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The Frustration of the Iran War and the United States’ ‘Cold Peace’ Concept toward North Korea

Chaesung CHUN (EAI, Seoul National University)

The Iran War, following more than one hundred days of considerable turmoil, appears to be entering a phase of termination. The Trump administration articulated multiple objectives for the war, yet it ultimately came to be defined as a war aimed at achieving the denuclearization of Iran. Nevertheless, the military campaign has generated enormous frustration and criticism over its failure to effectively bring about Iran’s complete denuclearization. Whether this will result in a full and effective end to hostilities, or whether protracted negotiations will usher in a new phase of disorder surrounding Iranian denuclearization, remains to be seen. What is clear, however, is that the war has left a profound lesson: hot war cannot achieve denuclearization.

Confronted with this frustration, the United States is reconsidering its approach to North Korean denuclearization. Not only is the prospect of military victory against North Korea deeply uncertain, but there is also a powerful and deeply rooted fear that war against a state that has already deployed a substantial nuclear arsenal is simply not a viable option. Whereas Iran did not possess nuclear weapons, North Korea is an established nuclear power equipped with an estimated fifty nuclear warheads and intercontinental ballistic missiles capable of reaching the continental United States.

At the same time, the prospect of achieving a full and genuine peace (hot peace) is equally elusive. Beyond the profound mutual distrust between the United States and North Korea, the priority accorded to the North Korean nuclear issue within U.S. foreign strategy has inevitably diminished. The United States has entered a new phase of nuclear deterrence strategy in which it must simultaneously confront two nuclear great powers—China and Russia. And the expiration of the New START(Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty) this February rendered even the control of nuclear weapons among nuclear great powers an increasingly intractable challenge.

Victor Cha’s recent contribution in Foreign Affairs, “North Korea as It Is: The Case for a Cold Peace,” reflects this situational assessment. The Trump administration’s second term has identified the reordering of U.S. foreign policy priorities as its central mission in its National Security Strategy (NSS). North Korea was not even mentioned in the NSS, and in the National Defense Strategy (NDS), it is addressed only in the context of nuclear deterrence for the defense of the American homeland. The Cold Peace concept reflects the recognition that neither hot war nor genuine peace is attainable, while also acknowledging the reality that the U.S. security strategy is undergoing a fundamental transformation.

The core of the Cold Peace concept is to retain denuclearization as a long-term goal while simultaneously employing deterrence by denial to prevent a North Korean nuclear attack on the American homeland, managing crises through stabilization measures wherever the risk of nuclear war exists, and exercising maximum restraint with regard to offensive deterrence that could escalate tensions. Central to this logic is the importance of pursuing diplomatic negotiations between the United States and North Korea, and adopting a diplomatic strategy designed to gradually encourage North Korea to drift away from the North Korea–China–Russia alignment. At the same time, the U.S. government continues to maintain the complete denuclearization of North Korea as its official policy objective. Rather than representing a finalized and specific policy, the Cold Peace concept should be understood as identifying key elements of North Korea policy that warrant consideration amid the sweeping transformations in the international order. This discourse should be seen as the surfacing of a perspective that has been under discussion within the United States with a degree of consensus over a considerable period of time.

The implications of this discourse for the Republic of Korea are twofold. First, the priority accorded to the North Korean nuclear issue within U.S. strategy is declining, and the limits of what the United States can accomplish are becoming increasingly apparent. This shift may generate anxiety for South Korea. In particular, there is considerable concern that a bilateral U.S.–North Korea agreement focused exclusively on intercontinental ballistic missiles that threaten the American homeland could neglect the short-range and tactical nuclear forces directly targeting South Korea. Paradoxically, however, this situation also opens space for South Korea’s North Korea strategy to be formulated and pursued with greater autonomy. The United States is currently engaged in restructuring its strategic posture amid a volatile international environment and the constraints of its hegemonic strategy, a process of delineating what it can and cannot do and recalibrating its roles accordingly. Since U.S. policy toward North Korea equally reflects the limits of what America can do, it follows that South Korea’s autonomy can be substantially enhanced depending on the strategy it develops and pursues within that space. In a situation where South Korea must mount an active and comprehensive response to the allocation of roles across the entirety of the U.S.–South Korea foreign and security strategy, this space has now opened in the domain of North Korea policy as well.

Second, the Cold Peace concept remains at the conceptual stage and therefore cannot be applied directly to foreign policy in many respects. Even if a Trump–Kim summit were to be held, North Korea would likely demand recognition of its status as an official nuclear state, and given the ongoing deepening of its ties with China and Russia, it may show little genuine interest in improving relations with the United States. With respect to inter-Korean relations, North Korea is likely to invoke the “two hostile states” doctrine to restrict exchange and cooperation for a considerable period. Under these conditions, crisis management through diplomacy, the freezing of North Korea’s nuclear capabilities, and a strategy to weaken the North Korea–China–Russia alignment are not objectives attainable in the short term; they are strategies that must be pursued persistently over the long term.

