Global crises and conflict zones have cast a particularly long shadow over the 2024 presidential election. On top of the wars in the Middle East and Ukraine, North Korea just tested a long-range intercontinental ballistic missile, one of more than 100 such tests carried out by Kim Jong Un’s regime since the beginning of 2022. The next president must think about how to handle North Korea, which for decades has defied U.S. demands, requests and grievances.
With respect to Donald Trump, we may already have some clues. Citing three anonymous sources close to Trump’s thinking, Politico reported on Dec. 13 that the former president is considering a plan that would allow North Korea to keep its nuclear arsenal but not develop any new nuclear weapons or hold new tests in exchange for economic sanctions relief to Pyongyang. Trump strongly denied the report, calling it “a made up story” manufactured by his political opponents.
Such an approach, however, would be a dramatic U.S. policy shift on the North, which withdrew from the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty in 2003, has conducted six underground nuclear tests—the last during Trump’s term—and continues to violate multiple U.N. Security Council resolutions to this day. If a framework like the one described were to be seriously considered, let alone implemented, it would leave foreign policy pundits aghast, as the general consensus is that such an approach is akin to rewarding the North Korean dictatorship’s worst behavior.
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