By Daniel L. Davis
South Korean president Moon Jae-In has renewed his call to formally end the Korean War—and as North Korea demands a high price for doing so. These are the two fundamental truths about North Korea the Biden administration must keep in mind. First, Kim Jong-un has no intention of giving up his nuclear weapons, no matter how many incentives America offers him. Second, the United States will deter Pyongyang indefinitely regardless of what Kim does or doesn’t do.
The overriding objectives of Washington’s foreign and military policy regarding North Korea must be to prevent unnecessary war and to maximize America’s ability to prosper in the Indo-Pacific region. The United States can work toward the distant goal of a nuclear-free Korean Peninsula is a good and worthy target, but it is not a prerequisite for the United States to fully realize those two paramount objectives. Closely cooperating with our South Korean ally and engaging diplomatically with North Korea can help facilitate both.
Possibly the single greatest roadblock to minimizing the threat of war that has afflicted virtually every U.S. administration since 2006, which is when Pyongyang successfully conducted its first test of a nuclear warhead is the dogmatic insistence that North Korea must completely denuclearize before the United States takes any action.
This piece was originally published in The National Interest on November 10, 2021. Read more HERE.