Fred Fleitz is the vice chair of the America First Policy Institute’s Center for American Security, and until recently he was a member of the Trump transition team. He previously served as a deputy assistant to the president during Trump’s first term and chief of staff of the National Security Council, among other U.S. national security positions over the years.
He has written extensively on North Korea’s nuclear program and other national security topics. In a recent interview with RFA Korean’s Jaewoo Park, Fleitz discussed what the change in administration could mean for North Korea and its interactions with the United States.
The interview has been edited for length and clarity.
RFA: The Trump administration is looking to resume dialogue with North Korea’s leader Kim Jong Un and in a recent Fox News interview, the president said Kim was very smart and also that he’s willing to meet Kim Jong Un again.
Do you believe Kim Jong Un and North Korea are equally open to resuming the dialogue with the United States?
Fleitz: I can’t speak for President Trump, but I believe he would like to resume personal diplomacy with Kim Jong Un. He’s made some statements to that effect to pull this off, the Envoy for Special Missions, Richard Grenell, will be engaged in negotiations with the North Korean government and I think that’s going to help us figure out whether these talks are possible.
Now, we know the North Korean government said things last year that they were not willing to resume negotiations if Trump was elected. I think that we’ll see after productive diplomacy where the U.S. shows a willingness to talk, and we’re hoping that the North Koreans will reciprocate.
I suspect there may be some strings attached to a meeting between Trump and Kim.
Perhaps the U.S. will say to North Korea you have to stop providing weapons to Russia’s war in Ukraine before there’ll be a Kim-Trump summit. I don’t know, I’d recommend that, but I don’t know that that’s under consideration by the Trump administration.
RFA: Do you think it’s a North Korean leverage tactic to say they aren’t interested in dialogue?
Fleitz: I don’t know if it could be a negotiating tactic. It could reflect how relations really deteriorated over the last few years but look, we have a new U.S. government.
Trump is taking a whole new approach to global security and I think that really creates opportunities for North Korea to lower tensions and to build a more cooperative relationship with the U.S. and other nations in the region.
RFA: The New York Times reported that North Korea is preparing to send additional troops to Russia to fight against Ukraine, all while President Trump is advocating a peace deal between Ukraine and Russia. Do you think North Korea’s actions could be used as leverage and also how might this impact U.S. engagement with North Korea?
Fleitz: Well, I think the North Korean troops in Ukraine really are a tragedy because they’re being killed at a pretty high rate. I think the Russians are taking advantage of North Korea and I hope that North Korea will reconsider the whole idea of sending their young soldiers to this distant land where they basically, as we say in English with North Korea, don’t have a dog in this fight. I don’t know how that will translate into Korean but it’s really a tragedy. I think that the U.S. will make a big issue out of this in the talks with Russia and in any talks we have with North Korea.
RFA: Both President Trump and defense secretary nominee Pete Hegseth (this interview preceded Hegseth’s confirmation) have mentioned North Korea as a nuclear power and these comments went viral in South Korean media. Do you think that their comments suggest a shift of U.S. policy to accept North Korea as a nuclear power?
Fleitz: I believe the U.S. will stick to the CVID (Completely Verifiable and Irreversible Denuclearization) policy again. I’m not speaking for President Trump and North Korea is not a nuclear power as defined by the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty.
RFA: North Korea declared and defined South Korea as its main enemy and said that they’re no longer interested in reunification with South Korea. If North Korea were to bypass South Korea and engage directly with the United States, how might the Trump administration respond?
Fleitz: Well, North Korea directly engaged in negotiations with the United States at the Singapore summit and at the Vietnam summit in, in, during the Trump administration.
So there’s a precedent for these talks and it’s not that South Korea is being left out.
It’s simply an initiative by the United States to try to engage North Korea directly.
Now I’ve heard these statements by Kim Jong Un and other North Korean leaders about declaring the South Korean enemy and that there’s no interest in negotiations anymore. Those statements took place almost two years ago now.
So I think there’s time for North Korea to revisit them because we have a different international situation with the election of Donald Trump and I think it opens a lot of doors for possibly resolving this conflict.
RFA: Right now in South Korea, there’s political turmoil. Could that potentially leave South Korea out of the loop on U.S. policy toward North Korea?
Fleitz: The political turmoil in South Korea is a problem for regional and international security. America needs a strong and stable South Korea and I think I heard President Trump saying something like I’d like to talk to President Yoon if only they would stop impeaching him.
Look, we’ve had political problems in our country. So maybe I shouldn’t be talking about this but I just think it’s crucial that this situation resolve itself because there are huge security threats to South Korea right now from China and from North Korea.
And the more unstable South Korea appears, the more tempted these nations will be to exploit that instability.
RFA: President Trump in his first term scaled back joint military drills with South Korea as a gesture of goodwill toward North Korea. Will he do this again in his second term?
Fleitz: Well, that was very controversial during the Trump administration and experts in the U S and in South Korea were angry that Trump wanted to suspend these joint drills.
But I pointed out when people said that, that these drills also were suspended after the agreed framework was struck in the 1990s the idea was to suspend these talks well, these drills while there’s a possibility of a negotiated settlement because we know how much North Korean leaders have expressed their anger and hatred of these joint drills I think they’re important to conduct. But if there is some sign that North Korea will engage in good faith negotiations, I don’t see any harm in suspending them during those talks A lot of my colleagues don’t agree with me on that but I will add that there is historical precedent for doing this
RFA: Do you think when the United States and North Korea start up dialogue it would be possible that they discuss sanctions relief and economic cooperation?
Fleitz: Well, when President Trump went to Singapore in mid 2018 for the historic Trump-Kim summit, he showed Kim and his staff a video of what North Korea could look like if it lowered tensions and normalized relations with the United States.
And it was wonderful. It would have been an incredible improvement for the lives of North Koreans. And I think Trump is still talking that there’s a lot of potential in North Korea that could be developed with a stable political situation, a stable security situation. And if North Korea would agree to that, the US would be willing to work with it.
That’s the message I think Trump is sending. I know there’s all kinds of other issues to resolve. Certainly if there’s the a bismal human rights record of North Korea, that’s going to get in the way. There’s the enormous missile program, there’s missile tests, there’s a nuclear program. But Trump is talking about an end goal that I think is very appealing if the North Korean leadership would decide to take advantage of.
RFA: President Trump has mentioned Kim Jong Un many times in the past week. Do you think that’s a sign that it’s going to be different from the Biden administration?
Fleitz: I think so, and I’ll also remind you that Trump made many references to North Korea in his first speech to the UN General Assembly in his national security strategy.
And if you compare those documents with those in the Biden administration, there’s almost nothing about North Korea in the BID documents, maybe one or two sentences.
It simply was not a priority. I think it was a conflict that the, that the BI administration thought would simply go away or they weren’t interested in dealing with. And I think that’s something that made the situation get worse.
RFA: Do you have any message you’d like to relay to the North Korean people?
Fleitz: I’m very glad to have this opportunity to speak to the people of North Korea. I hope the North Korean government will watch this because I think a brighter future’s ahead of us if both sides will take advantage of Trump’s election.
Edited by Eugene Whong.