OPINION:
Back in 2018, I had a front-row seat in Singapore when President Trump became the first sitting U.S. leader to meet North Korean dictator Kim Jong-un.
Expectations were high as the president tried to entice Mr. Kim to negotiate in good faith by emphasizing North Korea’s economic potential, including beachside condos and hotels.
If Mr. Kim would agree to “shake the hand of peace,” then he could transform his country from an economically isolated hermit kingdom into a prosperous Asian powerhouse.
The U.S. offered investment, commercial opportunities and security guarantees. A year later, during a summit in Hanoi, Mr. Trump rightly walked away from what would have been a bad deal after Mr. Kim demanded massive sanctions relief without acceding to anything close to the U.S. demand for “complete, verifiable and irreversible denuclearization.”
In the years since, North Korea has significantly expanded its inventory of nuclear weapons and now reportedly has about 50 warheads.
Designed to survive a first strike, North Korea’s nuclear arsenal includes underground and mobile land launchers as well as a fleet of submarines.
North Korea has also test-fired nuclear-capable cruise missiles from a newly deployed destroyer.
Ruthlessly focused on regime survival, Mr. Kim has little interest in improving the horrific standard of living of his starving people — especially if that means giving up his nuclear weapons arsenal. He will, however, gladly pocket any sanctions relief gained through perfunctory negotiations to enrich his family and coterie of elite security and military forces on whom he relies to stay in power.
The second Trump administration tried a similar strategy with the Kremlin. During meetings with Russian President Vladimir Putin and the CEO of the Russian Investment Fund, Kirill Dmitriev, Special Envoy Steven Witkoff discussed joint business development in rare earths and hydrocarbons.
The men also talked about easing of sanctions in return for Mr. Putin’s negotiating in good faith to end Russia’s barbaric war on
Ukraine.
Yet Mr. Putin has demonstrated a practically infinite threshold for pain inflicted on his army, which has sustained more than 1 million casualties, and his citizens, who must suffer through an unbalanced wartime economy.
Nor does Mr. Putin have any empathy for the innocent Ukrainian hospitals, maternity wards or neighborhoods that the Russian military has rained hell down upon.
There is no evidence that Mr. Putin would ever seek a commercial reset with the West at the cost of abandoning his strategic objective of conquering Ukraine and violently demarcating the Kremlin’s self-designated sphere of influence.
In return for Tehran’s agreement to negotiate on its nuclear program and to open the Strait of Hormuz, the U.S. lifted the blockade on Iran’s ports, enabling the ruling regime to earn billions of dollars in revenue by selling oil at market prices.
Speaking shortly after the memorandum of understanding was signed, Vice President J.D. Vance noted that we want Iran “to have a successful country, but only if they do what’s necessary to commit long-term to not building a nuclear weapon.”
Therein lies the challenge. Because it never addressed Iran’s ballistic missile inventory and support to proxy terrorists, and granted sunset clauses for the nuclear portion, the Obama administration’s deal was severely flawed. It never gained enough support, even from Democrats, to be ratified as a treaty in the Senate.
Still, there is no indication that Iran’s hard-line Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps. is prepared to accept a more comprehensive deal that better serves U.S. national security interests.
That is because, just like its axis-of-dictatorship allies, Russia and North Korea, Iran’s kleptocratic theocracy does not exist to promote its citizens’ well-being. Rather, it exists to violate citizens’ human rights with impunity.
No amount of economic incentives will change the fact that the regime is at war with the U.S. and is ruthlessly determined to eliminate American influence in the Middle East, destroy Israel and dominate its Gulf Arab neighbors.
The Trump administration should be lauded for trying to use commercial incentives to bring our adversaries to the negotiating table. After all, British Prime Minister Winston Churchill rightly argued that it “was better to jaw-jaw than war-war.”
Yet that approach — even if it demonstrated to domestic opponents of those regimes what a better future might hold as a proof of concept — has to this point led to a series of diplomatic dead ends.
As long as these rogue dictatorships remain in power, there appears to be no better option than to revive President Reagan’s pragmatic national security strategy based on deterrence, containment and deep partnerships with our closest allies around the world.
• Daniel N. Hoffman is a retired clandestine services officer and former chief of station with the Central Intelligence Agency. His combined 30 years of government service included high-level overseas and domestic positions at the CIA. He has been a Fox News contributor since May 2018. He can be reached at danielhoffman@yahoo.com. All statements of fact, opinion or analysis expressed are those of the author and do not reflect the official positions or endorsement of the CIA or any other U.S. government agency.
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