South Korea Defense Ministry via AP
South Korean army Col. Yun Myung-shick, right, shakes hands with North Korean army Lt. Col. Ri Jong Su before crossing the Military Demarcation Line inside the Demilitarized Zone to inspect a dismantled North Korean guard post, December 12, 2018.
This story is part of the Prospect’s series on how the next president can make progress without new legislation. Read all of our Day One Agenda articles here.
When President-elect Joe Biden walks into the White House on January 20, 2021, a wide range of pressing foreign-policy challenges will await him. Arguably, none is more urgent than North Korea. In the first hundred days of his administration, President Biden should declare the 70-year Korean War over and appoint a special envoy to negotiate a peace treaty, with an eye toward reconciliation with North Korea and gradual denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula. A process that leads with the political question of U.S.-North Korea relations, more so than myopic focus on denuclearization, will have a better chance of success and prevent conflict with nuclear-armed North Korea.
North Korea’s October military parade marking the 75th anniversary of the founding of the Workers’ Party of Korea is the latest reminder that a U.S.-led nuclear weapons–centered policy has the perverse impact of hardening North Korea’s resolve in acquiring nuclear weapons. Both sides need an off-ramp from the vicious cycle of threats and nuclear buildup. Operationally, that means building mutual trust through a step-by-step approach of peace-building and denuclearization.
President Biden should declare the 70-year Korean War over and appoint a special envoy to negotiate a peace treaty.
This year marks the 70th anniversary of the start of the Korean War, a conflict that epitomizes endless war. While some Americans may think that the Korean War is a distant affair, the conflict continues to have a profound impact on the lives of those who fought in it. It was a brutal war, killing five million people in a three-year battle. In 1953, the United States on behalf of the United Nations Command signed an armistice agreement with North Korea and China. It was meant to be a temporary measure and remains in place to this day. As Deputy Secretary of State Stephen Biegun noted in a speech earlier this month, the temporary status of the war must be addressed without delay: “The war is over; the time for conflict has ended, and the time for peace has arrived.”
There are three reasons the Biden administration should finally declare the Korean War over and replace the armistice with a peace treaty.
First, it would tap into the growing bipartisan call for ending endless wars. Pursuing global military dominance everywhere ultimately makes Americans less safe. In this sense, President Trump deserves credit for de-escalating tensions with North Korea, albeit in a largely symbolic way. By meeting with Kim Jong Un and signing the Singapore declaration, Trump opened the possibility for a more stable, future-oriented bilateral relationship. President Biden should take full advantage of this opening by his Republican predecessor and work with Congress to end the Korean War, which could entail a presidential statement expressing the United States’ formal recognition of the Korean War’s end, followed by appointment of a senior envoy to negotiate a peace treaty to be ratified by the U.S. Senate. The peace treaty should at minimum include the signatories of the armistice (the United States, North Korea, and China) and likely U.S. ally South Korea, given Seoul’s direct interest in matters pertaining to the security of the Korean Peninsula.
Secondly, declaring the original “forever war” over would align President Biden with the American public, which does not want conflict with North Korea. Since the “fire and fury” period of 2017–2018, a coalition of national organizations, Korean American leaders, nuclear policy experts, and former government officials have called for dialogue and diplomacy with North Korea. Polls show that the overwhelming majority of Americans support engaging in diplomatic negotiations, either directly with Pyongyang or through China, especially when the alternative is a ground invasion to remove all of North Korea’s nuclear weapons. Recent polls confirm this restrained view. The Eurasia Group Foundation’s September 2020 poll showed that majorities of Trump and Biden supporters believe the United States should negotiate directly with adversaries to avoid military confrontation, even if they are human rights abusers.
Third, formally ending the Korean War could lead to a more cooperative relationship with Pyongyang, which in turn would provide a clearer window into the motives, threat calculus, and values that shape their actions. This could greatly improve our understanding of North Korea’s views toward nuclear weapons, making costly miscalculations less likely. As General Robert B. Abrams, commander of U.S. Forces Korea, U.N. Command, and ROK-U.S. Combined Forces Command, recently stated, not having reliable information about North Korea’s nuclear capabilities is a national-security threat for the United States. “[North Koreans] are carrying on with the [nuclear] program and it’s getting harder for us to track them. The International Atomic Energy Agency recently stated in a report that after 11 years of no access to North Korea’s facilities, their knowledge is declining.”
Majorities of Trump and Biden supporters believe the United States should negotiate directly with adversaries to avoid military confrontation.
Americans time and again have negotiated with former adversaries to end conflicts, whether it was with Germany, Japan, or Vietnam. North Korea should not be an exception. Indeed, political reconciliation was seriously debated in past deals, including in the Agreed Framework and the 2005 six-party statement. The 2018 joint statement signed by President Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un also pledged a new political relationship. But no peace treaty ever formalized these commitments, and political decisions eclipsed these lofty goals.
As with all complex foreign-policy challenges, ending the Korean War will require dexterity and staff resources, not to mention a willing partner in North Korea. But with the help of a South Korean government that is seeking to improve its ties with the North, as well as a willing partner in China, President Biden is well positioned to pursue this path.
Critics will say that ending the Korean War has no significance. They deliberately use terms like “end-of-war declaration,” “peace treaty,” and “peace regime” interchangeably as a way to undersell or obfuscate their importance. A political statement such as an end-of-war declaration is different from a Senate-ratified treaty, which is different from a peace regime that institutionalizes the peace process through norms and rules of engagement. President Biden should make clear that these are three distinct steps, with binding commitments expected from the North Korean side along the way, including with regard to nuclear weapons.
Others will argue that formally ending the war could strengthen calls by South Koreans to eject the U.S. Forces Korea. Yet opinion polls show that South Koreans want U.S. troops to remain unless and until security conditions improve. A bigger unknown is how Americans would react to what the Korean War’s end means for the U.S. troop presence in South Korea. According to the Pew Research Center’s July 2019 survey, fewer Americans view North Korea’s nuclear program as a major threat to their well-being compared to three years ago. At a time of unprecedented domestic challenges, would American taxpayers support keeping U.S. troops in South Korea without any reference to when our troops can come home? What are the conditions under which U.S. troops will no longer be needed? These are legitimate questions that should be debated.
A strategy centered on coercion and episodic diplomatic engagements has failed to curb North Korea’s nuclear weapons program. A serious effort to provide positive security assurances while reducing the U.S. and ROK reliance on coercive measures has never been tested. Formally ending the Korean War could catalyze both the peace process and the denuclearization process to follow, and better protect America’s national-security interests. President Biden should use the first hundred days in office to declare the Korean War over and advance a peace treaty with adversaries of the Korean War.
