Top photo credit: North Korean leader Kim Jong Un visits the construction site of the Ragwon County Offshore Farm, North Korea July 13, 2025. KCNA via REUTERS
Kim Jong Un is nuking up and playing hard to get
July 15, 2025
President Donald Trump’s second term has so far been a series of “shock and awe” campaigns both at home and abroad. But so far has left North Korea untouched even as it arms for the future.
The president dramatically broke with precedent during his first term, holding two summits as well as a brief meeting at the Demilitarized Zone with the North’s Supreme Leader Kim Jong-un. Unfortunately, engagement crashed and burned in Hanoi. The DPRK then pulled back, essentially severing contact with both the U.S. and South Korea.
The Biden administration did little to break the stalemate, during which Pyongyang expanded both its nuclear arsenal and missile capabilities. The North’s objective appears to be an effective deterrent against Washington, meaning the ability to target the American homeland. In that effort, Kim likely benefits from his close partnership with Russia’s Vladimir Putin. For the latter, enabling the DPRK to put the U.S. at risk would be payback for Washington’s vigorous proxy war-plus against Moscow in Ukraine.
The North has so far demonstrated no interest in reviving the two leaders’ relationship. However, Trump remains the only sitting American president to reach out to the North, and thus apparently willing to consider relaxing economic sanctions, a major North Korean objective. Pyongyang has reason to both play hard-to-get for negotiating purposes and pursue diplomacy if Trump again opens Washington’s door.
Still, convincing Kim to take a risk after his humiliating failure in 2019 might require more than just a love letter or two. To entice Pyongyang, Trump should demonstrate his commitment to establishing a serious relationship with Pyongyang and bringing the North into the larger global order. Toward this end, he should drop the ban on American travel and propose diplomatic relations with the DPRK.
Trump imposed a travel ban in 2017, prohibiting North Koreans from coming to America. The policy was bizarre on its face. After all, the number of North Koreans attempting to visit the U.S. was vanishingly small. The harm they could do to America was inconsequential. The policy appeared to be an afterthought, an attempt to present Trump’s original “Muslim travel ban” as something else with North Korea’s (and Venezuela’s) inclusion.
Next, the administration banned Americans from traveling to the DPRK. This policy also made little sense. By what measure is North Korea too dangerous for Americans? Over the previous two decades a score of Americans was detained; all but one survived mostly brief imprisonments. In contrast, Syria, left open for extreme tourists, enterprising journalists, and warrior-wannabes, claimed several American lives. Indeed, the risks of my two trips to North Korea paled compared to those to Syria, Afghanistan (twice), Sudan, South Sudan, Haiti, Iraq, Burma/Myanmar (several times in Karen-held territory during the civil war), Pakistan, Bangladesh, and Indonesia (including in the Moluccan Islands, then aflame between Muslim and Christian militias). Yet Washington restricted travel to none of the latter lands.
Nor did the Trump ban serve any useful purpose. The administration acted in the aftermath of student Otto Warmbier’s tragic death. However, the exact circumstances of his arrest and injury are, according to those involved in North Korean tourism, more complicated than the official version of events. Indeed, neither doctors nor a coroner found evidence of torture.
Moreover, the North long recognized that American prisoners were valuable only if alive and always returned those who violated its rules after winning Washington’s attention. Only four of the 15 Americans held after 2009 were tourists, and they all knowingly violated the North’s dictates. Of course, that didn’t warrant punishment, let alone death, but the regime is even more brutal and unforgiving toward its own people. The Trump ban achieved little other than to further isolate a country and system that desperately requires the opposite treatment. Indeed, U.S. regulations prevent almost all tourism, journalism, and even humanitarianism, given the practical difficulties in winning State Department approval for travel.
After his latest inauguration, Trump issued an expanded travel ban, affecting 19 countries, with another 36 potentially similarly targeted. This time the North was not cited despite reportedly being originally considered for inclusion. Some have speculated that the exclusion was intended to ease any move toward bilateral negotiations. More likely, however, it resulted because North Korea is not required to suggest faux balance to the latest list, which is not otherwise limited to Muslim-majority nations. Pyongyang ostentatiously dismissed the issue as having minimal practical relevance: “one obvious fact is that we are not in the least interested in the matter of entry into the US.”
