An Odd Leverage on North Korea

We will all obviously be watching from afar, as the agreement between the USA and North Korea to dismantle the latter's nuclear weapons program proceeds forward. I don't know what will happen, and you do not either. None of us quite understands Kim Jong-Un quite enough to predict anything.

But the hope is that he will do what he committed to do, on the timeline that he agreed to do it and with the inspection protocol that was assumedly agreed to as well.

Now, that may or may not be the extent of the disarmament of North Korea. Certainly Kim has a fair cohort of conventional weaponry, enough to provide a threatening presence to his neighbors to the South. But as was discussed with a friend in an email yesterday, we may have some leverage in subsequent discussions about limiting that weapons store as well.

President Trump established some form of relationship with Kim during the meetings this week. It was at least courteous, and we have to gather from the reporting and what we saw, that they have a line of communication.

We have to suspect that, at least to some extent, Kim was bargaining to keep himself in power. I've written to that point before; Kim is young and a different sort from his father and grandfather, the previous dictators of North Korea in the pre-Twitter world. He can see that he is not going to be able to hold on to power if the rest of the world wants him gone.

But he may very well have indicated to President Trump, in some way, that his continuation in power was his primary motivation, and if he could be assured that the free world was not going to threaten his rule, he would be willing to make concessions -- such as denuclearization. He knows that, with enough provocation, the USA could fairly easily topple him.

We would have reason to, of course. Kim is a murderous dictator whose people are starved while he builds up his weaponry. He is universally thought a bad dude who, in a world with an organized global judiciary, would have been forcibly removed long ago.

It is not impossible that that is a factor now and going forward. Kim knows that he bears the guilt for past (an assumedly ongoing) actions that are severely punishable in the world community, one way or the other. Along with everything else he needs, he also needs protection from prosecution for what he has done, in the form of avoiding the fate of Saddam Hussein, Khaddafi and the like.

So it makes reasonable sense that the USA, who are the ones actually doing the negotiations, are leveraging Kim's guilt and fear of retribution. That is a powerful piece of leverage right there. I don't care if there were American and NoKo flags neatly placed next to each other at the summit -- Kim knows we could turn him into kimchi in a New York minute if we wanted to.

And he knows that we have the right to do that, as well as the capability, given that he murdered an American citizen (Otto Warmbier) as well as his own brother, and everyone knows it. So I'm pretty sure that Kim knows that he is not dealing from a position of strength That can color the tenor of the talks, to where Kim would be willing to make some serious concessions if he could be assured that he would not be brought before some international tribunal for war crimes, or peace crimes, or whatever he did -- actually, since the Korean War hasn't actually ended, I suppose "war crimes" could apply to the Warmbier situation.

Donald Trump, of course, is eminently aware of any tiny bit of leverage that he has to work with. If Kim's perception of his own culpability, and his risk of losing his grip, is that high, and Trump's promises to help him drag his country into the 21st Century that attractive, then he would be more readily willing to give up things he actually doesn't need -- like too many weapons systems.

So it may very well be that the likeliest path to a more progressive and peaceful North Korea may be through leaving a weakened, contrite Kim in power. We know, and he knows, that he is a murderer and a brutal dictator. But a dictator who decides to modernize his country peacefully, changing his tactics, knowing that his past puts him at risk of being removed fatally, well, that gives the USA a lot of leverage to get done what we would like to in the interest of peace.

I've written before that a lot more can come out of the summit and the subsequent relationship than just denuclearization. I think there is a good reason for that to be a possibility, and after the summit it appears more possible.

I just think that we have a subtle lever that we need to employ.

Copyright 2018 by Robert Sutton