Fears of a nuclear arms race in Asia after Trump’s North Korea comments
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Welcome to The World in 10. In an increasingly uncertain world, this is The Times Daily podcast dedicated to global security. Today with me, Tom Noonan, and Alex Dibble. Donald Trump's return to the White House has had immediate consequences across the world. This week we've been looking at them in detail and at specific comments Trump's made about Putin and Russia, for example. Do go back and listen to this week's episodes.

One talking point, though, which we haven't yet covered, but will do now, is North Korea. As he was signing his executive orders earlier this week, Donald Trump told reporters about how friendly he was with Kim Jong-un in his first term when they met in 2019, and he became the first sitting American president to step inside North Korean territory.

Then he said North Korea is a nuclear power. Now, that might seem innocuous, given all that we know about North Korea's missile tests, but it set the hares running in South Korea and with other US allies in the region.

So was it a deliberate choice of words? And if so, what is Trump's plan? Our guest today is The Times' Asia editor, Richard Lloyd Parry. Richard, just to drill down into what we know, first of all, what actually are North Korea's nuclear capabilities? Is Trump right about North Korea being a nuclear power? I don't think anyone really knows with complete accuracy. They don't declare this kind of thing. But the best independent estimate is

seem to assume that North Korea now has scores of nuclear warheads, 60, 80, 120, something like that.

I mean, making warheads and successfully mounting them on a missile are not the same things. The second step requires a higher degree of technology expertise and testing. So the North Koreans make out they can do that. The answer is I think no one really knows, but most people are assuming they could. In other words, they could nuke South Korea or Japan very quickly and readily with hundreds of missiles.

As for the intercontinental ballistic missiles, that's another question. Basically, those missiles are space rockets that go up into space and then come back down, re-enter the atmosphere. And there's all kinds of things that could go wrong. More people are doubtful that North Korea has the ability to do that, but it might be able to do that.

And from an American point of view, you only need to be able to take out one North American city for it to be an absolute world historical catastrophe. And even if North Korea was subsequently obliterated in your counter-response...

all that Americans would ever remember would be that you were the president who allowed the North Koreans to nuke North America. So any American president is going to be very wary of even the outside charts that they might be able to do that. There's a lot of talk about Donald Trump using the words nuclear power to describe North Korea. You know, Donald Trump is not your conventional diplomat. So are these carefully chosen words or is it a case of loose lips?

It's hard to know. I mean, you know, to many people, it's only common sense that North Korea is a nuclear power. We know they are. But the thing is that in the world of international diplomacy and the world of disarmament,

The term nuclear power also has a very specific meaning. It's only applied in certain circles to the five official acknowledged nuclear powers. So the United States, Russia, China, the UK and France. And to some people, if the president of the United States refers to North Korea as a nuclear power, it may imply acceptance. And this is all...

a particular concern in South Korea. There is a fear Donald Trump famously, in the words of the slogan, puts America first. In other words, he propagates what you might call a policy of national selfishness.

Donald Trump looks for deals that help Americans, in his view. So the fear is that what Donald Trump will do when he goes to Kim Jong-un is to negotiate away the weapons that threaten him the most, which are the long-range intercontinental ballistic missiles. The problem is that the South Koreans are more worried about the short and medium-range missiles, which could take them out. So what a lot of South Koreans think

Fear and foresee is a situation where Donald Trump goes to Kim Jong-un and says, look, just get rid of the long range stuff. Keep the rest. I don't care.

thereby leaving South Korea exposed. And what a lot of South Koreans are saying now is if that happens, we would need to get nuclear weapons of our own. And if South Korea nuclearized, then that will be tremendously consequential. There would then be pressure on Japan to nuclearize, perhaps other countries, including Vietnam,

it's highly probable that the whole non-proliferation regime would fall to bits and we'd be in a very new and unpredictable world. Now, obviously, when it comes to North Korea and their nuclear weapons, why it generates so much more interest than the other unofficial nuclear-armed countries like India or Pakistan or Israel is that those countries tend to be seen as much more likely to operate within the world order, to play by the rules of the game, as it were.