Only the ban on Americans remains, and it expires annually. The administration should have allowed it to end on August 31, but unfortunately in May extended it through next year. Lifting the ban would demonstrate that Washington welcomed contact between the two countries. Allowing more Americans to travel there would also create a window, albeit small, into a very opaque society.
The DPRK has an obvious if somewhat inconsistent interest in revitalizing tourism. It recently opened the Kalma Coastal Tourism Zone, reportedly with space for 20,000 tourists, in Wonsan on the east coast. Although the area is open primarily for domestic tourists, Russian travel operators have begun advertising tours. Moreover, North Korea is again operating sightseeing boats on the Yalu River out of Sinuiju, though so far the tours are for North Koreans only.
Indeed, after only three weeks, Pyongyang shut down foreign tourism in the Rason Special Economic Zone, which had opened in February. The reason is speculative, but the authorities probably underestimated the negative information gleaned by travelers. Tourists also pushed the limits at the recent Pyongyang marathon, and the firm SI Analytics believes that Pyongyang is presently developing tighter controls. Noted CBS, “there is no word on when the country will fully reopen to foreign visitors.”
Trump also should propose that the two governments establish diplomatic relations. They could start small, with liaison offices, but with the expectation that full embassies would eventually follow. Having diplomats in Pyongyang, with some opportunity to travel outside of the capital, would provide American policymakers with at least minimal knowledge of conditions within the North and modest opportunity to view changing circumstances.
Official ties would also facilitate ongoing dialogue. Diplomacy should be recognized as a requirement, not treated as a reward, especially when the government involved is seeking to target American cities with ICBMs topped with multiple warheads filled with nuclear weapons.
If in October 1950, Washington and Beijing had diplomatic missions in each other’s capitals, they might have discussed the danger of a military clash as allied forces marched north and reached a modus vivendi, perhaps preserving a rump North Korea as a buffer for the PRC. An accommodation, no matter how imperfect, could have forestalled another two and a half years of war. In contrast, consider had there been no U.S. communication with the Kremlin as the Cuban Missile Crisis nearly exploded, literally. Later “Ostpolitik,” which led to mutual recognition of the two Germanys, reduced Cold War tensions between them and their mutual patrons, the U.S. and USSR.
Obviously, talking more routinely would not ensure that the most important issues were covered, let alone resolved. However, treating the North as an equal sovereign country worth engaging would encourage dialogue, including on controversial topics such as human rights. The two governments could discuss a framework for peace, perhaps starting with an end of war declaration and negotiation of a peace treaty. Rather than demand a commitment to denuclearize, Washington could push for an initial nuclear freeze in return for partial sanctions relief.
The price might be high, but Kim has dramatically increased his leverage. In the more than seven years since the first summit, he has added and improved nukes and missiles and forged a profitable alliance with Russia. Is Trump prepared to play tough and end up with an Asian nuclear crisis while embroiled in the Mideast and fighting a European proxy war?
North Korea is important. The issue is also increasingly urgent. A report from the Asan Institute/Rand Corporation in 2021 warned that before decade’s end “North Korea could have 200 nuclear weapons and several dozen intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs) and hundreds of theater missiles for delivering the nuclear weapons.” Assume those ICBMs can accurately target American cities. Washington policymakers would have to reconsider the ROK alliance, which requires being willing to go to war against a state capable of destroying America.
The president is busy, but North Korea won’t wait. With Pyongyang seeking to create an effective nuclear deterrent against the U.S., engagement is a must. President Trump needs to lead, and he should do so by seeking to increase contact not only between Washington and Pyongyang, but also Americans and North Koreans. Such efforts won’t substitute for serious diplomacy. However, they might make serious diplomacy possible and even eventually successful.
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Top photo credit: U.S. Navy Vice Admiral Brad Cooper speaks to guests at the IISS Manama Dialogue in Manama, Bahrain, November 17, 2023. REUTERS/Hamad I Mohammed
Why new CENTCOM chief Brad Cooper is as wrong as the old one
July 14, 2025
If accounts of President Donald Trump’s decision to strike Iranian nuclear facilities this past month are to be believed, the president’s initial impulse to stay out of the Israel-Iran conflict failed to survive the prodding of hawkish advisers, chiefly U.S. Central Command (CENTCOM) chief Michael Kurilla.
