Why the US should still insist North Korea give up its nukes

On June 14, US President Donald Trump’s social media account displayed a photo of Trump and a smiling North Korean paramount leader Kim Jong Un walking side by side during their 2018 summit in Singapore, which went well compared with the failed 2019 summit in Hanoi. No commentary accompanied the photo, but since the end of his first term, Trump has expressed willingness to re-engage with Kim and spoken warmly about him.

The post, which came shortly before he announced that the US and Iran had agreed to a deal to reopen the Strait of Hormuz, prompted South Korean media to wonder if Trump was obliquely inviting Kim for a new round of talks. Separately, South Korean President Lee Jae-myung said last week that Trump told him it was time to “pay attention to the North Korea issue” when both leaders met in France for the Group of Seven summit.

Might Trump be looking for another potential source of foreign policy success to burnish his legacy, given the difficulties of dealing with Iran?

While Washington says the Iran war was mainly about nuclear non-proliferation, US policy is doing little, if anything, to hinder the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK) from expanding its nuclear arsenal. This includes an estimated 60 nuclear warheads and a variety of delivery systems such as intercontinental ballistic missiles, submarines and hypersonic glide vehicles.

North Korea’s nuclear build-up has led experts such as Victor Cha to argue that the US government should stop making denuclearisation the primary objective of America’s policy towards the DPRK. Instead, Cha says in his May article in Foreign Affairs, Washington should officially acknowledge that North Korea is now a permanent nuclear weapons state, and should focus on arms control and crisis management. Significantly, Cha is historically a hardliner on North Korea who is effectually abandoning a position mostly advocated by hardliners.

This argument has considerable merit. There is no realistic prospect of the DPRK denuclearising in the foreseeable future.

But the downsides of the US opening bilateral negotiations on the premise of accepting North Korea as a nuclear peer – especially now – make this idea inadvisable.

Denuclearisation is dead

Cha is not alone. US analysts increasingly believe that the North Korean government intends to keep its nuclear weapons programme forever, and that there is no deal under which Pyongyang would agree to denuclearise.

As recently as June 14, the North Korean government again reaffirmed through official media “the irreversible position of the DPRK as a nuclear weapons state”. In early June, Pyongyang announced the opening of a new uranium enrichment plant for the production of nuclear weapons fuel, along with a commitment “to beef up our state’s nuclear forces at an exponential rate”.

The experiences of other countries only reinforce the belief of North Koreans that nuclear weapons are a protection against attack. The US launched wars against Iran and Iraq with the stated aim of preventing them from going nuclear. Washington threatened a preventive strike during the DPRK’s home-stretch run to a nuclear missile capability in 2017, but Pyongyang survived because of the vulnerability of Seoul to conventional bombardment.

In 2003, Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi agreed to give up his nuclear weapons programme at US urging. A few years later, however, the US supported an insurgency that killed Gaddafi and overthrew his government.

Under the Budapest Memorandum of 1994, Ukraine agreed to ship out its arsenal of Soviet-made nukes in exchange for promises from Russia, the US and Britain to uphold Ukraine’s sovereignty, security and borders – only to suffer a full-scale Russian invasion beginning in 2022.

America isn’t getting help from China and Russia, which have stopped pushing for denuclearisation.

President Xi Jinping visited North Korea on June 8 and 9; the Chinese government readout did not mention any discussion of the DPRK denuclearising. It is possible Xi raised the issue quietly, but Beijing is hesitant to annoy Pyongyang where there is no hope of acquiescence. More significantly, Beijing has stopped talking about North Korean denuclearisation in its official statements since 2024. As for Russia, Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov has said that North Korea’s nuclear weapons programme is a “closed issue” and that Russia “respects North Korea’s aspirations”.

Yet the US government continues to repeat the denuclearisation mantra. For example, the joint statement from a bilateral US-South Korean meeting earlier in June to discuss nuclear issues read in part: “South Korea and the US reaffirmed their shared goal of denuclearisation of North Korea.”

