If elected U.S. president, Kamala Harris would inherit a stagnant U.S. policy toward North Korea. She would be unlikely to improve on it. Several factors militate against a Harris Administration pursuing a bold or creative approach to achieving a breakthrough in bilateral relations.

Harris’ brief record of discussion of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK) includes the following themes: North Korea is a cruel dictatorship that deserves pariah treatment; de-nuclearization remains the U.S. goal; and Washington will continue to support ally South Korea. Each element of this outlook works to keep the U.S.-DPRK relationship moribund.  Categorizing North Korea as part of the Axis of Authoritarianism suggests relations cannot improve until the Kim regime is gone.  Pyongyang has made clear that denuclearization is a non-starter. Pyongyang now designates South Korea as an enemy state, which removes one of the avenues through which the DPRK has sometimes signaled a desire to ease tensions.   

Harris does not have a background in solving or even thinking deeply about strategic problems the U.S. faces in the Asia-Pacific region. This assessment is not based solely on her embarrassing gaffe of referring to a U.S. “alliance with the Republic of North Korea” during her visit to the Demilitarized Zone (DMZ) in September 2022.

Harris has consistently commented on Korean Peninsula issues only superficially and only when those issues became prominent in the U.S. mass media. Harris’s current foreign affairs advisor is Philip Gordon, has expertise in the politics of Europe and the Middle East, but not Asia.

Other presidents have already tried a variety of North Korean policies. The first is using the threat of U.S. military force to shape DPRK behavior.  That policy may have deterred North Korea from invading the South during the middle phase of the Cold War when the DPRK economy was performing well relative to South Korea’s economy and Pyongyang had considerable support from Russia. The usefulness of U.S. military threats decreased, however, as South Korea established conventional military superiority over the North beginning in the 1980s.  Furthermore, US military pressure including nuclear threats has almost certainly had the counterproductive effect of contributing to the Kim regime’s desire to acquire nuclear-armed missiles. 

In 2017, it was clear that North Korea was close to building a missile that could plausibly deliver a nuclear explosive to the U.S. homeland. In an attempt to block them, the Trump Administration turned to military threats. Trump said the United States would, “totally destroy North Korea,” if necessary, and also said of the DPRK’s attempt to develop an intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM), “It won’t happen!” The White House reportedly considered a “bloody nose” military strike, designed to frighten Pyongyang into backing down. These tactics failed. Trump’s team decided a military strike on the DPRK was too risky, and Kim’s technicians went on to conduct a successful ICBM test launch in November.

A second strategy the U.S. has tried is accommodating North Korea to win a reduction in tensions.  Trump moved partly in this direction.  In 2019 his government announced a cancelation of the usual spring U.S.-South Korea joint military exercise. Trump said publicly he believed joint exercises were “provocative” and that he wanted to withdraw U.S. troops from South Korea. All of this aligned with longstanding North Korean objectives. These gestures, however, had no lasting positive impact on U.S.-DPRK relations.  Large-scale military drills resumed in 2022.

A third strategy is imposing economic sanctions on North Korea, combined with the possibility of lifting those sanctions if Pyongyang fulfills certain conditions. This has become the default U.S. policy toward the DPRK despite proven failure. Economic pressure exerted by the United States did not deter Pyongyang from developing nuclear bombs or advanced missiles, and it is not stopping the North Koreans from enlarging and diversifying their arsenal with tactical nuclear weapons, submarine-launched missiles, and hypersonic glide vehicles. Secondary sanctions might have a stronger effect, but Washington is unwilling to press them for fear of antagonizing China. Trump explicitly offered North Korea the prospect of a profitable niche within the world economy in return for denuclearization, which did not appeal to Kim Jong-un.  At the Kim-Trump Summit in Hanoi, Kim revealed he was only interested in a large amount of sanctions relief in exchange for symbolic but minimally substantive steps toward denuclearization. The sanctions remain, as do North Korea’s nukes.

This history of U.S.-DPRK relations doesn’t leave much room for a prospective Harris Administration to explore a new approach. Moreover, any creative new initiatives would have large downsides for a U.S. president, especially one who hopes to win a second term.

Giving up on denuclearization would draw severe criticism, especially from some members of Congress, for the appearance of rewarding bad DPRK behavior. A U.S. agreement to participate in arms control talks with North Korea, such as accepting in principle that Pyongyang could keep a certain number of nuclear bombs or missiles, would implicitly abandon the U.S. policy of not acknowledging the DPRK as a nuclear weapons state. U.S. allies in Seoul and Tokyo would see this as a betrayal. If it got far enough, any agreement would face the practical problem of North Korea refusing to allow intrusive verification protocols, without which the agreement would be worthless.

The likely difficulties of the challenge overwhelm the incentive to try. Solving the North Korean problem is no longer a high priority for the U.S. president. Americans are not hankering for it. In recent Gallup and Pew surveys, respectively, of the top fourteen and sixteen concerns of Americans, illegal immigration and terrorism are the only international issues that are mentioned.

Even if Washington wanted to reach out, the receptivity of Pyongyang to a peaceful overture is questionable. Kim felt burned by the Hanoi summit. Pyongyang has been aloof since then. Kim needs the United States less now that he has a profitable partnership with Putin. China and Russia are, of course, well past doing Washington the favor of enforcing sanctions. The window for the United States to shape the DPRK’s behavior has mostly if not completely closed, at least for the time being.

All of these factors point to the conclusion that a Harris Administration would stick with the current (and ineffectual) U.S. policy of sanctions, denuclearization, and deterrence through the U.S.-ROK alliance. This would not be a case of doing the same thing and expecting different results.  Rather, it would indicate acceptance of indefinite stagnation and manageable tension as the best outcome available.

About the Author: Denny Roy 

Denny Roy is a Senior Fellow at the East-West Center in Honolulu specializing in Asia-Pacific strategic and security issues.  He holds a PhD in political science from the University of Chicago and is the author of four books and many journal and op-ed articles.

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