With Kurilla, an Iran hawk and staunch ally of both the Israeli government and erstwhile national security adviser Mike Waltz, set to leave office this summer, advocates of a more restrained foreign policy may understandably feel like they are out of the woods.
They would be sorely mistaken.
CENTCOM’s incoming commander, Vice Admiral Brad Cooper, is Kurilla’s deputy, and he would become just the second Navy officer ever to command CENTCOM. Unanimously confirmed by voice vote in the Senate and championed by both Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth and his immediate predecessor, Cooper’s Senate confirmation testimony indicates more continuity than change.
For an administration that once talked a big game about realigning U.S. foreign policy in a more restrained direction, this selection implies the opposite: an indefinite commitment to U.S. primacy in the region in the name of counterterrorism and great power competition.
Forces in Iraq and Syria don't make America safer
In his responses to written questions for his confirmation, Cooper argued that the United States should retain military forces in Iraq and Syria to “maintain the defeat of ISIS.” The primary reason for this, he argues, is that the U.S. presence denies the terrorist group safe haven from which to attack the U.S. homeland.
Yet, as the Trump administration itself acknowledged by reducing U.S. troop levels in Syria earlier this year, ISIS lacks the capacity to pose a serious threat to the U.S. homeland and other regional actors have an interest in suppressing ISIS. As Rose Kelanic at Defense Priorities writes, “While ISIS has morphed into an international ‘brand’ adopted by affiliates in far-off locales, notably ISIS-Khorasan (ISIS-K), a group based in Afghanistan and Iraq that was responsible for attacks in Russia and Iran earlier in 2024, whatever original ISIS elements still exist in Syria appear incapable of conducting sophisticated, international terrorist attacks.”
Furthermore, the “safe haven” concept has serious flaws — namely, that it is incredibly difficult to mount sophisticated military operations across the globe in a dysfunctional environment, especially given sophisticated U.S. over-the-horizon intelligence and counterterrorism capabilities and the interest regional partners have in suppressing terrorism. This is precisely why Afghanistan did not become a safe haven for terrorism after the 2021 U.S. withdrawal.
Finally, the vulnerabilities of U.S. forces in Iraq and Syria exceed the purported benefits. U.S. military infrastructure in Iraq and Syria sits in proximity to Iranian forces and extremist groups while lacking sophisticated air defense systems. It is little wonder that these forces have faced more than 400 attacks since the October 2023 breakout of the Gaza war, according to CENTCOM and the Office of the Secretary of Defense. While there have thankfully been few casualties, withdrawing U.S. troops entirely removes that risk.
Great power competition is a bad framework for the region
Another assumption underlying Cooper’s testimony is that America needs to reform its arms sales process to ensure its continued influence with regional partners at the expense of Russia and China. He expresses support for the administration’s industry-friendly Foreign Military Sales (FMS) reforms, which eschew important congressional oversight and human rights conditions.
There are two problems with this approach:
First, if arms bought influence, America is getting a raw deal. As long as arms keep flowing, reckless regional partners engage in behaviors that threaten to entangle the United States in conflict or violate human rights. Israel, for example, launched air strikes against Iran in defiance of the stated U.S. preference of a negotiated agreement to prevent an Iranian nuclear weapon. Additionally, during its conflict with Yemen’s Houthi rebels, Saudi Arabia received American military assistance in creating what the United Nations called the world’s worst humanitarian crisis. Finally, these sales give “reverse leverage” to U.S. partners, whose threats to diversify their arms imports induce concessions that are not in the U.S. interest.
Secondly, as Jon Hoffman argues, China (the more capable of the two aforementioned powers) lacks the will and ability to project power in the Middle East, is more focused on political developments in its own region, and shares an interest with the United States in regional stability to protect its economic and energy interests. There is accordingly little to gain and everything to lose from a war with China over the Middle East.
Threat inflation on Iran
Troublingly, Cooper asserted that a nuclear Iran would fundamentally alter the balance of power in the Middle East, enabling Iran to “become a global hegemon and maintain regional dominance for many years.”
