Whatever you think of Kim Jong Un's regime, North Korea understood decades ago that the United States could not be trusted and that nuclear weapons were a non-negotiable guarantee of security.
When Donald Trump threatened North Korea with "fire and fury" in 2017 if they did not denuclearize, it unleashed global shock and unease. The President was seemingly only bluffing in his threats, but his actions today against Iran beg to differ. Of course, the two situations are not quite the same. Even back then, the DPRK had a nuclear capability and more explicit protection from China, yet Trump's unhinged threats were enough to usher Kim Jong-un toward diplomacy, manifesting in a series of flashy summits from 2018 to 2019 that ultimately resulted in nothing.
I said at the time North Korea will never denuclearize and that Trump's efforts to force them to do so outright would fail, pointing out such talks were ultimately doomed save the US compromised, which they would not. Why? Because a nuclear deterrent is the ultimate guarantee of national sovereignty and the DPRK knows fine well that the United States cannot be trusted. After all, the US just last week reengaged in diplomatic talks at total random to kill a country's head of state and unleash a regime-changing war. Yet this is only a surface, immediately present event at the time of writing in a history that is littered with such examples.
North Korea is one country that takes such history seriously. For their ruling regime, they understand that the threat from the United States is existential. They have watched how the US throughout the 20th and 21st centuries has waged relentless military action, removing hostile regimes from power, either directly or indirectly, with some of them having peacefully negotiated away their nuclear weapons capabilities themselves, such as Gaddafi in Libya. Pyongyang's insecurity is not unfounded, the end of the Cold War saw the Communist state plunged into total isolation and economic collapse, with American scholars believing its collapse, just like the USSR and Eastern Bloc, was inevitable.
Because of these geopolitical conditions, the DPRK made the strategic decision around the start of the 21st century to anchor its survival around nuclear proliferation. This started off slowly under Kim Jong-il with tests in 2006 and 2009 but then aggressively accelerated from 2013 onwards as Kim Jong-un sought to secure his own legitimacy as a young successor and chartered his own domestic regime on building North Korea into a nuclear power. A significant part of North Korea's governing philosophy, known as "Juche" (self-mastery/rule), is that the country should be prepared to pay any price to struggle against "fate" and reshape the environment around it on its own terms. Thus, growing international sanctions were shrugged off, regardless of the hardships they may have caused for the population.
Now, as of 2026, North Korea has Intercontinental Ballistic Missiles (ICBMs) that can reach the entirety of the American homeland, something Trump famously tweeted in 2017 that "won't happen." As war with Iran ranges on, we have likewise seen how, although Tehran does not have nuclear weapons or any ability to hit the US itself, it has been able to unleash large-scale missile and drone attacks against American bases and allies in a way that has surprised many. Thus, if North Korea were attacked, we can realistically assume it would be able to unleash far more devastating consequences than Iran and that any decapitation strike on Kim Jong-un would be met with nuclear retaliation. Thus, having achieved their deterrence goals and slowly advancing them in terms of method and sophistication, Kim Jong-un does not even see the need to engage in dialogue at all, with geopolitical currents allowing him to harden his position.
This has all led to a strange conclusion: While North Korea is routinely vilified for the conditions of its governance, and often exaggerated to the point of satire, X was ultimately awash over the past few days with posts realizing that at least on a proliferation level, Kim Jong-un's strategic decision-making has been vindicated, and if anything, Iran appears foolish in their lack of political will to do so. However, what is more unsettling amidst the situation in Tehran is the precedent this will set worldwide. Is this the end of the global non-nuclear proliferation regime? Trump and Israel have shown that international law is utterly worthless as the paper it is written on, and the only thing in today's world that makes "right" is "might." This opens a very disturbing can of worms as the liberal international order ultimately disintegrates; Kim was just ahead of the game.
The views do not necessarily reflect those of DotDotNews.
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