Understanding Saudi Society: The Role of Women

An anonymous woman, publishing her story anonymously, gives keen insight into the lives of women in Saudi Arabia. Publishing under the name Sultana, this woman worked with author Jean Sasson to present powerful but painful information about the daily lives of Saudi women.

As someone whose family has lived in Arabia for centuries, she can give an authentic insider view of her experience, and the experiences of her sisters, cousins, and friends. She presents evidence which makes it clear that Saudi women are utterly controlled, first by their fathers, and ten later by their husbands. She writes:

This absolute control over the female has nothing to do with love, only with fear of the male’s tarnished honor.

For readers in other societies — Europe, Australia, the Americas, etc. — she offers data which are shocking and counterintuitive. Saudi men are legally allowed to kill their wives or daughters if those women have done something which the men consider to be dishonorable. The Saudi man is prosecutor, judge, jury, and executioner — all in one. There is no defender.

The authority of a Saudi male is unlimited; his wife and children survive only if he desires. In our homes, he is the state. This complex situation begins with the rearing of our young boys. From an early age, the male child is taught that women are of little value: They exist only for his comfort and convenience. The child witnesses the disdain shown his mother and sisters by his father; this open contempt leads to his scorn of all females, and makes it impossible for him to enjoy friendship with anyone of the opposite sex. Taught only the role of master to slave, it is little wonder that by the time he is old enough to take a mate, he considers her his chattel, not his partner.

Women are considered as property, a notion which settles comfortably in the minds of Saudis, who didn’t abolish slavery until 1962, and whose current system of permanent servitude for foreign born domestic workers differs little from slavery.

The double standard is clearly enshrined in Saudi society: men are allowed as many wives as they want and adulterous relationships are permitted, as are the men’s visits to brothels.

On the other hand, women will suffer punishment or even death for merely speaking casually to any man who is not an immediate family member.

This dysfunctional society warps and distorts every human relationship, as our anonymous author explains:

And so it comes to be that women in my land are ignored by their fathers, scorned by their brothers, and abused by their husbands. This cycle is difficult to break, for the men who impose this life upon their women ensure their own marital unhappiness. For what man can be truly content surrounded by such misery? It is evident that the men of my land are searching for gratification by taking one wife after the other, followed by mistress after mistress. Little do these men know that their happiness can be found in their own home, with one woman of equality. By treating women as slaves, as property, men have made themselves as unhappy as the women they rule, and have made love and true companionship unattainable to both sexes.

Even the official paperwork of the Saudi government codifies the inferior status of women:

The history of our women is buried behind the black veil of secrecy. Neither our births nor our deaths are made official in any public record. Although births of male children are documented in family or tribal records, none are maintained anywhere for females. The common emotion expressed at the birth of a female is either sorrow or shame. Although hospital births and government record keeping are increasing, the majority of rural births take place at home. No country census is maintained by the government of Saudi Arabia.

Women in Saudi Arabia need written permission from a male relative to travel or get married. The police can, and do, arrest women for wearing skirts which expose their calves.

It is difficult for readers in the ‘Western World’ to imagine the oppression under which Saudi women live. Even walking from home to a small shop a few blocks away is forbidden unless the girl or woman making this trip is accompanied by a male family member.

The publication of these experiences by Jean Sasson and the anonymous ‘Sultana’ has truly revolutionized the West’s understanding of Saudi Arabia.

Madagascar: Surprisingly Important

Most people have trouble finding Madagascar on a map. (Hint: it’s an island off the eastern coast of Africa.) If they’ve heard of Madagascar at all, it’s in conjunction with an animated film for children. But this French colony played at least one major role in World History.

In the early phases of WW2, Germany had invaded most of France. The parts of France not directly controlled by the German army were controlled by the French collaborationist government — called the ‘Vichy’ government, named after its capital city — which complied to Nazi demands and wishes. France’s colonial empire therefore also fell indirectly through the Vichy bureaucracy into Axis hands, from Algiers to Vietnam. Part of that empire was Madagascar.

