One, with Special Counsel Mueller, could set the tone for the remainder of President Trump's time in office and determine Mr. Trump's political future.
The other, with North Korea's dictator, could completely reshape the geopolitical landscape in Northeast Asia for decades to come.
To survive the first, President Trump and his advisers must think small. To cement his place in history as one of our nation's greatest Presidents, he must think big on Korea.
If and when he meets with Mr. Mueller, President Trump must pay close attention to the smallest details of his answers to questions and resist the urge to ramble or embellish -- admittedly not his strong suit. But, if President Trump can successfully escape the nuanced jaws of the perjury trap many see being laid for him, he has the opportunity to put the last year and a half of investigatory distractions behind and make a big (the Colonel can't resist it -- HUUUGE) deal on the Korean Peninsula.
To really change the geopolitical landscape in Northeast Asia, however, President Trump and his advisers must not just "think out of the box" -- they must think BIG.
The "box" in which U.S. policy towards North Korea has been contained for nearly three decades now has been containing the specter of a nuclear armed and capable regime. For the first four decades of the Korean dilemma previous to that the calculus was fairly straightforward -- the U.S., South Korea, and their allies merely had to maintain a conventional force deterrent on the peninsula to ensure South Korea's political and economic freedom.
To be sure, the political arc in South Korea did not always bend in perfect alignment with the American conception of "Jeffersonian Democracy;" but, the population south of the DMZ enjoyed vastly more political, social, and economic freedom than their brothers in the north and by the fourth decade following the Korean War, the difference in the economic vitality between the two Koreas was stark. The Republic of Korea (South Korea) was booming; the Democratic People's Republic -- neither democratic, of the people, nor a republic -- of Korea (North Korea) was starving. As has been demonstrated time and again (see: East Germany, the USSR, Cuba, et. al.), free-market capitalism will rapidly out-distance socialist command economies with ease, and nowhere is this more clearly demonstrated than the dramatic difference between the plights of the divided Korea peoples.
The Colonel fears that Mr. Trump and company are preparing to enter into the same fairly limited objective negotiations with the current Kim regime that was attempted by American administrations with the two previous Kim regimes. The stated goal -- at least the the one the Colonel can best decipher -- is the "denuclearization of the Korean peninsula." That sounds like a lofty goal, but can the Colonel be frank? That is a bandaid on a gangrenous mortal wound.
Think big, people!
Thinking big in Korea requires understanding a bit of the history that got the Korean people to this point. As the markets of Northeast Asia (specifically China, Korea, and Japan) opened to European trade through the 19th Century, Japan, in particular, transformed itself more rapidly than the rest of the region, and, by the turn of the century, began to exert itself colonially. Japan outright occupied Korea from 1910 until Japan's defeat in 1945. As with the rest of Eurasia, post-war "administration" of Korea was divided between the USSR and the Western Powers. A line delineating Russian and U.S. control in Korea was hastily and "temporarily" drawn on the map along the 38th parallel. And, as happened with West and East Germany, the Russians had no intention of allowing reunification of the Korean peninsula -- at least not under control of the West. Relatively free elections were held in the south -- the Russians installed a dictator in the north.
Five years after the close of WWII -- June 25th, 1950, to be exact -- the North Korean army, armed and organized by the Soviet Union, swept south in a bid to re-unite the peninsula under communist dictator Kim Il Sung. Three years of bitter fighting later an armistice was signed between the U.S. and South Korea on one side and China (who had joined the fight with major land forces) and North Korea on the other. No peace treaty -- just an agreement to maintain a demilitarized zone roughly along the original 38th parallel dividing line. Since 1953, a tense cease fire has existed. No peace; instead, a constant build-up and modernization of forces on both sides to the point that the combined military might facing north and south constitutes the world's most densely packed potential for destruction and loss of life. War today on the Korean peninsula, even if it remained "conventional," would result in more military and civilian casualties, in the shortest period of time, in the history of human civilization. No hyperbole -- just fact.
So, "denuclearization" of the peninsula, alone, does not solve the underlying problem, nor prevent potentially the greatest catastrophe since the end of World War Two.
What, then, is the answer?
One possible key to dissipating the explosive gases fogging all reason in the region is find agreement on a deal that would cement a peace treaty and normalize relations between all concerned. Each side would need assurances, in word and deed, that the existential threat posed by the other was radically minimized, if not gone altogether.
Here's what each side needs:
The Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK, aka North Korea) is ruled by a third generation, hereditary, personality cult dictatorship which maintains its grip on power with one of the largest militaries in the world -- justified (whether we see it as valid or not) by the threat of invasion leading to regime change by the world's most powerful nation. Kim Yong Un has one overarching concern -- to remain in power. To do so, he must maintain the belief among his 25 million subjects that he (and a huge military force) are all that stands between them and complete annihilation. There once -- four or five decades ago -- might have been the dream of accomplishing Granddaddy Kim's goal of Korean re-unification under the north's form of government. But, that possibility has long since passed with the south's achievement of military parity with the north, and the enormous economic disparity between north and south.
What Kim Yong Un wants is an assurance that his regime will survive for the foreseeable future. He also needs to demonstrate to the world technological accomplishments (currently nuclear power/weapons and ballistic missiles) to maintain the fiction of his omnipotence and omniscience in the minds of his people. A peace treaty that guarantees no attempt at regime change by his enemies, allows for peaceful technology development with which to impress his people, and lifting of economic sanctions to further boost the economic well-being of his people and their consideration of their leader, might be enough to achieve the goal of denuclearization.
For China's part, the conventional wisdom is that the PRC isn't keen to see the buffer between them and the democratic west gone with reunification of the Korean peninsula under a true representative republican government. The Colonel thinks this argument has outlived reality. The Chinese communist party is no longer a shaky regime, threatened by competing powers in the region. The PRC has matured into a regional hegemon on the cusp of world super-powerdom. Although the PRC has historically enjoyed seeing the U.S. stuck in the Korean tar baby, they would probably love more to see U.S. forces removed from Korea and would probably support a peace treaty that accomplishes that end.
All hereditary dictatorial regimes eventually collapse. The trick is to manage the inevitable collapse of the DPRK so that it does not destabilize the region. Were the DPRK to collapse today, the great economic disparity between the two Koreas would make the process of reunification extremely difficult and detrimental to all of the Korean people. The reunification of Germany in the last century is instructive. The economic disparity between East and West Germany was significant and it took a reunified Germany a decade to regain its former economic footing as a Europe-leading economy. The current disparity between North and South Korea is an order of magnitude larger. Bringing the North up to rough parity with the South will take generations. There is little interest in the south for such a sacrifice.
So, immediate reunification is, for all practical purposes, off the table. Normalization of trade relations between North Korea and the rest of the world (Vietnam being a good, if not nearly an exact, analog) made possible by a peace treaty with verifiable disarmament conditions would go a long way towards opening up the DPRK to enlightening ideas. Given the brainwashed condition of the North Korean people, it will take a generation or more of slow progress toward a more open society, but trade and communication almost always empowers people to eventually choose freedom over slavery.
For the United States' part, a peace treaty codifying verifiable denuclearization and strategic systems disarmament is the holy grail on the Korean peninsula. Further, the U.S. needs assurances that North Korean nuclear and ballistic missile technology will cease to contribute to proliferation of such technology to regimes such as Iran. Surely, the nation with the greatest economy on the planet can find sufficient inducements to convince the Kim regime to take this offer.
We must make the DPRK and their Chinese patrons an offer they can't refuse. Appeal to Kim's venality if we must. We have nothing to lose by going big on Korea -- and everything to gain.
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