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Why the Next North Korea Crisis May Bring Less Fire and Fury

It’s beginning to feel like the days of “fire and fury” are here again.

Why the Next North Korea Crisis May Bring Less Fire and Fury
South Korean soldiers patrol along a barbed-wire fence at the Imjingak Pavilion near the Demilitarized Zone (DMZ) in Paju, South Korea. (Photographer: SeongJoon Cho/Bloomberg)

(Bloomberg) -- U.S. President Donald Trump is trading insults with Kim Jong-un, North Korea is launching missiles and no one’s talking about disarmament. It’s beginning to feel like the days of “fire and fury” are here again.

Or maybe not. While Kim’s nuclear arsenal is believed to have only grown more dangerous in the two years since Trump last threatened to “totally destroy” the country, the geopolitical landscape has shifted in ways that may make the brinkmanship of 2017 less attractive to both men.

For starters, a series of dovish moves by Trump -- including canceling a strike on Iran and withdrawing troops from Syria -- have undercut his threats of military action. Kim, meanwhile, must be careful he’s not so provocative that he prompts more sanctions or loses the diplomatic profile he gained during his unprecedented detente with Trump.

So, despite Kim’s warning he’ll take a “new path” if Trump doesn’t make a better offer in nuclear talks by the end of the year, he faces largely the same dilemma he has for most of 2019. How can he raise enough pressure on Trump to force a concession, without becoming an international pariah again?

“It’s neither in the U.S.’s nor North Korea’s interests to cross each other’s red line,” said Kim Hyun-wook, a professor at the Korea National Diplomatic Academy. “Trump would have to take measures that aren’t necessarily politically beneficial for him, and North Korea knows that it won’t be able to tolerate the response measures either.”

For more than two years, North Korea has refrained from testing nuclear bombs or missiles capable of carrying them to the U.S. mainland -- something Trump touts as a key first-term achievement. The region has been bracing for an end to that lull since the president walked away from his second face-to-face meeting with Kim in February and North Korea kicked off what became a record year of shorter-range rocket tests.

In recent days, the rhetoric has turned personal again, with Trump reviving his “Rocket Man” nickname for Kim and a top North Korean official dismissing the U.S. president as a “heedless and erratic old man.” North Korea has said it was preparing a choice of “Christmas” gifts for Trump, with Kim expected to announce his judgment at an upcoming meeting of the Workers’ Party in Pyongyang.

Kelly Craft, the U.S.’s ambassador to the United Nations, told the Security Council on Wednesday that she saw “deeply troubling indications” that North Korea was poised for a major provocation, including an ICBM test or space launch. Trump’s top envoy for nuclear talks, Stephen Biegun, is expected to arrive Sunday in Seoul for what will likely be the U.S.’s last chance to dial back tensions before the new year.

Trump has so far played down North Korea’s warnings, saying in a tweet that Kim was “too smart and has far too much to lose” to renew hostility with the U.S. A serious provocation would put more strain on the Republican leader during an election year, as Democrats seek to portray him as destabilizing to global security and too accommodating of autocrats like Kim.

Still, North Korea has more rungs to climb before conducting its seventh nuclear test or launching its first ICBM since November 2017. First, Kim could simply announce that he was rescinding his moratorium on such tests -- an intermediate step North Korea has taken before scrapping previous freezes.

“They will up the ante, but will calibrate it just enough so that the talks won’t totally break down,” said Yasuyo Sakata, a professor at Kanda University of International Studies. “The red line is that they cannot do a real intercontinental ballistic-missile test. But they can do satellite tests, for example.”

North Korea’s lesser provocations include conducting a Dec. 7 engine test at the Sohae Satellite Launching Ground. It carried out another “important test” on Saturday, but few details, a move that analysts believe is aimed at maximizing the effect of an announcement it will make at the ruling party’s plenary meeting scheduled later this month.

The recent tests have provided “priceless data” that will be used to develop another strategic weapon “for reliably restraining and overpowering the nuclear threat of the U.S.,” Pak Jong Chon, chief of the General Staff of the Korean People’s Army (KPA), said in a statement Saturday published on KCNA.

South Korea sees a possibility of North Korea launching a satellite on a ballistic-missile class projectile before Christmas, the JoongAng Ilbo newspaper said this week, citing an unidentified government source.

Kim could also fire an intermediate-range missile over U.S. ally Japan, something he last did in September 2017. Earlier this month, a North Korean diplomat released a statement warning that Prime Minister Shinzo Abe may see a ballistic missile “in the not too distant future and under his nose.”

The U.S. and its allies will only spend the year-end in peace, if they “hold off any words and deeds rattling us,” Pak said.

Why the Next North Korea Crisis May Bring Less Fire and Fury

North Korea must take care not to alienate Chinese President Xi Jinping and Russia’s Vladimir Putin, who both wield Security Council vetoes and advocate sanctions relief for it. Xi in particular doesn’t want trouble that may blow back across China’s border with North Korea, including the threat of a regional war with the U.S. or American sanctions against Chinese banks.

“No matter what we do, it should be conducive to reducing tension, to promoting dialogue, and thus prevent from falling back into confrontation,” Zhang Jun, China’s ambassador to the UN, told reporters after the Security Council meeting last week.

There are some advantages for Kim in raising the heat on Trump through 2020, including demonstrating weapons technology that will better deter any U.S. invasion and establish North Korea as a nuclear state. He has likely found enough ways around international sanctions to keep his economy stable for the time being, UN observers have said.

In the long run though, Kim probably needs to get sanctions lifted if he wants to develop the industrial and tourism projects he promotes almost daily in state media. And he’s unlikely to find a better U.S. negotiating partner than Trump, who has defied convention by meeting him and showering him with praise.

“It is possible that North Korea wants to regroup while the U.S. presidential election plays out,” said Naoko Aoki, an adjunct political scientist at RAND Corp. “That may mean increasing and improving its nuclear and missile arsenal, and then negotiating from what it may consider a position of increased leverage.”

To contact the reporters on this story: Isabel Reynolds in Tokyo at ireynolds1@bloomberg.net;Jihye Lee in Seoul at jlee2352@bloomberg.net

To contact the editors responsible for this story: Brendan Scott at bscott66@bloomberg.net, Shamim Adam

©2019 Bloomberg L.P.