The Vichy government managed most of the imperial territories and colonies, but was careful to do so in a way pleasing to the Axis.

The Free French government was a government-in-exile, headed by Charles de Gaulle, and located largely in England. It was the legitimate authority over France, but unable to directly manage events in France, or in most of the empire, during the time between mid-1940 until late 1942. After that time, it slowly began to assume meaningful authority over small bits of the empire as they were liberated by the Allies. The Free French government had its own military, which fought in concert with the Allies.

Historian Richard Overy describes the beginning of the Allied effort to free Madagascar from the Vichy regime, i.e., from Axis control:

Late in March 1942 a small convoy of ships steamed south from the Clyde estuary in Scotland destined for the invasion of French territory. Convoy WS17 carried two thousand Royal Marines and a wide assortment of naval and military supplies. The ships were a motley collection, small armed escort vessels swaying side by side with smart passenger liners crudely converted to the dull costume of war. Mercifully unattended by submarines, the convoy plowed on, past the continent of Europe, past the Azores and on into the South Atlantic. On 19 April the convoy arrived in Cape Town where it met up with the rest of the invasion fleet, the aircraft carriers Indomitable and Illustrious, an aging battleship and two cruisers. The 34 ships left for Durban, on the east coast of South Africa. In the last week of April they sailed in two separate groups to take part in Operation ‘Ironclad,’ the invasion of Madagascar.

The history of WW2 includes many invasions: The Axis powers invaded Poland, France, Belgium, and other countries. The Japanese invaded China, the Philippines, French Indochina, and islands around the Pacific. In reply, the Allies invaded and liberated the nations of North Africa, Sicily, Italy, and France in the European theater, and likewise carried out liberating invasions of the Philippines and other islands.

The liberation of Madagascar was one of the very first Allied invasions, and was the first amphibious invasion carried out by the Allies. As such, it set the stage, and provided important experience, for other later amphibious invasions. The concept of amphibious invasion was relatively new, having played little or no role in WW1, and was a pivotal factor in the ultimate Allied victory. The invasion of Madagascar was, therefore, a groundbreaking moment in military history.

At first, Madagascar might seem like an odd choice of target. France, Italy, North Africa, or the Philippines are more obvious goals. But Madagascar had a strategic importance. The Japanese, having secured the South China Sea, were eyeing the major shipping routes through the Indian Ocean. Madagascar, on the western edge of the Indian Ocean and on the eastern edge of Africa, would have been a good staging and refueling station for the Japanese, who would have good reason therefore to occupy the island.

The mission of convoy WS17 was to liberate Madagascar from Vichy control and from Axis control, and to prevent a Japanese occupation there, as Richard Overy explains:

Their destination was the northernmost tip of the island, Cap d’Ambre, which was almost separated from the rest by a deep inlet that formed the natural harbor of Diego Suarez. This large sheltered anchorage was used by the French as a naval base. It was overlooked by the small port of Antsirane, where the French garrison and a handful of aircraft were stationed. This colonial backwater might well have remained untouched by the war save for the threat from Japan. Following the rapid Japanese conquest of southeast Asia and the East Indies it was feared that Japanese forces would fan out into the Indian Ocean, seizing Ceylon or Madagascar in order to cut the vital shipping lines that sustained Britain’s fragile war effort in the Middle East and India. Madagascar suddenly became the key to British survival, and Churchill signaled his strong approval of its occupation.