Then you have the secrecy and the lack of insight we have into how North Korea works and how Kim Jong-un rules. Do Donald Trump and his new advisers see Kim as a rational leader? Yeah, I mean, Kim Jong-un is not, despite what many people say, he's not a madman. He's an extremely rational politician. He has survived alone as a Stalinist dictator for

to an extent that no one would ever have predicted in the early 1990s, and no one did. So you've got to give him some credit for being a smart chap. And in fact, Donald Trump said that today, he said he's a smart guy. He's right about that. He is, he knows what he's doing. There is no reason why Kim Jong Un would launch a unilateral nuclear attack on anyone. Because if he did, it would be the last decision he made. He would burn along with his country.

under a massive counter-response from the United States, among others, probably. And he's not that. He's not suicidal. So, yes, some people argue, well, this is the reality we face. We're not going to get these nuclear weapons back in the box forever.

Our job now is to create conditions in which Kim Jong-un is deterred from ever doing anything stupid. And one of those conditions is by making sure that Kim Jong-il feels safe and does not feel threatened by South Korea and the United States, among others, feel threatened by invasion.

Richard, is this a sign of a new US policy under Trump? Is it about trying to stop North Korea from getting nuclear weapons in the way presidents have tried to do with Iran? Or do you think it is actually now about containing North Korea and working within that framework? Yeah, I don't think recent American administrations have made up their minds about that. And I think, I mean, this is to oversimplify, but I think...

You know, the last Democrat administrations in the US, Biden and also Barack Obama, essentially looked at the situation in North Korea and just decided, well, this is just too, this is too hard. We can't see a way of solving it. We've got lots to think about elsewhere.

So they've just left it. They have lived with the status quo. And that essentially has been the policy. Donald Trump, for all his many faults, did have a go in his first term in office and met with Kim Jong-un. He failed, I think, because he completely failed to understand what motivates Kim Jong-un. He used to say, he essentially offered Kim Jong-un a big deal, a comprehensive deal, where if Kim Jong-un gave up everything, all the nukes,

he was offering to invest, to put money into North Korea. Kim Jong-un doesn't want that.

He doesn't live in a kind of political ecology in which he has anything to gain from enriching his people. They're quite comfortably under his thumb in poverty. In fact, to create a more sophisticated society where information flowed more freely would threaten Kim Jong-un because people could see the dreadful state they're in and how they're being lied to and suppressed. So, I mean, that offering to build condos on the coast for Kim Jong-un isn't going to go anywhere, right?

Kim Jong-un cares about one thing. His one goal in life is to die in advanced age, peacefully in his bed, as both his father and his grandfather did. And that's all he cares about. The well-being, prosperity and human rights of North Koreans are not a consideration. And just finally, Donald Trump says now he wants to reach out to North Korea again. What do you think he wants to get out of that? And I suppose, is he actually going to be any more successful than he was last time?

Yeah, I mean, predicting Donald Trump is not a game I really want to get into. So, I mean, things have changed to a very great degree since Trump had his last meetings in 2000, I think it was 2018, 2019. Kim Jong-un is in, if anything, a stronger position. Sanctions against him are weakening because they're not really being enforced by China.

So Kim Jong-un is in a stronger position. He doesn't need a deal or he needs it even less than he did then. And...

He is no more likely to be won over by the idea of smart condos on his coastline, because of Donald Trump now than he was then. So it's hard to see how things could move along now. I mean, people often say that Kim Jong-un is unpredictable. I don't think he is, but Donald Trump is unpredictable. So I guess it all depends on where his unpredictability leads him. Richard Lloyd Parry, The Times' Asia editor. Thank you.

That's it from us. Thank you for taking 10 minutes to stay on top of the world with the help of The Times. We'll see you tomorrow. You want work to be less hard work. You hear an ad for MHR, so you reach out. We connect your department systems, which leads to real-time data sharing that uncovers new insights, which empower your decision makers and triple monthly sales, which leads to high fives and awkward hugs. You say a big thank you. We say you're welcome.

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