Back in 2016 when Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump were campaigning hard in preparation for the 2016 election, North Korea was one of the largest foreign policy issues that would need to be addressed. After the 45th President of the United States was chosen and Donald Trump was sworn into office, it looked like war was inevitable.
In the months and years to follow, relations with the country of North Korea actually seemed to improve and President Trump even met with Kim Jong-un during his term. The positive progress that was established in President Trump’s term in office may already be in jeopardy as the United States struggles to get into contact with North Korean officials.
Last week, multiple administration officials with the Biden administration admitted that no contact could be made with North Korea in the early days of the new administration. A few days later, North Korea pledged to ‘never restart’ denuclearization until ‘hostile policies’ are halted.
North Korea also warned the United States and President Biden to ‘not cause a stink’ in the current relationship between the two countries. It’s currently unclear exactly how the relationship will progress in the coming weeks, but it certainly seems like a stalemate in nuclear conversations may exist for a while.
The U.S. The Defense Secretary released a statement yesterday claiming that the forces of the United States are prepared to fight immediately, if necessary. While there are no reasons to believe the escalations between the two countries will occur, it’s quite concerning that so much of the progress that was made between President Trump and Kim Jong-un may be fading away quickly. It’s currently unclear how helpful China will be in preventing North Korea from acting up as well.
The next four years could be extremely important in halting the nuclear progress of North Korea. With the ongoing pandemic, it’s quite unclear how much North Korea’s nuclear development has been affected. It’s hard to imagine that much progress could have been made during the pandemic and Kim Jong-un’s health has come into question several times over the past couple of years.
President Biden will likely have his hands full with China and North Korea during his term in office and he may have to strike a deal with North Korea and China to achieve the long-awaited goal of denuclearizing the Korean peninsula.
Nobody believed that President Trump would have ever travelled to meet Kim Jong-un in person. The possibility of meeting in person and negotiating is probably much lower with a Biden administration in the White House. There’s very few people that believe that President Biden will follow Trump’s steps and actually take a chance on meeting Kim Jong-un in person to discuss denuclearization.
The only good news is that North Korea apparently is no longer interested in firing missiles into the air that fly over Japan and land into the Pacific waters off the coast of Japan. They also apparently have not conducted a nuclear test since they conducted three in a one-year span between 2016 and 2017. We can only hope that these trends remain for as long as President Biden remains in office.