The amphibious landing was a new tactic. Few military leaders anywhere had experience in such operations. Operation Ironclad was a test of whether such a technique was possible or practical. The outcome was uncertain, but the threat of Japanese submarines being resupplied and refueled so close to the European theater required the attempt. Richard Overy details the difficulties:

Ironclad was a tricky operation. The island was protected in the north by natural fortifications of shoal and reef. The harbor itself was dominated by large naval guns set in coastal fortresses, and its long winding entrance was easy to defend. Armed with the element of surprise, the task force was detailed to land on the undefended western coast and attack the port from the rear. D-Day was fixed for 5 May — every operation had D-Day and H-Hour to signal its beginning — and the flotilla arrived punctually off the coast at two in the morning. Minesweepers marked a channel through the treacherous waters and the small transport vessels gingerly steered past the buoys to reach the undefended beaches of Courrier and Ambararata bays. Three mines exploded in the approach but no one on shore noticed. The landings were carried out unopposed, for the French regarded the western shore as unnavigable. Not until the marines had advanced 3 miles towards the port did they suddenly meet stiff resistance. Any hope that the defenders might come over to the Allied cause evaporated. For most of the following day the British were pinned down with heavy casualties. The operation was rescued from disaster only by an act of desperation. The destroyer Anthony was sent with fifty marines aboard to run the gauntlet of the harbor guns and seize the port under the noses of the French forces. In darkness and in swirling seas Anthony rose to the occasion; the marines were disembarked on the jetty and seized the naval depot and the commanding general’s house. Attacked from the rear the startled garrison began to crumble. By 3 a.m. on 7 May resistance was almost over. The port was surrendered. A brief naval bombardment the following morning silenced the harbor guns.

Operation Ironclad was a success, but only barely. Although the port and harbor at the northern end of the island had surrendered, the remainder of Madagascar, heading south overland, had to be liberated over the next six months.

The invasion of Madagascar proved that the Allies could complete an amphibious invasion, but it also revealed that the Allies were far from being ready to do such a landing on a large scale or against serious opposition. The Vichy army which resisted the liberation of Madagascar was an amateurish outfit compared to the Japanese army which would oppose any liberation of the Philippines, or compared to the Axis troops who would put up a fight against any Allied liberation of Italy, France, Sicily, or North Africa.

The Allies had managed to prove that they could do an amphibious invasion, but it was clear that they had a long way to go before they would be ready for a bigger version of such a liberation.

Richard Overy examines the record of Operation Ironclad:

The seizure of Diego Suarez effectively forestalled the Japanese. It was the first successful amphibious assault of the war for the Allies, and the first genuinely combined operation, using aircraft, ships, and soldiers working together. It came at a dark time in the war for the Allied cause and was, Churchill later recalled, the only bright spot in Britain’s war effort ‘for long months.’ But it was small comfort. The whole operation had come close to disaster. The ships supporting it had almost run out of fuel and water by 7 May; casualties were surprisingly heavy, 107 killed and 280 wounded, some 20 percent of the attacking force; and contrary to expectations the French governor of the island not only refused to surrender but continued hostilities. The doughty Monsieur Masset retreated south with his forces leaving behind a trail of blown bridges and booby-trapped roads. He survived the fall of his capital in September. South African forces, depleted by illness and plagued by clouds of dry red dust, finally cornered the remnant of the French army in the very south of the island. Here the governor solemnly surrendered on 5 November, exactly six months and one minute after the onset of hostilities in May. Under French law the island’s defenders were now entitled to higher pay and awards for enduring more than half a year of combat.

Looking at the operation in the macro-context of WW2, historian Hubert Deschamps notes:

World War II brought economic crisis with the cessation of exports. The island declared for the Vichy government in 1940, and to prevent its invasion by the Japanese it was occupied in 1942 by the British, who handed it over to the Free French authorities in 1943. It had been considerably distrubed by these events.

Operation Ironclad not only had a military value, but also had a value related to morale on the home front. It was one of the few victories during the early part of the war to which the Allies could point. It gave credibility to the Allied cause.

