When Kim came to power in 2011, after the death of his father, Kim Jong Il, he inherited not only the family-run North Korean dictatorship, but also the Kims’ longstanding goal of reunifying the Koreas. Kim has upheld that goal in his rhetoric, both internal and external. While there has never been much detail about what unification is supposed to look like from North Korea’s perspective, the prevailing assumption has always been that it does not include a U.S. alliance with South Korea or a U.S. troop presence in the South. North Korean (and even leftist South Korean) propaganda has always portrayed the United States as an obstacle to unification, even though its notion of unification can’t possibly be the same as the South’s presumption of absorbing North Korea or extending democratic governance northward. That’s certainly not what Kim has in mind.
But because unification is a somewhat abstract aspiration, it also doesn’t have a deadline. Kim has more concrete goals that are evident in North Korea’s word and deed, and that happen to also propel North Korea toward the meta-goal of unification, but on terms favorable to the North. Kim has sought to 1) secure his rule against internal challengers, 2) achieve and demonstrate a reliable nuclear deterrent, 3) improve his people’s quality of life, and 4) elevate North Korea’s international standing as a nuclear state. Until very recently, his priority has been the first two goals. Having made significant progress on them, with his current charm offensive, Kim is now aiming to do the same for the latter two. [...]
With a firmer grip on the regime and a strengthened nuclear strike capability, all this diplomacy moves Kim closer to his remaining goals of prioritizing the economy and elevating North Korea’s international standing as a nuclear state. The fact of hosting friendly meetings with foreign delegations and presenting them with memorabilia commemorating the recent success in “perfecting the national nuclear forces” is a nuclear status fait accompli. And even if North Korea can’t rejoin the international community in full because of continuing human rights abuses and opaque economic practices, going on the diplomatic offensive is a smart way of discouraging the international community—and especially China—from stringently implementing an increasingly suffocating international sanctions regime. Diplomacy is a low-cost means of getting sanctions relief, which will help improve the North Korean standard of living. At the same time, an extended process of reconciliation with South Korea holds out the promise of much needed economic investment and assistance. Already there’s talk of an energy corridor running from Russia, through North Korea, down to the South. That all this encourages greater friction in the U.S.-South Korea alliance and mutes the preventive war narrative that was building last year in Washington is simply a bonus. [...]
And even if Americans disagree about the answers to questions like these—and I suspect they do—the absence of any meaningful discussion about them makes it entirely likely that Trump and Kim reach a deal that’s good for each of them personally but not good for the United States. It’s plausible, for example, that Kim and Trump could agree to a peace treaty ending the Korean War and a commitment to rollback North Korea’s nuclear arsenal so that it no longer includes ICBMs but does allow Kim to retain some nukes. That would do significant damage to the credibility of U.S. alliances in the region, turning them into the depreciating asset—or increasing liability—that Trump always viewed them as anyway.
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