Brian P. Klein

How Donald Trump can still engage North Korea without a focus on nuclear talks

The Trump administration has options for either engaging or containing the North, but should avoid the brinkmanship that marked 2017 and which could lead to disaster

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North Korean leader Kim Jong-un and US President Donald Trump walk together after their first meeting at the Hanoi summit. Photo: AP

Brian P. Klein

Published: 1:00am, 27 Mar 2019Updated: 8:51am, 27 Mar 2019

US President Donald Trump had been uncharacteristically quiet since his failed meeting with North Korea’s Kim Jong-un in Hanoi. That silence ended with a confused tweet at the end of last week overturning some unannounced, but apparently new, sanctions his Treasury Department was about to impose on Kim’s government.

The Treasury had announced new sanctions for several Chinese firms helping North Korea smuggle oil and coal, among other illicit activity. The White House assured us that reversing sanctions no one knew about was an olive branch because Trump still “likes” Kim.

While that’s a downgrade from the effusive love Trump professed earlier, it seems that he still wants to keep the door open for a possible resumption of talks. Kim had also showed some restraint, at least at first. The official state newspaper, Rodung Sinmun, kept their rhetoric on simmer after the summit, blaming National Security Adviser John Bolton and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo for the failure, rather than Trump himself.

But there’s not much left to talk about on denuclearisation. If the goodwill expressed by both sides is going to lead anywhere, there needs to be something new, like normalising relations between the US and North Korea.

That doesn’t mean the US gives up on complete, verifiable, irreversible denuclearisation. It means there may be a different, less direct path that leads to that goal.

For starters, Trump’s “wealth for weapons” approach failed to convince Kim that personal riches, trade and investment were worth his missiles and nuclear material. The all-or-nothing deal was much too far from Kim’s piecemeal approach – some sanctions relief now for a continued missile and nuclear test freeze. That should not have been a surprise. Incrementalism has been North Korea’s negotiating approach for decades.