Talks With North Korea Should Unite, Not Divide Allies

(Bloomberg View) -- No one questions the size of Donald Trump's nuclear button. Instead of bragging about it on Twitter to North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un, the U.S. president might try spending more time on the phone with South Korean President Moon Jae-in.

QuickTake North Korea's Nukes

Kim is clearly hoping for the opposite. In addition to taunting the U.S. by claiming to have his own “button,” he used his New Year's address to take up Moon's offer of talks over the upcoming Winter Olympics in South Korea. The timing suggests, as Kim himself did in his speech, that international sanctions are beginning to cause real pain inside North Korea. Presumably, he's counting on exploiting Moon's oft-stated desire for a rapprochement in order to ease pressure on his regime and drive a wedge between Seoul and Washington.

That's no reason not to hold talks. It's important to remember that South Korea, not the North, first proposed negotiations -- as well as a delay in joint military exercises with the U.S. until after the Olympics. If such a pause now induces Kim not to interfere with the Olympics, or even to send North Korean athletes to the Games, it will be a small victory and a respite from months of mounting tension on the peninsula.

A brief moment of Olympic harmony won't solve the larger issue of the North's nuclear program. But neither should it significantly reduce the pressure on Kim.

It's also important to remember that talks are valuable in themselves. Trying to divine Kim's thinking from North Korean propaganda broadcasts is about as unrewarding as deconstructing Trump's tweets. By contrast, taking up Kim's invitation for dialogue through multiple channels could open new windows into the North Korean regime's stability and priorities.

If continued talks are predicated on a pause in the North's nuclear and long-range missile tests, they will have served a useful purpose. In the most optimistic scenario, they could lay the groundwork for multilateral negotiations over denuclearizing the peninsula. 

Even a more modest hope is still worthwhile: The talks are an opportunity for the U.S. and South Korea to forge a more coherent and clearly coordinated strategy for dealing with the North. Handled well, there's room for a good-cop, bad-cop routine, with the U.S. administration continuing to marshal international consensus and tighten loopholes in the U.N.-imposed sanctions regime, while Moon tries to nudge Kim toward serious dialogue with a few carrots, including perhaps some humanitarian aid.

Whether that's what Kim has in mind is irrelevant as long as the U.S. and South Korea remain on the same page. The usual North Korean demands -- immediate sanctions relief, a reopening of the Kaesong joint industrial zone, a halt to U.S.-South Korea military exercises -- should be no harder to dismiss now than before, absent any real concessions on Kim's part.

The fact is the North Korean leader doesn't have the power to divide the U.S. and South Korea if they don't want to be divided. That's what Trump should be boasting about.

--Editors: Nisid Hajari, Michael Newman.

To contact the senior editor responsible for Bloomberg View's editorials: David Shipley at davidshipley@bloomberg.net.

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