This would become even more so, for shortly after the liberation of Madagascar, the infamous Raid on Dieppe worked against Allied morale. While some military and political leaders considered the Dieppe Raid, named Operation Jubilee, a success, it didn’t seem that way to the general public. Historians continue to debate the value of the Raid on Dieppe, but at the time, the victory at Madagascar was much-needed to maintain morale, as Richard Overy writes:

It would be unkind to argue that Ironclad was the best the Allies could do in the summer of 1942, but it was not far short. For all those critics of British policy, then and since, the invasion of Madagascar is a salutary reminder of just how slender were British resources in 1942, and how inexperienced were its forces for a major amphibious assault of the kind that Stalin urged against German-held Europe. The British Chiefs-of-Staff were even hostile to an operation as modest as Ironclad because of the disruption to shipping. As it was, the Royal Naval task force at Gibraltar had to be severely depleted to support the Madagascar invasion. If the Japanese navy had chosen to intervene, Britain could have done little to obstruct it, and the whole operation would have produced a strategic nightmare. How much greater were the risks and costs of a cross-Channel assault against a strongly defended coastline with limited resources. When later in the year a substantial raid was mounted on Dieppe by Canadian forces stationed in Britain the outcome was disastrous. Until the landings in North Africa later in the year, the invasion of Madagascar remained the one solid victory for the Allied cause, and it was fought not against hardened soldiers of the Axis but against an assortment of French colonial troops who had started the war as Britain’s allies and had little stomach for conflict.

The Allied military experienced a direct line of development, planning, and maturation from the invasion of Madagascar in May 1942 to the invasion of Normandy in June 1944. Operation Ironclad was a fragile and small version of Operation Overlord; the former was the ancestor of the latter.

Richard Overy conceptualizes the weakness but ultimate success of Operation Ironclad:

The western Allies knew that at some point they would have to invade Europe and face their most dangerous enemy. But in the summer of 1942 they were not even sure they could save themselves against the onrush of Japan in the Pacific and Axis forces in North Africa. The choice of Madagascar was an admission of weakness, not strength. Ironclad disrupted the war effort elsewhere but was ultimately successful. The invasion of France in 1942 was operationally impossible. It took another two years before the secretive, hazardous assault on the beaches of Cap d’Ambre was writ large in Normandy.

The narrative of Madagascar’s liberation is not often featured in major histories of WW2, but in context, it represents an important step in the growth and coming-of-age for the Allied military.

The liberation of Madagascar was an indispensable step on the road to the liberation of Paris.

Is a Peaceful North Korea Possible?

As a country, belligerence seems innate to North Korea. The nation was created by the USSR, shaped by the harshest versions of Stalinism, and responsible for starting the Korean War with a surprise attack on South Korea. Millions of people died in that war. North Korea, which was founded in 1945 by the Soviets and ruled by their chosen dictator Kim Il-sung, formally became the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK) in 1948.

The DPRK has been identified by global organizations — the UN, NATO, SEATO, the G7, the G20, and others — for its brutal inhumanity. It arrests, beats, imprisons, tortures, and murders its citizens for offenses like possessing certain books or failing to be sufficiently enthusiastic about the regime. That regime started with Kim Il-sung in 1945, was inherited by Kim Jong-il in 1994, and inherited by Kim Jong-un in 2011: a hereditary dynasty of dictators.

Recalling the North Korean situation as it stood during the first decade of the new millennium — the decade in which the DPRK realized its dream of obtaining functioning nuclear weapons — Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld wrote:

As long as Kim Jong Il was in power, I thought we had little prospect of inducing his regime to abandon its nuclear weapons program. Every day Kim and his officials focused on ways to consolidate and protect their dictatorship. Their disastrous policies spawned famine, torture, and oppression. The inhumane leadership of North Korea seemed to believe that the surest hold on power was the pursuit of weapons programs.

North Korea has long isolated itself from nearly every nation on earth. Its original allies — the USSR and Mao’s PRC — developed in ways which drew them away from the DPRK. The Soviet Union fell apart in 1991, abandoning its doctrinaire Marxist ideology. China tweaked its definition of communism in ways which made it less similar to North Korea. So the DPRK has no true allies. But it does retain at least working relationship with China.

