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Donald Trump’s North Korea challenge

To no one’s surprise, North Korea fired a ballistic missile on Feb. 12, the first missile test since Donald Trump moved into the Oval Office. The successful launching of the Pukguksong-2 missile into the Sea of Japan was not only another technological advance for Pyongyang’s nuclear-capable missile development, but also a major foreign policy challenge to the new Trump administration.

And no one should be surprised, the Feb. 12 short-range missile test (500 kilometer-range) will soon be followed by the tests of medium-range Taepodong I (2,000 kilometer-range), intermediate-range Musudan (4,000 kilometer-range), or even an intercontinental-range Taepodong II (8,000 kilometer-range), if the new U.S. administration fails to react to the “notice” sent by Kim Jung-Un.

“As U.S. President Donald Trump grapples with domestic crises and transition issues,” warns Jesse Johnson of Japan Times, “the country that is widely seen as representing his largest foreign policy challenge is gearing up some 10,000 km away to test an intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) capable of striking the United States˘ Reports last month said that North Korea had apparently built two missiles presumed to be ICBMs and placed them on mobile launchers for test-firing in the near future.”

For most North Korea watchers, President Trump’s controlled reaction to Kim Jung-Un’s provocative missile test underscores the fact that he has “few good options” to curb Pyongyang’s nuclear ambitions.

“The responses under consideration — which range from additional sanctions to U.S. shows of force to beefed-up missile defense,” a Reuter analysis summarizes, “do not seem to differ significantly from the North Korea playbook followed by Trump’s predecessor, Barack Obama.”

These North Korea “experts,” however, may be in for a surprise if they expect that Donald Trump is simply taking his cue from his predecessors.

Traditionally, from Clinton to Bush to Obama, to rely on Beijing to rein in the defiant North Korea has been a major, if not the most important, component of the U.S. policy toward North Korea. President Trump, however, may have a very different view on China’s role in defusing the North Korea bomb. As Sebastian Maslow at Japan’s Tohoku University puts it, “My view is that Trump’s treating of China as being part of the North Korea problem.”

Instead to count on China to solve the North Korean nuclear issue, President Trump’s North Korea policy is likely to be based on a strategy of “coercive diplomacy.”

On the “coercive” side, the Trump Administration is working to rebuild and strengthen the U.S.-South Korea-Japan trilateral alliance.

The Trump administration has assured South Korea the United States’ “ironclad” commitment to defend the country through strengthening of the extended deterrence, establishing the high levels of security coordination, using the full range of military capabilities, and moving forward with the final deployment of the THAAD missile defense system in South Korea before the end of 2017.

And immediately after Pyongyang’s missile test, President Trump told Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe that the U.S. stands behind Japan “100 percent.” “I just want everybody to understand and fully know that the United States of America,” Trump declared, “stands behind Japan, its great ally, 100 percent.”

What is more significant, “Trump,” writes Johnson, “has also offered up a another, different path to resolving the issue: diplomacy. The U.S. has for years dismissed calls for talks out of Pyongyang, insisting it must first give up its nukes. But given the failure of numerous other approaches, Trump has left the door open to speaking with the North.”

“I would not rule anything out at this point, including direct talks,” says Steven Ward at South Korea’s Chosun University, “Trump doesn’t care about the protocol and sensibilities of international diplomacy. Remember, he is an experienced deal-maker.”

A policy of “coercive diplomacy” is likely to face many obstacles. But since almost everything else has been tried – from Bill Clinton’s “Agreed Framework” to George W. Bush’s “Axis of Evil” to Barack Obama’s “Strategic Patience” – by successive administrations with little avail, it is perhaps, as Joel Wit at Johns Hopkins University’s School of Advanced International Studies puts it, “the most promising choice from a menu of very bad options.”

Xiaoxiong Yi is director of Marietta College’s China Program.

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