https://www.nationalreview.com/2018/03/north-korea-talks-trump-strategy-should-be-ambitious/?utm_source=Sailthru&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=180209_G-File&utm_term=GFileThree Out-of-the-Box Options on North Korea
By Nicholas Grossman
March 9, 2018 6:30 AM
After the Olympics, South Korean envoys met directly with Kim Jong-un in North Korea - itself a small diplomatic breakthrough - to head off increasing tensions over joint American–South Korean military exercises scheduled for April. Kim surprised them by proposing talks with the United States and putting North Korea’s nuclear program on the table, backing this up with a promise to suspend nuclear and missile testing while the negotiations go on.
That’s big. Not that we should take Kim at his word - I doubt North Korea will give up its nuclear weapons - but his openness to diplomacy is a positive development, especially when accompanied by a voluntary testing freeze.
The United States should take this unexpected opportunity to think outside the box, perhaps making a grand proposal of its own.
Why would North Korea negotiate now? One possibility is that Trump’s version of Nixon’s “madman theory” yielded some success.
As many analysts have noted, the costs of attacking North Korea are prohibitively high: There would be thousands of South Korean fatalities within minutes, before U.S. air power could stop them, followed by a prolonged confrontation with potentially millions more casualties; at worst, a great power such as China might come to the North’s defense. The U.S. wouldn’t shy away if North Korea started a war, but these risks are sufficient to deter America from firing first. The Kim regime knows all this, which reduces its incentives to acquiesce to demands. It has been under sanction for years, but has managed to stay in power while advancing its missile and nuclear capabilities.
But if Trump could convince North Korea (and China) that he might be crazy enough to attack, Kim would be more willing to make concessions. Trump has issued a series of threats, on Twitter and elsewhere, that go far beyond what his predecessors did. He’s ordered additional forces to the region, such as three carrier groups conducting exercises in the waters between South Korea and Japan in November 2017, in a powerful show of force. And in January 2018, Trump interviewed North Korea expert Victor Cha for U.S. ambassador to South Korea - but the nomination fell through over Cha’s opposition to a pre-emptive strike.
This heightened risk of American attack gives Kim motivation to negotiate.