So it is that diplomats from around the world look to China to communicate with North Korea. The global community hopes that China will be able to at least persuade the Kim dynasty to see reality. It is probable that the Chinese hierarchy sees the DPRK as a problem, and sees the leadership of the DPRK as unrealistic. Certainly, it would make life easier for China if the North Koreans were at least a bit rational.

At the same time, however, China does not want to be triangulated into the role of being the spokesman for the world community. China will not simply present the world’s demands to North Korea, and thereby become simply a messenger. So this is the tension: China wants the DPRK to improve its behavior, but it does not want to be seen as falling in line with the consensus of the globe’s nations, as Don Rumsfeld writes:

I thought it worthwhile to try to get China to work diplomatically to persuade North Korea to change its nuclear weapons policy, based on the view that our countries had a shared interest in keeping the Korean peninsula free of nuclear weapons. Unfortunately, China seemed more interested in blocking U.S. efforts against North Korea than in keeping the Korean peninsula nuclear weapons-free. The outcome the Chinese seemed to fear most was a collapse of their neighbor. Then they would be forced to deal with refugees and a failed Korean state on their border. As long as Kim Jong Il had China as a patron of sorts, I was not optimistic that negotiations with North Korea involving the Chinese, known as the six-party talks, would succeed.

So, during the first decade of the new millennium, the team which hoped to confront and reform the DPRK — the team which included the UN, NATO, SEATO, the G7, the G20, the Six Party Talks, and others — did not always receive much help from China.

Regarding China’s stance, Don Rumsfeld wrote:

China may one day regret its position if Japan, South Korea, or Taiwan decides to pursue nuclear weapons to counter the North Korean threat.

Moving from the first decade of the new millennium to the second decade of the new millennium, the global community adjusted its approach to the DPRK. Where words had failed, actions would have an impact.

But the perennial question facing the diplomat is this: If one seeks to employ actions instead of words, how does one avoid war? How do the agreed nations of the world take action against North Korea without starting a war?

Nikki Haley was the United States ambassador to the United Nations from January 2017 to December 2018. She was one of the leaders who helped to implement a new approach by the UN and the US:

The new policy came to be called the “maximum pressure” campaign. Part of the new policy was military preparedness. Although we were committed to finding a diplomatic solution, the president never took the possibility of military action off the table. We would deliver a devastating blow if North Korea used its missiles against the United States or our allies. And we made sure the North Koreans knew it.

The “maximum pressure” strategy included both military strength and economic leverage. A concerted enforcement of economic sanctions denied large amounts of income which North Korea would have otherwise received from its export of goods. The two factors — economic pressure and military muscle-flexing — did not replace, but rather joined, the diplomacy of the previous decades, as Nikki Haley writes:

We also exerted pressure through diplomacy, encouraging other nations to cut off political and trade ties with North Korea.

The new tactics had measurable effects: the number and frequency of nuclear weapons explosions and missile launches in North Korea declined detectably from 2017 to 2020.

North Korea and the United States held their first-ever summit-level talks, when Kim Jong-un met with President Trump on 12 June 2018 in Singapore. This was followed by two more summit meetings, in Hanoi in February 2019, and in the Demilitarized Zone (DMZ) between North Korea and South Korea on 30 June 2019.

Starting in early 2021, this trend reversed itself, and North Korea began increasing its dramatic public displays by detonating nuclear weapons and launching missiles.

Negotiating with North Korea: Words Are Never Enough

Since its inception — or, rather, because of the nature of its inception — North Korea has been seen both as a danger and as a violation of human rights by the nations of the world. All major global gatherings — the UN, NATO, SEATO, the G7, the G20, etc. — have not only issued statements condemning North Korea’s behavior, but also have undertaken economic sanctions as an effort to persuade North Korea to respect human dignity and to desist from belligerent actions.

North Korea was organized in 1945 as a Stalinist satellite state, an extension of the USSR, under the rule of dictator Kim Il-sung, chosen by the Soviets to run the puppet state for them. It formally became the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK) in 1948.

