It ain’t over until Kim Jong-un sings

North Korea has agreed to talks on denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula as well as suspension of its nuclear and missile tests while the talks proceed. US/South Korean military exercises will continue as scheduled.

So what does Kim Jong-un get? He gets a big prize: a meeting with the US President, by May. For a brutal regime under tight sanctions that fears for its continued existence, that’s a big prize. Once upon a time, the US used to refuse to meet at all with North Korea, except in the context of the “six party talks” (that’s North and South Korea, China, Japan, Russia, and the US). Kim can’t take a meeting literally to the bank, but it is not surprising he values a North Korean leader’s first encounter with the US President, especially as the sanctions are biting. The Trump Administration merits credit for that.

Of course we’ve been to talks with North Korea on nuclear issues many times in the past. It’s a history that does not inspire confidence. There have been lots of failures, and even the negotiating successes haven’t lasted. North Korea has notoriously cheated on its obligations, including by selling sensitive technology to other countries. Not to mention that it is a brutal and oppressive dictatorship that treats its own people badly. And we haven’t always been sterling at maintaining our part of the bargains in a timely way. So good as the news is, it would be a mistake to get too excited, as Michael O’Hanlon reminded us just this morning.

That said, blocking or rolling back the North Korean missile and nuclear programs is a worthy goal. The threat to the continental US is still hypothetical, but the threat to US forces and our allies in South Korea, Japan, and Guam is all too real already. So too is the risk that North Korea’s successful nuclear and missile programs will inspire similar programs by South Korea or Japan, thus blowing a big hole in the global nuclear nonproliferation regime, which has helped to contain the spread of nuclear weapons to a relatively few countries (in addition to the Perm 5, India and Pakistan, Israel, and South Africa, which gave them up after apartheid ended, as did Belarus, Kazakhstan and Ukraine after the collapse of the Soviet Union).

Even a freeze in the North Korean nuclear and missile testing is worth something. Its programs were making far more rapid than intelligence agencies anticipated if we believe what is said in the press. Of course Pyongyang can always restart its testing, whereas we can’t undo a meeting with the President. We can however keep the sanctions in place. We’d best do so. It ain’t over until Kim Jong-un sings a far better tune than temporary suspension of testing.