So according to a White House official, and reported in every South Korean news portal, Trump is open to talking with Kim, “without any preconditions.”
Some have been waiting for this for a while – at least Washington’s think-tanks have.
Read the latest from Washington’s think tanks: Can diplomacy with North Korea be revived? Will Trump and Lee work together to engage Kim? How can we strengthen the alliance? Given the state of U.S. diplomacy, it’s getting harder and harder to believe these pieces are still being written.
Yet, there’s a problem here. Every lienteric expulsion from Washington’s think tanks rests on two reflexes: that the U.S. on the Korean Peninsula is a stabilizer, and that the ROK–U.S. alliance enhances South Korea’s security.
Take a look at recent pieces in the mainstream platforms. The Hudson Institute argues the absence of U.S. involvement and the weakening of the ROK-US alliance is a risk, while RAND argues the alliance should be enhanced to “deter aggression, uphold regional order, and strengthen security beyond the region”. Meanwhile, over at Brookings, their experts are wondering whether China is a spoiler in the North Korea nuclear dilemma!
After Venezuela and Iran, and with the consistent Cold War positioning on China and Russia, the ideas that the U.S. is a stabilizer and that ROK–U.S. alliance enhances security, are no longer certain.
Why would South Koreans want Trump’s attention? Why would anyone want Trump’s attention?
The U.S. as a stabilizer?
Think tank research on U.S. involvement on the Peninsula revolves around tactics — sequencing, messaging, back-channels — rather than the deeper question of whether intensified U.S. focus would actually make the peninsula safer. This assumption looks increasingly detached from recent experience.
The dramatic U.S. operation to capture Venezuela’s leader signaled a willingness to override sovereignty in the name of domestic political narratives. Likewise, the oscillation between coercion and episodic military confrontation with Iran has reinforced a perception of unpredictability rather than strategic steadiness. These actions did not project consistency or reliability; they projected volatility. Allies may still depend on U.S. capabilities, but dependence is not the same as confidence.
The think-tank discourse treats American engagement as a neutral input variable. If Washington reengages Pyongyang, if Washington signals resolve, if Washington calibrates deterrence correctly — then the peninsula might stabilize. That framing presumes that the primary problem is insufficient or mismanaged U.S. attention. It avoids the possibility that erratic or overbearing U.S. involvement might itself generate instability.
This analytical reflex reflects institutional habit. Major foreign policy institutions are embedded within Western strategic cultures that be default still treat American primacy as the organizing principle of global order. Within that worldview, crises are managed by recalibrating U.S. leadership, not by questioning its structure or scope. Even when policy failures are acknowledged, they are cast as deviations from an otherwise stabilizing norm. The system is assumed sound; only its execution falters.
What is missing is a candid assessment of how U.S. actions over the last ten years have abysmally failed. In Latin America, East Asia, and the Middle East, American initiatives are now unilateral and improvisational. The message to smaller states is clear: U.S. engagement can be swift, muscular, and politically driven. It sure shapes how actors in East Asia interpret Washington’s intentions – but seemingly not Washington’s think-tanks.
South Korea’s security?
At the same time, the think tank community has been slow to register how much South Korea’s own foreign policy has evolved. Seoul is no longer simply the junior partner in a binary alliance structure. Domestic debates have intensified over strategic autonomy, economic security, and the risks of entanglement in great-power competition. South Korean policymakers face a dense web of constraints: supply chain vulnerability, demographic decline, an entrenched nuclear North, and growing economic interdependence with China.
Within this environment, U.S. attention is not automatically reassuring. It can be double-edged. Heightened U.S. focus on North Korea might invite escalation dynamics that Seoul must bear geographically and economically. It could also subordinate South Korean priorities to broader U.S. strategic contests — whether with China, Iran, or other adversaries. For a country whose capital lies within artillery range of its northern neighbor, unpredictability in Washington is not an abstraction. It is existential.
Yet many analyses still default to a 1990s template: alliance coordination plus calibrated U.S. engagement equals stability. That template presupposes a shared strategic horizon. But South Korea’s horizon is widening. There is increasing emphasis on diversified diplomacy across Southeast Asia, cautious economic balancing with China, and pragmatic management of North Korea rather than transformative ambitions. Denuclearization, once the centerpiece of policy discourse, has become a far more distant and uncertain objective.
Why, then, would anyone actively seek renewed, intensified U.S. attention on the Korean Peninsula at this moment? The question is not rhetorical. If American foreign policy appears volatile, if interventions elsewhere signal willingness to take dramatic action with limited consultation, and if domestic U.S. politics drive sharp swings in posture, then inviting deeper involvement carries risk.
This does not mean South Korea seeks to abandon the alliance. The alliance remains foundational to deterrence and intelligence sharing. But foundations can coexist with caution. A mature middle power does not automatically equate more attention from a superpower with greater security. It weighs costs alongside benefits.
The think tank community’s difficulty lies in its intellectual architecture. It continues to treat U.S. leadership as the solution space rather than one variable among many. That framing sidelines South Korean agency and minimizes how regional architectures are diversifying. ASEAN-centered diplomacy, minilateral arrangements, and economic interdependence across East Asia all provide alternative mechanisms for managing risk that do not hinge entirely on Washington’s spotlight.
If analysts fail to acknowledge these shifts, they risk prescribing policies out of sync with regional realities. Worse, they may inadvertently encourage escalatory dynamics by normalizing the idea that crises are opportunities for renewed U.S. assertion.
The more sobering possibility is that stability on the Korean Peninsula may, for now, depend less on dramatic diplomatic revival or muscular signaling and more on restraint — particularly restraint from actors whose recent record demonstrates unpredictability. For Seoul, the calculation is pragmatic: security requires reliability. Attention without reliability is noise.
The question, then, is not whether diplomacy with North Korea should be attempted. It is whether intensified U.S. focus, given recent patterns of behavior, enhances or complicates South Korea’s strategic position.
Until the think tank community confronts both the fragility of American credibility and the evolution of South Korean autonomy, its analyses will remain curiously detached from the lived strategic anxieties of the peninsula.
A different era?
What is really happening, is that we’ve finally come to the end of an order. Three day visits to Seoul and conversations with high-level contacts in or recently out of government no longer cut it.
Washington’s think tank specialists who hold conversations with gatekeepers that know exactly what they want to hear, can no longer cut the mustard. Well-worn and well-rehearsed diplomatic speaking points that go on like honey and stick to think-tank bread all the way back to Washington are pointless in a world of social media, political vlogs and message groups.
“I have many friends in Seoul” – the catch-phrase of every dandruff-shouldered think-tanker on their return to Washington, and a final write-up supporting a stronger alliance, regional order, and security beyond the region, should be dust-binned. Those days are over. Reflexive calls for renewed U.S. attention sound less like strategy and more like habit. It’s time to get creative and rethink how to pursue a lasting peace.
Jeffrey Robertson previously worked for the Australian Government in the fields of foreign policy and diplomacy with a focus on East Asia. He now writes from the other side of the line – as an academic, consultant, and sometimes spy fiction ghostwriter. He writes and updates research at https://junotane.com.