The DPRK represented the harshest form of Stalinism, and maintained this posture after the death of Stalin in 1953, and after the end of the Soviet Union in 1991. Identified as one of the most repressive regimes on earth, North Korea routinely arrests, beats, tortures, imprisons, and executes its citizens for the slightest offenses. People have been sentenced to decades in prison for merely possessing a Bible. Women have been forced into slavery.

The militaristic nature of the DPRK led to the surprise attack in 1950 on South Korea. The resulting Korean War caused the deaths of millions, and was a direct consequence of the actions of the Kim Il-sung regime. In 1994, he died, and his son Kim Jong-il inherited the role of dictator.

During the reign of Kim Jong-il, North Korea energetically pursued the ability to manufacture nuclear weapons and the missiles needed to deliver them to nations around the world. The DPRK wanted not only to bully South Korea, but rather also to bully any country on the globe.

The intelligence agencies of various nations soon discovered North Korea’s atomic weapons program. Diplomats used both the carrot — promised rewards for desisting from weapons development — and the stick — promised economic punishments for continued construction of nuclear weapons. Neither approach succeeded.

Eventually, the DPRK revealed its new weapons to the world. While the exact timing was a surprise, North Korea’s acquisition of atomic weapons had been an inevitability for some years.

One reason for the date of unveiling of the DPRK’s nuclear capabilities was the fact that the world’s attention had been elsewhere. Problems in Iraq and Syria dominated both diplomatic talk and the news media. Like his father and his son, Kim Jong-il didn’t like it when he wasn’t on the front pages of the world’s newspapers. At atomic explosion would quickly fix that.

In October 2006, Vice President Richard Cheney — better known as Dick Cheney — learned of North Korea’s surprise. He recalls:

In the fall of 2006, as violence in Iraq was still escalating, North Korea conducted its first nuclear test, setting off an explosion at the Punggye test site some two hundred forty miles northeast of Pyongyang. When the blast was detected, it was Sunday evening, October 8, in Washington, D.C. The next morning President Bush went before the cameras in the Diplomatic Reception Room to condemn the test and issue a warning.

An atomic weapon “test” is not actually testing anything: the scientists know how it will work. It is a gesture designed to intimidate other nations.

President George W. Bush perceived that the DPRK posed two problems. First, its own nuclear arsenal. Second, its ability to sell nuclear weapons to rogue states and to terrorist groups. During a televised address, he said:

The North Korean regime remains one of the world’s leading proliferators of missile technology, including transfers to Iran and Syria. The transfer of nuclear weapons or material by North Korea to states or non-state entities would be considered a grave threat to the United States, and we would hold North Korea fully accountable for the consequences of such action.

Bush’s concerns were justified. The DPRK wasted little time before it began selling nuclear technology to bad actors. Dick Cheney writes:

Six months later we received intelligence that a threat of this nature had materialized. I learned about it in detail one afternoon in mid-April 2007, in National Security Advisor Steve Hadley’s office. I was seated in one of Steve’s large blue wing chairs and he was to my left. Two Israeli officials were on the sofa to my right. Meir Dagan, director of Mossad, the Israeli intelligence service, pulled materials from his briefcase and spread them on the coffee table in front of us. For the next hour, Dagan showed us photos of a building in the Syrian desert at a place called al-Kibar. It was a nuclear test reactor.

Intelligence agencies were able to confirm that both supplies and expertise from North Korea were being used to start a nuclear weapons program in Syria. In September 2007, the Isreali military destroyed the site.

That was a significant setback to the Syrian atomic weapons program; indeed, possibly the end of that program. The site, also known as Dair Alzour, was investigated by United Nations officials, who confirmed the nature and purpose of the site.

While the Syrian threat was neutralized, the North Korean threat grew.

A decade later, the situation had not changed substantially. North Korea was still belligerent, threatening other nations. Its nuclear arsenal was larger, and it had developed missiles capable of traveling greater distances. In 2011, Kim Jong-un had become the dictator upon the death of his father, Kim Jong-il.