South Korea must reset the temporal framework of its North Korea strategy going forward, and deliberate carefully on how to harmonize the Cold Peace concept with its own strategy of peaceful coexistence. South Korea must methodically coordinate the elements of its North Korea policy—denuclearization, inter-Korean exchange and cooperation, peaceful coexistence, and eventual unification—which may find themselves in tension with one another within the new international environment. South Korea must develop a concrete policy roadmap that encompasses the entirety of U.S. foreign and security strategy, tracks the evolution of U.S. policy toward North Korea, identifies the space for autonomous South Korean policy, and advances that agenda in cooperation with the United States. If the United States has begun to confront North Korea as it truly is, it is equally time for South Korea to formulate its North Korea strategy on the basis of the United States as it truly is, and the Korean Peninsula as it truly is.  ■ 

Cold Peace: Was It Wrong Then but Right Now?

Jihwan HWANG (University of Seoul)

Both North Korea and the United States bear responsibility for the trajectory of the North Korean nuclear issue. Looking back over the past three decades of nuclear diplomacy, there have been many moments that invite reflection and regret. What might have happened if Washington and Pyongyang had each made modest concessions during the 2002 dispute over North Korea’s highly enriched uranium program, preventing the collapse of the Agreed Framework? What if President Trump had proposed the “Cold Peace” framework advocated by Victor Cha at the Hanoi Summit in February 2019? These counterfactuals cannot be answered with certainty, but they underscore the missed opportunities that have characterized U.S.–North Korea negotiations. In this regard, it is welcome that Victor Cha, who directly participated in the Six-Party Talks, has put forward a new approach to U.S. policy toward North Korea.

Yet past failures occurred for reasons that cannot simply be wished away. A different negotiating proposal from Washington does not guarantee a different response from Pyongyang. As Cha himself acknowledges, if North Korea has no intention of relinquishing its nuclear weapons program, any agreement—regardless of its design—is unlikely to prove durable.

Viewed from this perspective, Cha’s essay represents not only a candid acknowledgment of the shortcomings of three decades of U.S. diplomacy toward North Korea, but also an ambitious attempt to chart a new course. Whether his proposed “Cold Peace” framework can succeed where previous efforts failed, however, remains uncertain. North Korea may already have moved far beyond the assumptions underlying the proposal, while the United States continues to pursue a diplomatic solution that Pyongyang no longer finds attractive. At this stage, North Korea may be seeking something more than a cold peace. Three concerns, in particular, merit consideration.

First, it is unclear whether such an agreement would be politically sustainable within the United States. Even if President Trump were able to reach a deal with Kim Jong Un through summit diplomacy, would the agreement survive a change of administration? The fate of the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) raises legitimate doubts. U.S.–North Korea relations have already experienced a similar cycle: the Agreed Framework reached under the Clinton administration effectively unraveled during the Bush administration. Deeply entrenched views in Washington regarding so-called rogue states have historically constrained diplomatic flexibility, and those constraints have not disappeared.

Second, it is uncertain whether North Korea is prepared to accept a Cold Peace arrangement. Pyongyang currently demands recognition as a nuclear weapons state and calls for negotiations on nuclear arms reduction rather than denuclearization. Can Cha’s proposal be reconciled with these objectives? Moreover, North Korea has long insisted that the United States abandon its “hostile policy” toward the DPRK. Whether a Cold Peace framework would satisfy this longstanding demand remains an open question.

Third, the implications for South Korea deserve careful attention. One of the central purposes of a Cold Peace strategy is to strengthen U.S. homeland security by reducing the number of active adversarial relationships confronting Washington. Yet it is far from clear that such an approach would be fully compatible with South Korea’s security concerns. The South Korean government has also embraced a phased approach—freeze, reduction, and eventual denuclearization—as a pathway toward peaceful coexistence on the Korean Peninsula. However, achieving harmony between U.S.–North Korea relations and inter-Korean relations is increasingly difficult when North Korea is pursuing an openly hostile policy toward the South. Pyongyang has recently redefined inter-Korean relations as those between “two hostile states” and has intensified its confrontational rhetoric and policies. Under such circumstances, South Korea may reasonably worry that progress in U.S.–North Korea negotiations could come at the expense of the credibility of U.S. extended deterrence commitments. As Cha himself notes, “If allies feel abandoned and do not trust the U.S. security commitment, that could trigger a regional arms race and result in new nuclear dominoes falling.”

For these reasons, Cha’s proposal deserves serious consideration. A more flexible and proactive U.S. approach toward North Korea would certainly be preferable to the rigid policies that have often characterized Washington’s diplomacy over the past three decades. Yet there were also reasons why previous administrations did not pursue such an approach. The political and strategic constraints that limited U.S. policy in the past have not fundamentally disappeared in 2026. Ultimately, a sustainable solution will require not only a new American strategy, but also a willingness on the part of the United States, North Korea, and South Korea to move beyond narrow conceptions of national interest and engage in a process of mutual adjustment and coordination.  ■ 

Variables to Consider Before Advancing the ‘Cold Peace’ Proposal

Dong Ryul LEE (Dongduk Women’s University)

The proposal for a “Cold Peace” with North Korea—premised on treating denuclearization as a long-term objective while adopting it as a transitional strategy for managing immediate crises—can be considered a viable alternative insofar as it departs from the realistic recognition that North Korean denuclearization is not achievable in the short to medium term. However, before this alternative is pursued, there are two important preconditions that must be carefully considered and resolved.

