Why North Korea's Kim Jong Un Can't Get A Nuclear Deal

President Trump and Supreme Leader Kim Jong Un’s summit in Vietnam on February 28 broke up without agreement.  Trump walked away empty-handed, but so did Kim Jong Un, who had hoped to leverage his nuclear threat for economic and political concessions because he judged Trump to be malleable and desperate for a deal.  To get Trump's attention, Kim has now launched a volley of short-range missile tests.

 Why is Kim been unable to leverage his nuclear threat to get what he wants?  In the larger sense, why have North Korea, Russia, and Iran, all failed to negotiate away sanctions based on their nuclear capability?

The answer is that geopolitical reality is staring them in the face.  Without an insuperable nuclear capability, without a broad-based functioning economy, without an inclusive social contract, without a community of cooperating independent states, North Korea, Russia and Iran cannot, with only a nuclear threat, aspire to lead in a new world order or even achieve parity with other nations in a new global system.  They are--nearly--failed states.

The whole point of negotiations then becomes not the larger purpose of national destiny, but the smaller, parochial purpose of preserving the current autocratic leaders’ rule.  It is the autocracy that is at stake, not the nation.

Kim Jong Un, Vladimir Putin and the conservative coterie in Iran centered on the Guardian and the Expediency and Discernment Councils start with a fundamental disadvantage.  At the unthinkable level of nuclear war, they know they cannot eliminate a devastating US response if they act on their nuclear threat.  Bravado--such as Putin’s comment that in the event of a nuclear war, “why would we want a world without Russia?”--is impotent autocratic hyperbole.  Their nations might possibly survive a nuclear exchange, but they will not.

At the same time, their economies after years of mismanagement and sanctions are weak and so marginal to the global economy that they are not significant enough to force concessions.  The loss to the global economy due to the disruption of their national economies would be a cause of strategic concern, but it would not bring down any systemically important economies.

Economic weakness is compounded by political irrelevance.  Each is a marginal player in the global system.  North Korea, Russia, and Iran are not effective members of any larger community of nations; except with the likes of a few failed states, such as Syria and Venezuela.  They cannot leverage alliances to gain concessions.  Even coordination among the three is feeble because of markedly different circumstances even if they have the same narrow interest in keeping their nuclear arsenals for self-preservation.

Even if sanctions were lifted, their economies would still perform poorly due to continued economic mismanagement, and there would be no one for their people to blame but their autocratic rulers.  Without sanctions as a scapegoat, the autocrats do not have anyone to blame for their people's poor economic prospects.  Lack of basic civil liberties and increased social oppression are at odds with their citizens’ aspirations and threaten national cohesion.  Retaining their nuclear capabilities does not eliminate the threat to their power from domestic economic and social failure.

Only Russia poses a significant threat to the West--or to life on earth—for which it might achieve diplomatic concessions, but its participation in global institutions, which once projected Soviet power, appears an anachronism of the Cold War because of Russia’s habitual violation of international laws and norms of conduct.  Its demonstrable lack of good faith--whether by invasion of neighboring countries, denying culpability for the downing of Malaysian Flight MH17, poisoning of political opponents in Russia and abroad, or even failure to accept the outcome of international arbitration for Ukrainian commercial losses due to Russia’s seizure of Crimea--has destroyed international goodwill toward Russia.

The threat of nuclear conflict is real because the means are there, but it is not what animates Kim Jong Un, Vladimir Putin, and Iran’s coterie of conservatives.  What the autocrats want more than anything is to guarantee their hold on power.  For whatever convoluted reason of personal prestige or incompetence, President Trump was right to walk away.  Without political transformation in North Korea, Russia, and Iran, the autocrats cannot denuclearize without losing political control, which is what they value more than national interest.