The world’s diplomats had shown that diplomacy would not affect the DPRK. Spoken and written words were largely meaningless coming from the North Koreans or going to them. The DPRK would agree to any terms and sign any agreement, even as it was violating the treaty it was signing.

An effective policy toward North Korea would consist of actions, not words.

In January 2017, Nikki Haley became the United States Ambassador to the United Nations. She recalls her assessment of the North Korean situation at that time:

The Trump administration’s approach to North Korea, more than any other country except Iran, represented a fundamental break from the past. For over twenty years, both Republican and Democratic presidents had tried various strategies to stop the regime’s nuclear and ballistic-missile programs. These strategies consisted mostly of trying to bribe Pyongyang into good behavior. What was worse, these bribes were not conditional. North Korea had to do nothing but promise to change its behavior in order to receive aid from the United States. Only after the regime had gotten what it wanted did the United States realize that their promises would not be kept.

As ambassador, Nikki Haley helped to enact economic measures against North Korea. Various nations, by refusing to accept goods exported from the DPRK, reduced North Korea’s import income by more than $1 billion dollars.

She also helped to coordinate a diplomatic framework allowing joint operations by the militaries of various nations. These operations were a show of force in direct response to DPRK missile launches.

Nikki Haley’s actions were part of the new approach to North Korea. Substantive actions made more of an impression on Kim Jong-un than diplomatic verbiage. She writes:

The Trump administration took a fundamentally different approach. The policy of “strategic patience” proclaimed by President Obama was over. We would no longer rely on a policy of appeasement to try to persuade the Kim regime to give up its nuclear program. U.S. presidents had been kicking the can down the road on North Korea for years. There was no longer any road to kick the can down.

When it became clear to Kim Jong-un that his actions would have consequences, and that those consequences would be more than mere words, he became amenable to change. Some historians mark 12 June 2018 as a turning point: on that date, the first meeting between Kim Jong-un and President Trump resulted in a significant decline in the number of missile tests conducted by the DPRK.

The Singapore summit was the first ever meeting between a U.S. president and a North Korean leader.

Kim Jong-un was convinced that, in contrast to the previous decades, there would now be advantages for the DPRK if it behaved more peacefully. Two more summit meetings followed, one in Hanoi in February 2019 and one on 30 June 2019 on the border between South Korea and North Korea.

North Korea is still a problem. Kim Jong-un is still a problem. But it has been shown that progress can be made if specific concrete actions are taken. In diplomatic relations with the DPRK, words alone will never be enough.

The Limits of Diplomacy: North Korea’s Disregard for Words

North Korea has been a constant concern for diplomats around the world almost from the very moment that the nation came into being in 1945. It was created by the Soviet Union, and was originally the northern part of the People’s Republic of Korea, a short-lived entity. It officially became the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK) in 1948. The Soviets were the sustaining economic factor in the founding of the nation and during the DPRK’s first years were the ultimate authority behind North Korean policies.

It was Joseph Stalin who authorized a request from Kim Il-sung to launch a surprise attack on South Korea in 1950. The North’s invasion of the South was the beginning of the Korean War. The DPRK’s belligerence has been constant since that time: although actual combat ceased in 1953, the North’s continual weapons buildup and militaristic rhetoric have left the nations of eastern Asia constantly wary.

Ironically, as the Soviet Union experienced occasional periods of relaxation in the post-Stalin era, including the rapprochement of detente in the 1970s and the perestroika and glasnost of Gorbachev in the 1980s, the DPRK became ever more harsh in its Stalinist tendencies.

The global diplomatic community, in the forms of SEATO, the UN, and NATO, have worked continuously to persuade North Korea to remain peaceful. Condoleezza Rice, who was at the time National Security Advisor, describes a moment in 2002 when it became clear that the efforts of various nations were not successful and that the DPRK was building a nuclear weapons program.