The US policy of not officially acknowledging North Korea as a nuclear weapons state is a legal fiction. Maintaining that position does not prevent the US from making policies and plans that take into account North Korea’s nuclear capabilities. Indeed, since at least 2015, American officials have said they assume North Korea can build a working nuclear missile that could reach the continental US. But not officially accepting the DPRK’s nukes as permanent is not a useless gesture. It holds Pyongyang accountable to its previous stated commitments to denuclearise, and it assures Seoul and Tokyo that America still has their backs.

While Pyongyang seems determined to keep a steadily burgeoning nuclear weapons capability, now is not a propitious time for Washington to enter negotiations on Kim’s preferred terms, for several reasons.

Compared with previous US presidents, Trump appears sympathetic to the idea of withdrawing US troops from South Korea. He has called US-ROK military exercises expensive and provocative.

Since expelling US troops from the Peninsula is also a high-priority objective of the DPRK, Kim’s government would likely bring this issue to the table in talks about arms control or confidence-building measures. This would create a danger of the two sides reaching an agreement that leaves South Korea less secure – for example, a reduction of US troops in exchange for a cap on long-range North Korean ballistic missiles that threaten the US.

US bargaining power with North Korea is currently at a low point. Pyongyang is riding high and has less need for a constructive relationship with America than in the recent past because of the DPRK’s partnership with Russia and China’s consequent fear of missing out. North Korea’s status is artificially propped up by the Ukraine war, which makes the DPRK unusually useful to Russia. Better for the US to wait until that war is over and Pyongyang feels less wanted.

Giving up on denuclearisation as the stated goal of US policy towards the DPRK would lock in permanent North Korean proliferation by removing an important reason for Pyongyang to reconsider its policy.

It would reward bad behaviour by North Korea, which is under UN Security Council sanctions for its ballistic missile practice launches and nuclear test explosions.

The global nuclear non-proliferation regime would weaken. Accepting North Korean nukes would be a betrayal of South Korea and Japan, which want denuclearisation to remain the chief objective. As a consequence, Seoul and Tokyo would be more likely to develop and deploy their own nuclear weapons.

Phased progress in US-DPRK talks, starting with freezing or capping the production of nuclear weapons, could still be possible without abandoning denuclearisation as the ultimate goal.

Pyongyang would likely approach any arms control negotiations in bad faith – insisting on American concessions such as lifting sanctions, while intending to cheat on any agreements that might restrict DPRK capabilities.

Finally, there is at present no crisis over the DPRK’s nuclear missile arsenal. North Korean officials and media often make belligerent statements indicating willingness to go to war, but these invariably include the qualification “if the enemy attacks us first”.

Many observers feared North Korea would use its nuclear arsenal to blackmail South Korea into giving in to reunification under terms favourable to Pyongyang. That has not happened. Nor is Pyongyang eager to reunify with South Korea – far from it, given the DPRK’s new policy of renouncing unification and treating the South as a foreign, enemy country rather than a temporarily isolated part of a Korean nation that also includes the North. This change is written into the DPRK’s Constitution.

Non-proliferation has largely worked

Viewed broadly, global non-proliferation efforts have been fairly successful. Since the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty entered into force in 1970 with five acknowledged nuclear-weapon states, only four more countries have joined the club. Many analysts expected the number would be much higher by now.

North Korea, however, represents a prominent failure of the non-proliferation regime. Pyongyang acceded to the treaty as a non-nuclear weapons state, but then withdrew in 2003 – the only country to do so. Like the other three post-1970 proliferators – India, Pakistan and Israel – North Korea lives in a state of chronic high tensions with its neighbours. Less like the others, the tensions with North Korea’s neighbours are of Pyongyang’s own making.

The current US approach has no prospect of a breakthrough. The realisation that a policy is not producing the desired result can feed a desperation to try something else. This can lead to a new policy that is flawed in other ways. Offering Pyongyang new talks based on a major unilateral US concession would entail significant costs and risks, with uncertain benefits.

The next US president might be in a better position to reassess the wisdom of seeking arms control talks with Pyongyang. For now, however, US and allied interests would be better served by remaining patient, keeping denuclearisation as the default policy.