This is simply not plausible.
First, one should challenge the assumption that Iran currently has regional dominance. While militarily formidable and populous, Iran has no serious claim to even regional hegemony. In the past 21 months, Iran’s Axis of Resistance has been degraded by Israel, and the collective military power of the Gulf states, buttressed by oil revenues (which, unlike Iran’s, are not under sanctions), poses a significant challenge. The U.S. and Israeli strikes in June, while likely strengthening Iranian long-term resolve to pursue nuclear weapons, also may have degraded Iran further, by diminishing Iran’s air defenses and assassinating Iranian military leaders and nuclear scientists.
Another impediment is Israel, a nuclear-armed quasi-ally of the United States that has spent those 21 months projecting power across the region in the midst of a crushing war that has killed more than 57,000 Palestinians, mostly civilians, in Gaza. Given the degradation of the Axis and that Tehran’s land forces are structured for defense in depth and lack long-range maneuver capability, Iran faces serious headwinds.
If Iran is incapable of regional hegemony, global hegemony is but a pipe dream.
Even a nuclear deterrent would not make Iran a global hegemon. With a GDP akin to Romania’s and a military whose power projection capabilities are dwarfed by those of true great powers, Iran is no hegemon-to-be. If nuclear weapons and a highly militarized society were sufficient to ensure global dominance, then North Korea would be a great power. This is serial threat inflation of the highest order.
Combatant commands incentivize threat inflation
This was all predictable. Ever since the combatant command system originated in 1986, the commands have, in the words of The Washington Post 25 years ago, “evolved into the modern-day equivalent of the Roman Empire’s proconsuls — well-funded, semi-autonomous, unconventional centers of U.S. foreign policy.”
These mini-Pentagons act as less accountable versions of embassies and sources of threat inflation, all while siphoning resources away from diplomacy. By creating vested peacetime interests in U.S. intervention that compete for resources, CO-COM commanders are incentivized to treat regional problems as threats to U.S. security to garner funding and forces. At a time when some in the Administration are rightfully urging deprioritization of the Middle East theater, CENTCOM’s rhetoric threatens to keep the United States locked in the region for the long haul.
The hawks haven't lost yet
The confirmation of another fervent Iran hawk as CENTCOM commander ought to serve as a wake-up call to those who want to prevent further U.S. military intervention in the Middle East. These restrainers must not only resist the urge to take a victory lap, but also reexamine whether the present combatant command structure is still fit for purpose.
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Top photo credit: Vladimir Putin (Office of the President of the Russian Federation) and Donald Trump (US Southern Command photo)
How Trump's 50-day deadline threat against Putin will backfire
July 14, 2025
In the first six months of his second term, President Donald Trump has demonstrated his love for three things: deals, tariffs, and ultimatums.
He got to combine these passions during his Oval Office meeting with NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte on Monday. Only moments after the two leaders announced a new plan to get military aid to Ukraine, Trump issued an ominous 50-day deadline for Russian President Vladimir Putin to agree to a ceasefire. “We're going to be doing secondary tariffs if we don't have a deal within 50 days,” Trump told the assembled reporters.
The threat is unlikely to change Putin’s calculus, however, or bring the conflict to a near-term conclusion. Instead, Trump’s deadline is likely to make his own life more difficult, limiting his future flexibility, putting the settlement he craves farther out of reach, and forcing him to take steps that harm rather than advance U.S. interests.
Trump’s intention to impose “secondary tariffs” on Russia if Putin does not meet his deadline was not well-explained in his press conference with Rutte. Nor was it immediately clear if the planned punishment for Putin’s continued intransigence would include tariffs on Russian trade with the United States or “secondary sanctions” on Russia’s trading partners — or some combination of the two.
Whatever the details, however, looming economic consequences are unlikely to intimidate Putin or convince him to accept an early ceasefire. For starters, if Trump is indeed talking about tariffs on Russian trade with the United States, then his threat is an empty one. The United States imported only about $3 billion in goods from Russia in 2024, meaning that U.S. tariffs will impose little, if any, new costs on Moscow.