Colin Powell, who was at that time Secretary of State, had been working on a new version of a diplomatic strategy to pacify North Korea. But it was clear that the regime in Pyongyang, the DPRK’s capital, was unimpressed by anything which diplomacy might offer. There was no possibility of diplomacy persuading North Korea to move in the direction of peace.

On the contrary, the DPRK had formed a relationship with Abdul Qadeer Khan. Khan’s speciality was helping nations build nuclear weapons. He worked primarily with Islamic nations, but was willing to work with the Kim dynasty as well. Khan was the favored source by both Muslim dictatorships and North Korea. His professional goal was to spread weapons of mass destruction among nations who opposed democracy and liberty.

Condoleezza Rice recalls a moment in 2002 when it was clear that the DPRK was simply ignoring all diplomatic efforts and proceeding to build atomic weapons:

Colin advocated a bold approach, as he called it, prescribing engagement through a series of step-by-step moves by each side. His hope was that they’d lead to a different (if somewhat vague) new relationship between the United States and North Korea. Then, as the preparations were under way, a bombshell dropped from the intelligence community. Incomplete but troubling reports linking North Korea to the A.Q. Khan network had emerged. Moreover, Pyongyang had been suspected of seeking the components for uranium enrichment around the globe. Very close to the first anniversary of September 11, John McLaughlin, the deputy director of the CIA, reported the Agency’s assessment that North Korea had built a “production-scale” facility for uranium enrichment. Whatever the status of the Agreed Framework in slowing the plutonium program, the North appeared to be pursuing a second means of obtaining a nuclear weapon.

Diplomacy amounts to words — spoken words or written words — and diplomacy has achieved great things for the cause of peace. But in order for “the pen to be mightier than the sword,” in the famous words of Edward Bulwer-Lytton, at least a modicum of sincerity must be present on both sides of the negotiating table. North Korea is utterly cynical, and willing to say anything, sign anything, and agree to anything — and then do the very opposite.

In 2006, the DPRK revealed that it had successfully constructed nuclear weapons. In the following decade, it developed more and stronger weapons, as well as increasingly sophisticated long-range missiles capable of delivering those weapons to distant countries.

By 2017, the DPRK had built a substantial arsenal. Nikki Haley, who was U.S. ambassador to the United Nations at the time, writes:

In November, the North Korean regime launched an intercontinental ballistic missile capable of hitting anywhere in the United States. With that, the Kim regime declared itself a nuclear power.

Kim Jong-un, who was now the leader of North Korea, and who had inherited power from his father, Kim Jong-il, and from his grandfather, Kim Il-sung, was in a position to threaten major nations.

Speaking with the North Koreans was useless. Signing treaties and agreements with them was useless. Words were meaningless. The other nations had to flex their military muscles in order to get the DPRK’s attention: Japan began increasing its military program and South Korea began to orchestrate military maneuvers as a public display of its ability to retaliate for any sneak attack by the North.

Ambassador Nikki Haley explains:

The North Koreans had openly stated that their missiles were intended to deliver nuclear weapons to strike cities in the United States, South Korea, and Japan. Now they unquestionably had the capacity to do so. It was as dangerous a situation as the United States had encountered in years. The air in Washington and New York was full of a constant, unsettling fear — that we were only one provocation away from a terrible conflict.

Together with Japan and South Korea, the United States demonstrated military preparedness. It showed that it was capable of returning maximum retaliation after any surprise attack by North Korea.

During the next few years after 2017, the DPRK did indeed reduce its threats to nearby nations — threats which were often delivered in the form of missile “tests.” These tests were not really tests — they were displays of power: a form of bullying.

But the reduction in the number of tests was mere cover. Secretly, North Korea continued to build more weapons.

North Korea has no allies, but it has at least a working relationship with China, more so than it has with any other nation. Even China, however, found it wise to put significant economic pressure on the DPRK.

The lesson is this: other nations must apply economic pressure and display military strength in order to obtain a meaningful change in the behavior of North Korea.