| | | One of the most dramatic periods in U.S. foreign policy reaches a climax on June 12 with Donald Trump and Kim Jong Un's sitdown in Singapore. As the world waits to see whether the U.S. president can persuade the North Korean leader to give up his nuclear weapons, Reuters Commentary enlisted leading thinkers to analyze the implications of the encounter.
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| Even a dictator like Kim needs buy-in from his people – especially the military, writes Katharine H.S. Moon. And while no one can know what his “real” intentions are, his reported reshuffling of top generals ahead of the summit hints at the forces at play inside North Korea. “His iron fist does have limits,” says Moon, a political science professor at Wellesley College. “If his regime fails to manage the DPRK’s changing internal politics, Kim’s efforts at external outreach will be in danger.”
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| Donald Trump’s focus on North Korea’s nuclear weapons – and his seeming willingness to put U.S. forces on the negotiating table – is missing Kim Jong Un's real leverage, argues former CIA analyst Kent Harrington. "Even without nuclear weapons, the North Korean army holds Seoul hostage." | | |
| Forget the "Libya model." Unlike North Korea, Libya did not possess nuclear weapons at the time Muammar Qaddafi abandoned its program – and those who think the North African nation is a precedent for either denuclearization or regime change in North Korea "are heading either for confusion or disappointment," writes political scientist Karl P. Mueller.
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| Trump's best option for denuclearizing North Korea is for the U.S. president to recognize that the talks are "the start of a process – not something that has to be done by the end of his first term", writes Philip W. Yun, a former State Department official who took part in talks with North Korea for more than a decade. The best way forward? Trump creates a political and security environment in which the North Korean leadership will "voluntarily, and of its own free will, give up its nuclear weapons."
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| Will Trump’s withdrawal from the Iran nuclear accord make Kim less likely to trust any agreement with the White House? It’s unlikely given the “key geopolitical differences” between Tehran and Pyongyang, says Katharine H.S. Moon.
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| Trump is right to give Kim the “prize” of a top-level presidential summit, says State Department veteran Peter Van Buren. “North Korea is a top-down system (some say the same for Trump’s Washington), and needs to be dealt with as such.”
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| While Northerners still believe that all Koreans want to see the peninsula re-united, Andray Abrahamian, a research fellow at Pacific Forum CSIS, says that’s not the case. “Pyongyang’s charm offensives on the South will no longer work; younger South Koreans just don’t care that much about unification.” | | |
| PODCAST: The Korean peninsula has been divided for 80 years. Ambassador Chas Freeman, a retired American diplomat, discusses how North and South have been caught in the crosshairs of great power rivalry. | | |
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