Steven Metz
The world was riveted this week by the meeting in Hanoi between U.S. President Donald Trump and North Korea’s Kim Jong Un. Last year’s initial summit between the two leaders in Singapore created nearly giddy hope for an end to the longstanding hostility between the United States and North Korea, particularly the resolution of the thorniest issue of all: North Korea’s nuclear weapons and ballistic missile program. But a true breakthrough in Vietnam was always unlikely for one pressing reason: Americans persistently fail to understand how Kim sees the world, instead treating him as they want him to be, rather than as he really is.
So it shouldn’t have come as much of a surprise that talks broke down and both sides abruptly walked away from the two-day summit, issuing contradictory explanations of how disagreements over sanctions relief derailed the negotiations.
Before Trump even got to Hanoi, his Twitter feed, as always, provided a window into his thinking. In a Feb. 24 tweet, Trump asserted that “Chairman Kim realizes, perhaps better than anyone else, that without nuclear weapons, his country could fast become one of the great economic powers anywhere in the World.” Reflecting Trump’s tendency to see politics in terms of financial gains and losses, he assumed that Kim is a normal political leader who wants increased national prosperity to bolster his support inside North Korea. Given that assumption, the Trump administration reportedly planned to encourage Kim to emulate communist Vietnam, combining controlled economic reform with more cordial relations with the United States.
Trump is not the only one who misunderstands Kim. Graham Allison, a former assistant secretary of defense under President Bill Clinton and now a professor at Harvard’s Kennedy School, for instance, recently tweeted “I remember Reagan’s ‘delusion’ that he could persuade the leader of the Evil Empire to embrace Western ideals. But Gorbachev did. As Trump heads to Hanoi, we should ask: is he taking a page from Reagan’s playbook?”
The last thing Kim wants is an economic boom that would create an elite, and even a middle class, less dependent on him.
The problem is that North Korea is not Vietnam and Kim Jong Un is not Gorbachev. Unlike the Soviet Union after Stalin or China after the death of Mao Zedong, North Korea is not ruled by a collective elite convinced that economic reform is crucial to regime survival. North Korea remains a parasitic dictatorship with one core objective: keeping the paramount leader in power. The last thing Kim wants is an economic boom that would create an elite, and even a middle class, less dependent on him. In the twisted psychology of a totalitarian system, dependence on the regime is more important than prosperity. Kim understands this even if Trump does not.
Americans insist on comparing North Korea to China or Vietnam, it seems, simply because it is an Asian country. In this erroneous view, Kim could, if he so chose, be like China’s Deng Xiaoping, ending his nation’s hostility with the outside world and setting it on a path to economic reform. In reality, Kim’s regime is more like the personalist dictatorships in the Middle East: Iraq under Saddam Hussein, Libya under Moammar Gadhafi, and Syria under Bashar al-Assad.
Kim probably understands the comparisons and, in fact, has drawn lessons from those Middle Eastern dictators. From Iraq, he likely learned that it is a bad idea to bluff about weapons of mass destruction since that might motivate U.S. intervention. Regime survival depends on actually having them and a willingness to use them. The sweet spot is to be crazy enough to deter the United States, but not crazy enough to provoke American intervention. From Libya, Kim probably learned that making a deal with the United States to give up a WMD capability doesn’t bring enough benefits to stave off internal opposition, and so is exceptionally dangerous. From Iran, he probably learned that reaching an agreement with the United States to limit a WMD program will not keep Washington from trying to undermine his regime.
All of this must suggest to Kim that the survival of his regime—and his own personal survival—depends on three things. First, he must avoid U.S. military intervention by toning down his hostility and continuing diplomacy without actually committing to anything significant. Second, he must have the capability to deter U.S. military action without provoking intervention. This means he must keep his nuclear weapons but stop testing them. Third, he must assure that North Korea’s economy is prosperous enough to stay in power but not prosperous enough to erode the dependence that sustains his regime. Like strongmen and monarchs before him, Kim must guard the perception that he is the source of all good in society, particularly security and economic well-being, by convincing the people of North Korea that without him, they cannot survive. In North Korea, dependence on the paramount leader, not prosperity, holds the system together.
Unfortunately, American policymakers and commentators do not seem to grasp this reality, preferring to treat Kim as a new Gorbachev, Deng or Vietnam’s collective leadership rather than like his true analogs: Saddam, Gadhafi and Assad. What Americans are doing is what political scientists call “mirror imaging,” assuming that the North Korean leader sees the world much like them and, therefore, wants essentially the same things.
But Kim is not a normal political leader. Having learned from his father and grandfather, he knows that personalist dictators die when they weaken their grip, allow the dependence on them to erode, or fail to deter or distract an adversary like the United States. He does not want the kind of prosperity that would make North Korea “an economic powerhouse,” as Trump offered, and does not need a true partnership with the United States. All he needs is a modest easing of economic pressure, particularly by China and South Korea.
Until Americans understand how Kim truly sees the world—what his priorities and objectives are, and what he fears most—they will simply be convenient tools for the North Korean dictator. But based on how the summit unfolded in Hanoi, there is little to suggest that Trump and others will come around to that understanding.
Steven Metz is the author of “Iraq and the Evolution of American Strategy.” His WPR column appears every Friday. You can follow him on Twitter@steven_metz.
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