First, it is argued that the strengthening of alliances—most notably the conclusion of a “collective defense declaration” among the United States, South Korea, and Japan—constitutes one of the most essential prerequisites for advancing the Cold Peace proposal. For a robust trilateral alliance to take shape, however, the United States must first preemptively secure two firm assurances from its allies. The first is that a firm consensus must be established among the allies in advance that the Cold Peace proposal does not in any way constitute recognition of North Korea’s claims to nuclear-state status. The second is that concerns must be dispelled that the U.S. Cold Peace framework prioritizes the defense of the American homeland and may not entail a firm commitment to extended nuclear deterrence and security guarantees for allies such as South Korea and Japan. In particular, it is necessary to confront directly the reality that confidence among U.S. allies has been significantly eroded by the Trump administration’s excessive and inconsistent tariff policies and its America-first orientation. The Lee Jae Myung government, while harboring expectations regarding U.S.–North Korea dialogue, remains reticent about choosing strategic clarity in ways that could entrench an adversarial relationship with China. In sum, a premature Cold Peace proposal pursued in the absence of firmly established mutual trust among allies risks triggering an uncontrollable and rapid proliferation of latent discussions on nuclear armament among Northeast Asian states including South Korea, Japan, and Taiwan, thereby generating serious upheaval in the nuclear order of Northeast Asia as a whole—and indeed the international community—while ushering in a new phase of crisis.

Second, for the Cold Peace proposal to succeed, a more sophisticated analysis and a corresponding strategic response are required to surmount the far more difficult and complex hurdle posed by China. It is difficult to conclude that China possesses either the will or the capability to bring about North Korean denuclearization. Nevertheless, despite ongoing demands from Pyongyang, China has yet to publicly endorse North Korea’s claims to nuclear-state status. Should there be a genuine attempt to alter the status quo in ways that risk de facto legitimization of North Korea’s nuclear possession, China may well exercise a degree of influence and agency to protect its own security interests. While China has been reluctant to play the role of a mediator facilitating U.S.–North Korea negotiations, it cannot be ruled out that Beijing would be wary of—and might even act to obstruct—direct U.S.–North Korea negotiations conducted in ways that run counter to its national interests or from which it has been excluded.

China, which regards its competition and confrontation with the United States as not only inevitable but likely to intensify, prioritizes maintaining and managing North Korea as a crucial strategic buffer over North Korean denuclearization. In particular, should the construction of a U.S.–South Korea–Japan alliance—which inevitably involves a China-containment dimension alongside or in parallel with negotiations for a Cold Peace with North Korea—proceed, China may perceive the “U.S.–South Korea–Japan alliance” as a more urgent and formidable threat than the North Korean nuclear issue itself. In such a scenario, China may find North Korea’s strategic value increasingly pronounced, pursue a North Korea–China–Russia triangular alignment, and exercise its influence in whatever way best serves the purpose of obstructing U.S.–North Korea negotiations.

China has sought to prevent North Korea from facing crisis under U.S. pressure, while simultaneously remaining watchful and responsive to U.S.–North Korea negotiations proceeding without its involvement. For instance, following the abrupt convening of inter-Korean and U.S.–North Korea summits after the February 2018 Pyeongchang Winter Olympics, China—in a highly unusual move—held four consecutive summits with North Korea between March 2018 and June 2019, having suspended such high-level contact for seven years since 2011. China effectively sought to intervene in and apply the brakes to the rapid rapprochement in U.S.–North Korea relations and the attendant attempts to alter the status quo on the Korean Peninsula. Conversely, immediately after the February 2019 Hanoi U.S.–North Korea summit ended in an unexpected “no deal,” China responded with a remarkably composed and principled official statement, as if it had anticipated the outcome, pursuing a conspicuously “quiet” course of action. For crisis management negotiations between the United States and North Korea—such as arms control discussions—to proceed smoothly, close strategic communication between the United States and China must be established as a prerequisite. Moreover, the various scenarios in which the China variable could operate during the negotiation process must be meticulously examined in advance. In particular, should the strengthening of the U.S.–South Korea–Japan alliance be perceived as an attempt to prioritize or simultaneously advance China containment over deterrence against North Korea, there is a risk that the Cold War structure surrounding the Korean Peninsula will be further entrenched and security instability further compounded.

In sum, for the United States to pursue crisis management through negotiations with North Korea, it is first necessary to restore the eroded trust of its allies, and to ensure a prior understanding between the United States and China, achieved through close bilateral communication, regarding the new approach to resolving the North Korean nuclear issue.  ■ 

■ Chaesung CHUN is President of EAI and Professor at Seoul National University; Jihwan HWANG is Professor at the University of Seoul; Dong Ryul LEE is a Senior Fellow at EAI, and Professor at Dongduk Women’s University.

■ Translated and edited by Sangjun LEE, EAI Research Associate; Inhwan OH, EAI Senior Research Fellow.
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