-un was a success and that his plan is going well. But we see in the background that Secretary of State Mike Pompano and Secretary of Defense Jim Mattes are maintaining the fundamental policy of the U.S. ― that we cannot tolerate the possession of nuclear weapons by North Korea.

"So we need to wait and see what will happen. But it is not auspicious that the negotiations are being drawn out in the same manner we saw before when such efforts were made before Obama. The bottom line is that the longer we spend negotiating away time, the higher the risk that we will face a North Korea that is a full nuclear power with many warheads and high-quality missiles to deliver them around the world.

"That danger has always been the bottom line for the U.S. So they key points are whether the U.S. can avoid that scenario? Will further concessions to North Korea help to avoid that scenario?

"North Korea will try to buy more time and drag the negotiations into a prolonged effort. The longer the time the two governments spend on negotiations, the greater the chances that North Korea will become a real nuclear and ICBM power.

"The positive part of Trump's approach is that he has not given up, or made concessions about denuclearization.

"That's the last thing that we want. I believe that when President Trump really realizes that is what is happening, he will hesitate to use force to settle the matter."

For a perspective on Trump's Asia policy from a Washington D.C. insider, I turned to Dr. Richard Bush, director of the Center for Northeast Policy Studies at the Brooking Institution. Dr. Bush suggested a disturbing breakdown in the policy process:

"One consequence of the presidential campaign that has become obvious in spades since the inauguration is the complete lack of administrative organization and the resulting chaotic policy process. Previous administrations, going back to the Truman administration, have employed a policy process that was inclusive (with occasional slight deviations).

"That is to say that all relevant agencies have a say on an issue. The consideration of policy was bottom-up, which assured accountability and the consultation with those who bring expert knowledge. The policy process was institutionalized with established sets of meetings wherein policy was decided and then implemented.

"That policy process no longer functions. To suggest, regarding any particular issue, that we have a coherent and well-thought-out strategy is just projecting rationality on to chaos. There is less coordination among agencies than before. We often find a remarkable gap between what the president is saying and the rest of the policy process.

"Trump already demonstrated in his previous career at a CEO that he never liked a corporate structure that placed limits on his freedom of action or freedom of speech. Accountability was not important for him and he was focused on his own bottom line, not the long-term interests of the corporation.

"That is the operating model for the Trump administration. The degree to which message discipline is absent on Trump's part is astounding and disturbing. And those were not the missteps of an inexperienced team. That behavior has continued. We are seeing a continuing pattern of chaos in policy.

"One of the biggest shifts in U.S. policy in our lifetimes has taken place over the last six months. That is Trump's approach to alliances. Trump has been skeptical, at best, about the value of alliances in U.S. grand strategy in his statements over the last 30 years. So the change is not a change in Trump's thinking, but rather in the implementation of his thinking at the national level. Actually, he takes a different approach to the U.S. role in the world than does the establishment in Washington D.C.

"I think, based on his recent actions, we can say that Trump is the most isolationist president that we've had. He seems to perceive the deployment of U.S. troops in allied countries to be a favor to those countries. It seems almost as if he thinks the Armed Forces of the Republic of Korea are not doing their jobs on the front line defending their own country, that allies should pay in full for everything deployed by the U.S military.

"I have some doubts as to how well he understands the nature of these alliance systems. He tends to perceive them only in quantitative terms. Are we getting the best deal in dollars for these countries' rental of American troops? He does not display an appreciation for the unquantifiable, but critical, features of an alliance such as shared sacrifice and a broad mandate for institutional cooperation in diverse fields. Those two elements are fundamental to the US-ROK alliance.

"So in Trump's universe, it was not so hard, I think, to accept Kim Jong-un's view. Trump could readily see that the U.S.-ROK exercises were provocative and leave it at that. Trump did not feel any need to push back and say: Well, there's a reason for those exercises, and that reason is you.'

"Trump had no problem suspending military exercises just like that, without consultation with our ally the Republic of Korea, or even the U.S. Department of Defense. Trump's ideas were right there on the front page of the newspapers. He even made hints that if the U.S. reduced its troop presence in South Korea, it wouldn't be a bad idea."

Finally, John Merrill, former director of INR (Bureau of Intelligence and Research) at the U.S. State Department, and a key figure in Korea policy, suggested that Trump's willingness to engage Pyongyang, as opposed to the disastrous "strategic patience" of the Obama Administration, has had some positive implications that should be properly recognized: "Trump has gotten deeply involved in the decision-making process on foreign policy, not content just to follow the advice of experts. That is especially true for the issues that Trump puts a value on. In the case of North Korea, that change has been a positive. We have moved from back-burner 'strategic patience' to real engagement.

"Trump's approach to China has not been always so effective. I wish he was not so confrontational in his approach. Repeated unnecessarily aggressive language from the administration has created conflicts that were unnecessary.

"But perhaps we can take his initial threats of a trade war as something of a marker necessary for his overall policy and we can all sigh a breath of relieve as he and his team inevitably back down from the initial extreme statements.

"As I suggested before, the foreign policy establishment in Washington, and in Seoul as well, has been basically brain-dead on North Korea for a generation. Things reached the nadir under President Obama's 'strategic patience' policy. Strategic patience is a fancy word for "do absolutely nothing." After that failure to engage or to negotiate, we have estimates of around 60 nuclear weapons now in North Korea. North Korea may, or may not, have a reliable delivery system in place."

The full consequences of Trump's engagement with Pyongyang are still unknown, but these four voices give us insights into an element that is as important as what is going on in Pyongyang: how North Korea and Trump's engagement with Kim Jong-un is perceived in Washington D.C., Seoul and Tokyo.