North Korea is the problem every new US administration fails to fix.
Now Joe Biden’s White House is having its stab at ending 70 years of futility. The White House has completed a North Korea policy review and is briefing US allies in Asia on its new approach. It hasn’t laid out a new strategy to the public yet, but is teasing a “calibrated, practical approach.”
Every President of the last 30 years has tried to defuse their standoff with the totalitarian, paranoid, and nuclear-armed state.
Bill Clinton did a deal to freeze Pyongyang’s plutonium program, but it launched a uranium program instead.
George W. Bush talked tough, then tried in vain to strike a deal in talks including Pyongyang’s neighbors.
Barack Obama chose “strategic patience,” which involved further isolating the already reclusive nation and waiting for it to change its belligerent behavior. No dice.
Donald Trump veered from one extreme to the other – threatening to rain fire and fury on the North before lavishing leader Kim Jong Un with summits and photo ops.
Through it all, the Kim dynasty has alarmed the world with tests of ever-more sophisticated missiles and nuclear weapons and refused to lift the repression of the North Korean people.
Biden’s approach appears likely to seek engagement with Pyongyang and offer small-scale steps in exchange for changes in its behavior, with the ultimate goal of working towards the eradication of the North’s arsenal. But Kim’s government prefers to rattle sabers to get attention, and warned Biden on Sunday of a coming “crisis beyond control.”
Each new American strategy founder for the same reasons: Military action against the North would have consequences too awful to contemplate. And the regime sees its nuclear arsenal as a guarantee of its survival. Until these change, Presidents are likely to keep striking out. ♦
The story originally published by CNN
