Trump and Kim both cut their teeth on their family businesses, as it were. That shapes the way they see the world, and how they deal with each other.
The world
has been fixated this week on the Singapore summit between U.S. President
Donald Trump and Kim Jong Un, the ruler of North Korea. As the first-ever
meeting between the serving leaders of these two bitter enemies, it was seen as
an opportunity to redirect a relationship that only a few months ago seemed to
be lurching toward armed conflict, and the risk of nuclear war. The outcome
from Singapore, though, was less an equitable step forward than a clear win for
Kim.
Since the unexpected summit was put together very quickly, while surviving a
sudden and soon-reversed cancellation by Trump late last month, no one expected
concrete, detailed agreements on the contentious issues that divided the two
sides, particularly North Korea’s nuclear weapons and ballistic missile
programs. Unsurprisingly, the joint
statement that
the two leaders signed at the end of the meeting was a vague agreement to
pursue “new” relations and work toward a “robust peace regime on the Korean
Peninsula.”
What was surprising was the degree to which Kim got what he wanted. Trump’s
depiction of Kim after the meeting was gushing in praise for a tyrant widely
considered one of the most repressive and dangerous on earth. “He’s got a great
personality,” Trump said in an
interview after
the summit. “He’s a funny guy, he’s very smart, he’s a great negotiator. He
loves his people.” Kim, meanwhile, made no serious concessions.
The general consensus, then, was that the North Korean dictator came out of the
meeting on top. Nicholas Kristof of The New York Times wrote that Trump was “outfoxed in
Singapore.” Abraham Denmark, the director of the Asia Program at the Woodrow
Wilson International Center for Scholars and a former Obama administration
official, tweeted that, “Kim got a huge propaganda win and
a metric ton of legitimacy.” Bruce Klingner of the conservative Heritage
Foundation added, also on Twitter, “This is very
disappointing,” noting that all of the major points in the summit’s joint
statement were in previous documents with North Korea, “some in a stronger,
more encompassing way.”
This should shock no one: Kim has been winning his psychological war with the
United States since the beginning of the Trump administration. In part, this is
a result of the skill differential between the two leaders. Both cut their
teeth on their family businesses, as it were. That shapes the way they see the
world, and how they deal with each other.
The Kim
family business, of course, is holding political power at all costs. It was
established by Kim Il Sung, Kim Jong Un’s grandfather, and continued by Kim
Jong Il, Kim Jong Un’s father. It uses brutal repression, fear, threats,
intimidation, military aggression, terrorism and crime to sustain a parasitic
regime and stave off the outside pressure of richer and stronger states that
would prefer to see it change. This has forced all three generations of Kims to
master the complex art of statecraft. Unlike Trump, Kim realizes that it’s not
just his reputation at stake, but his survival as well. To borrow from Samuel
Johnson, this “concentrates the mind wonderfully.”
The Trump family business was real estate development and salesmanship. Donald
Trump has been very good at this, but it has marginal applicability to the
world of statecraft. This background leads Trump to incorrectly assume that Kim
shares his priorities: self-publicity and financial gain. Put simply, Kim is
winning his psychological war because it is taking place in a world he knows
and has mastered, while Trump is playing an “away game” he has yet to fully
grasp.
The peculiar psychology of nuclear weapons is also working to Kim’s benefits.
Leverage is one of the most important resources in statecraft. As a general
rule, the process of developing a nuclear weapon capability gives a nation more
leverage than actually having fielded nuclear weapons. Not knowing what a new
nuclear power might do, other nations—driven by fear of the unknown—are willing
to make concessions to stop the nuclearization process. Once a nation actually
has nuclear weapons, it finds that they actually add little to its influence,
as Pakistan has found out.
Kim Jong Un seems to understand this and knows that having demonstrated nuclear
and ballistic missile capabilities over the past few years, his leverage over
the U.S. now is optimized, so it’s time to cash in. His logical play is to roll
back his nuclear weapons program in exchange for things he wants—legitimacy,
security guarantees, economic assistance—while keeping the capacity to start
the program back up. In all likelihood, this cycle will continue for decades.
If anything, the Singapore summit set the stage for it.
Kim undoubtedly knows that the economic system and propaganda narrative he
inherited from his father and grandfather are no longer viable. North Koreans
know how grim their lives are compared to their neighbors in South Korea and
China. Eventually, this discontent will be turned against the regime. Kim’s
only route to long-term personal and regime survival is tightly controlled
economic and nascent political reform styled on China and Vietnam. To pull this
off, he needs to convince North Koreans that he is able to do things that even
his father and grandfather could not. Being treated as an equal and praised by
the president of the United States was a big one.
In a broader sense, Kim needs to keep Washington on its heels so that he can
improve his two most vital relationships with China and South Korea. To do
that, he must win his ongoing psychological war with the United States. So far,
he is.
***Steven Metz is the author of “Iraq and the Evolution of American Strategy.”
His weekly WPR column appears every Friday. You can
follow him on Twitter @steven_metz.
