The first peace summit in Singapore between Donald Trump and Chairman Kim Jong Un was greeted with euphoria and uncertainty. This was the first time the western media attempted to analyze the personality of Kim Jong UN with their camera lens from a close range. It was equally the first time a sitting American president would sit on a round-table discussion with the ruler of North Korea.
The western press went ecstatic and gaga. Articles and news report portrayed a completely innocent picture of Kim Jong Un. All of a sudden, the narrative changed from Kim Jong Un the dictator to Kim Jong Un the diplomat. Some section of the western press and public opinion began to entertain the idea of awarding Trump and Kim the Noble Prize for peace.
It didn’t take long before president Trump began to brag about his negotiation prowess. At a congressional campaign trail, he went as far as his ego dictated. He bragged about his new romance with Chairman Kim and how Kim’s lovely letters were setting the stage for peace in the Korean peninsula. It was no longer about if DPRK would denuclearize but when.
Then came the Hanoi peace summit. Expectations were high going into the summit. Pre-summit fillers that came in from the South Korean Blue House suggested that, potentially, the major highlight from the summit would be a signing of peace treaty and a formal declaration of the end of war between Washington and Pyongyang.
The Trump administration came into the summit with a singular demand, to extract from Chairman Kim a pledge to a comprehensive, verifiable and irreversible denuclearization plan. The North Koreans demanded a lifting of sanctions as a precondition for further negotiation. Neither demands were met. There weren’t met because both leaders never wanted them to be met but, because, both countries and leaders had an entirely opposing and conflicting definition and vision of reunification and denuclearization.
Nuclear bomb is central to the survival of the Kim dynasty. Nuclear bomb is to the North Koreans what representative democracy is to the Americans. If North Korean learnt anything from the fall of Colonel Ghadaffi, it is that, the threat of American invasion is no fiction and that, their nuclear arsenal provides a deterrent to any possible invasion.
America’s crushing sanctions as for years prevented an upgrade of North Korea’s conventional military capabilities. An analogue Air force and a limited Naval is no match for F-35 stealth fighter jets and the United State sophisticated naval fleets in the event of an invasion. From the perspective of the North Koreans, this is where their nuclear deterrence capability looms into relevance.
The idea that Chairman Kim would sign a peace treaty and agree to denuclearization in isolation of the interest of China, the DPRK political elites and Russia is misleading. China and Russia both share borders with the North Koreans. The scenario where American troops are stationed on the northern flank of their borders will be totally unacceptable to these countries. Furthermore, for the DPRK, it was before their very own eyes that the international agreement on Iran’s nuclear program was abolished by the very Trump who wants to commit them into a nuclear agreement.
Finally, in view of the ongoing protracted and complex trade war between the US and China, it would be extremely difficult to extract any meaningful concession from the North Koreans. China is North Korea biggest trading partner and trusted military ally. To the North Koreans, their nuclear arsenal is a national heritage but for the Chinese it is an asset. The collapse of the Kim dynasty will be as tragic to the Chinese as the collapse of the Soviet Union to the Russians.
