In Handling the North Korea-Russia Alliance, Trump Should Follow Nixon
It is high time to improve North Korea-U.S. relations, and the U.S. president-elect is uniquely positioned to do so.
Aerial view of the city in Pyongyang, North Korea.
First Published in The Diplomat November 26, 2024
By James Jongsoo Lee
The reelection of Donald Trump presents an opening for improving North Korea-U.S. relations. Better bilateral relations between Washington and Pyongyang can undermine the menacing North Korea-Russia alliance and help slow down North Korea’s rapid military buildup. The international community, including South Korea, Japan, and the U.S. allies in Europe, can contribute to such an outcome by engaging Pyongyang.
The state of North Korea-U.S. relations and inter-Korean relations is a disaster that has been years in the making. The dramatic progress made in both sets of bilateral relations in 2018-2019 under then-U.S. President Donald Trump and then-South Korean President Moon Jae-in all came to naught following the failure of the Hanoi summit in 2019 and the subsequent unraveling of the inter-Korean rapprochement.
Under the present Biden administration and the administration of South Korean President Yoon Suk-yeol, North Korea-U.S. and inter-Korean relations deteriorated further. Increasingly isolated from the West, Pyongyang has been on a collision course vis-à-vis Washington and Seoul. Kim Jong Un, the North Korean leader, has been expanding his military arsenal while making threats to destroy South Korea and conducting frequent tests of weaponry.
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James Jongsoo Lee is Senior Managing Director at Brock Securities and Center Associate at Harvard University’s Davis Center for Russian and Eurasian Studies. He is also Adjunct Fellow at the Hawaii-based Pacific Forum and Contributing Editor at The Diplomat. He can be followed on X at @jameslee004.
The views and opinions expressed here are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the Pacific Council.