If Trump was instead warning that he would impose secondary sanctions or economic penalties on countries like China, the European Union, and India which purchase Russian oil and other goods, then the potential consequences for Russia are higher — if Trump follows through. A U.S. decision to impose economic penalties on Russia’s trading partners would place at risk the income Moscow relies on to finance its war machine, but it would also create political and economic complications for Washington that undermine the credibility of Trump’s threat and its effectiveness as a tool of coercion.
Not only would such a policy disrupt and set back ongoing U.S. negotiations with important U.S. trade partners and put pressure on the U.S. economy, but in the case of India and Europe, it would force Trump to impose painful economic punishments on crucial security partners. Because of these concerns, the United States has historically enforced secondary sanctions only sporadically and selectively, often targeting adversaries but not allies. The same would likely be true in this case.
Moreover, there is no guarantee that even secondary sanctions would cut off Russian revenues, as Moscow has become skilled as using black market transfers and its “shadow fleet” to circumvent U.S. and European economic pressure.
Most importantly, Putin and the Russian economy have shown tremendous resilience to the economic weapons that the United States and its allies have unleashed so far, and there is no reason to expect this time to be different. In fact, the Russian stock market rose almost three percent after Trump’s announcement, suggesting Russian investors share this assessment. As a result, Putin is unlikely to be fearful of Trump’s economic intimidation or sensitive to even the moderate costs additional U.S. economic warfare might impose.
If Trump’s ability to force Putin to the table using economic sticks is limited, then his military leverage is even smaller. Putin has a clear advantage on the battlefield, and the new aid arrangement in which Europe will buy U.S. weapons to send to Ukraine is unlikely to change this.
What weapons Europe can send quickly — purchased from the United States or taken from their own stocks — will be small in number and limited in type. After over three years of war, neither the United States nor Europe have deep reserves of munitions or other kinds of weapons to provide. More weapons can be purchased off production lines, but they won’t arrive for some time and so won’t do anything to help Ukraine’s soldiers in the near-term.
Moreover, defensive weapons like Patriot systems and interceptors — the focus of much fanfare during today’s big announcement — will help protect Ukrainian civilians but do little to reinforce Ukraine’s already strained front lines.
Putin’s continued strikes on Ukrainian cities and decision to press forward with a summer offensive are evidence of his confidence in Russia’s ability to persist militarily for the foreseeable future. It is unlikely the meager military aid package announced on Monday will change his mind on this score.
Ultimately, Trump’s newest deadline, like those that he has issued before, is unlikely to factor into Putin’s decision-making or to change the trajectory of the war. Putin has staked far too much on the outcome of the conflict in Ukraine to stop fighting before achieving his basic objectives or to settle for an unsatisfactory deal in response to an artificial and U.S.-imposed deadline while he still has the military advantage.
In this way, Russia is like any other wartime combatant, unwilling to sue for peace until it is clear that there are no more benefits to be gained from continued fighting.
Rather than bringing peace closer by forcing Putin the negotiating table, Trump’s threats may make near-term resolution less likely, both by hardening Putin’s resolve and by placing at risk newly opened channels of communication between the United States and Russia. The ultimatum also compromises Trump’s effectiveness as a mediator and constrains the flexibility he will need to successfully broker a deal between Russia and Ukraine.
When 50 days is up and Putin has not agreed to a ceasefire Trump will have an unenviable choice to make: demonstrate fecklessness by backing down or take economic actions that will inflict harm on the United States, alienate close partners, and almost certainly push a near-term end to the war beyond his grasp.
There is one glimmer of hope that Trump and others hoping for peace can hang on to, however. Fifty days is a long time, and will arrive in the early fall, as Russia’s summer offensive winds down and the winter approaches. There could be an appetite for another round of negotiations at this point, especially if Putin feels he has achieved enough militarily and prefers a deal that meets most of his war aims to continued fighting.
This shift would be unrelated to Trump’s new deadline, but U.S. national security officials should be preparing the ground to take advantage of the opportunity all the same. This includes pushing hard for bilateral meetings between the United States and Russia at least at the working level and encouraging more direct negotiations between Russia and Ukraine.
Reaching an end to the war in Ukraine will be a lot harder than issuing ultimatums, but openings for peace could still emerge organically soon. Washington should be ready when they do.
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