The next president must defuse the Korean crisis to avoid a nuclear catastrophe

Huris is, by definition, dangerous. Today we are faced with three examples of risky self-reliance on the increasingly unstable Korean peninsula with catastrophic nuclear consequences.

In a strong signal to adversaries in September, North Korea released rare photos of Kim Jong Un inspecting a previously undisclosed nuclear enrichment facility, highlighting Kim’s directive to “exponentially increase” the country’s nuclear weapons.

This month, Kim repeated an explicit threat to use nuclear weapons in the event of a conflict on the Korean peninsula. That conflict looks even more likely as South Korea’s spy chief warns that North Korea may conduct a nuclear test around the time of the US election, North Korea accuses South Korea of ​​flying drones over Pyongyang and the Kim government exploits roads connecting the two Koreas.

But Kim isn’t the only one displaying risky security. So have Vice President Kamala Harris and former President Donald Trump in response to one of the most pressing and consequential foreign policy dangers facing our nation: the growing threat of nuclear war on the Korean Peninsula. With 28,500 US troops in South Korea, an accidental or intentional confrontation on the Korean Peninsula threatens to drag the United States into a nuclear conflict. It is in the vital interest of the US to promote a peaceful resolution of the Korean crisis, but neither presidential candidate is offering a way out of war.

“I will not be pleased with tyrants and dictators like Kim Jong Un,” Harris declared in his speech at the Democratic National Convention. Trump responded that “getting along” with the North Korean leader is “a good thing.” But rhetoric aside, neither the candidate nor their respective party platforms have presented a strategy to reduce the all-too-realistic threat of war with North Korea, demonstrating an arrogance that American voters should not tolerate.

As a warrior and activist for peace, we are united in demanding that the next president, Harris or Trump, take this existential threat seriously as tensions are now at their worst in Korea. Otherwise, we fear that the United States would be embroiled in a conflict in Korea that would trigger World War III.

Since the 2019 Hanoi talks collapsed, the situation on the Korean Peninsula has become more dangerous than ever. The United States has tried to eliminate the threat, but has failed to deter provocations, deter nuclear ambitions, or do anything about the humanitarian crisis in North Korea. In the past two years, North Korea has tested nearly 100 missiles, including five capable of striking the US homeland. Meanwhile, we have lost all official avenues of engagement (or crisis management) with Pyongyang.

Inter-Korean relations have also reached their post-war nadir, with Seoul and Pyongyang declaring each other the main “enemy”. Last year, Kim signed a mutual defense treaty with Russian President Vladimir Putin, urged his military to plan to “conquer” South Korea and publicly rejected peaceful unification. South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol responded with his own hardline view of regime change and the absorption of North Korea. Seventy percent of South Koreans now want their own nuclear weapons.

The United States must point a new path before something inevitably breaks in Korea. The next president must place Korea at the top of his foreign policy priorities before it rises to the top due to a catastrophic crisis with nuclear fallout.

Opponents will argue that the United States has tried for 30 years to contain North Korea’s nuclear ambitions and improve the country’s human rights, but that the Kim regime will not cooperate. However, both Democratic and Republican administrations have shown that engagement works to de-escalate tensions and reduce North Korea’s nuclear arsenal.

We recommend two concrete steps that the next president can take unilaterally without protracted negotiations with North Korea to set the conditions for lasting peace: preparing for peace and rebuilding village-to-village ties.

First, the next president should formally begin the process to resolve the fundamental issue, the technical state of war lingering since the 1953 armistice, which halted but did not end the Korean War. Seventy-one years later, we need a peace agreement.

A formal agreement may seem legalistic, but it has game-changing potential. That’s because U.S. goals of advancing human rights and North Korea’s denuclearization ultimately require diplomatic engagement with Kim’s government, but that diplomacy is nonexistent after Trump dishonored to Kim by abandoning the talks and President Joe Biden pushed Kim into Putin’s corner through an “everything-no-carrot approach”. We need a fundamental reset to break the current impasse, and steps towards a deal of formal peace might well provide the necessary jolt.

The next president should embark on the formal resolution of the Korean War with personnel and funding. We must do the long-awaited work of ending America’s oldest war by transitioning legacy armistice entities, clarifying US treaty obligations, and establishing truth and reconciliation efforts.

Second, the next administration must lift the US travel ban on North Korea. This exceptional ban is a violation of US sanctions policy and is contrary to national interests. The State Department cites the possible but highly unlikely risk of illegal detention as the reason for the ban, although thousands of Americans have traveled without incident. Last year, after Army Pvt. Travis King entered the country illegally, North Korea immediately released him. This draconian ban impedes humanitarian efforts, prevents 100,000 Korean Americans from seeing their family, and cuts off the only current avenue of people-to-people contact essential to peace.

The next administration must abandon the failed “more of the same” approach to the deteriorating situation in Korea. The hubris of refusing to change course in the face of mounting evidence will continue the suffering of ordinary North Koreans and likely drag the United States into nuclear war. The American public deserves and should demand realistic and actionable plans from the next president on this most dangerous national security matter.

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Dan Leaf is a retired Air Force lieutenant general and former deputy commander of the U.S. Indo-Pacific Command. Christine Ahn is founder and co-director of Women Cross DMZ.

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