President Donald Trump has identified North Korea as an urgent threat from whom nobody is safe, but efforts to maximize pressure and convince Pyongyang to abandon its nuclear weapons program have always been a long shot. The only chance of ending North Korea’s nuclear obsession is for the United States, South Korea, Japan, and China to collectively put enough pressure on Pyongyang to convince Kim Jong Un that a deal has to be made. Once North Korea comes to the table, all four states then have to be ready to take yes for an answer, offering a combination of security and economic incentives to make denuclearization a reasonable alternative for North Korea’s leader.

“The Trump administration is currently conducting across the entire government a review of our Iran policy,” U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson announced on April 19, adding that “an unchecked Iran has the potential to follow the same path as North Korea and take the world along with it.” Ironically, the Trump administration appears to be following the same path on Iran as George W. Bush did on North Korea. The result could be equally dangerous.

By undermining implementation of the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, or JCPOA — a viable, verified, and sound agreement that blocks Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons — President Trump risks removing the shackles from Tehran’s nuclear efforts. We’ve been down that road before; instead of preserving and strengthening the Agreed Framework with North Korea, Bush freed Pyongyang to keep working on nuclear weapons that could eventually reach American territory.

North Korea has been the focus of global attention and anxiety over the past few weeks. The country’s nuclear and missile capabilities, and increasingly strong statements from U.S. officials, including President Donald Trump, have raised global concerns about the possibility of open war on the Korea Peninsula. While people are right to be worried, the seeds of a diplomatic solution could be forming — if the Trump administration is thoughtful and disciplined enough to seize the opportunity, and if the White House’s bluster is in fact calculated. Big ifs, to be sure, but the threat of military force may motivate both China and North Korea to consider deals in a way they have not been willing to up until now.

The current plan for US nuclear modernization would replace the nation’s aging Minuteman III missiles with next-generation missiles known as the Ground-Based Strategic Deterrent, at a cost of $100 billion or more. As part of the agreement that resulted in the Senate’s approval of the New Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty nuclear agreement with the Russian Federation, the Obama administration agreed to a nuclear modernization plan that includes retaining and upgrading the nation’s intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs). 

Chairman Rogers, Chairman Poe, Ranking Member Cooper, Ranking Member Keating, distinguished members, I appreciate and am honored by the opportunity to testify before your joint subcommittees on such an important topic. As a former official of the Obama Administration, I wanted to note for the record that I am testifying today in my personal capacity, and not speaking for any organization or governmental agency or institution.

It’s not hard to start an argument these days in Washington. President Donald Trump’s newly released budget will surely spark thousands of them, as analysts, partisans, Big Bird, and eventually members of Congress debate both sides of every issue. But there are some things to which most reasonable people can and should agree. Chief among these is that the United States has a long-standing and continuing interest in preventing countries and terrorists from building nuclear weapons. Unfortunately, the only way to interpret Trump’s proposed budget cuts for the State Department and the international programs they fund is that he couldn’t care less.

Those observing the Trump White House, in Washington and around the world, have been puzzling over the administration’s staffing gaps. The slow pace of appointments to key posts across the national security bureaucracy has been mystifying, fueling all manner of speculation about what’s going on. Is this the lingering aftermath of an unexpected and haphazard transition, the result of massive infighting, evidence of simple incompetence, or an elaborate scheme to destroy the “administrative state”?

Russia presents security challenges to the United States and its allies for which the Trump administration has yet to indicate any kind of a policy direction or goals. In the nuclear arena, none of these challenges are more acute than Russia’s ongoing violation of the 1987 Intermediate Range Nuclear Force (INF) Treaty. That Treaty, signed by Ronald Reagan and Mikhail Gorbachev, banned the Soviet Union and the United States from having or testing ground-launched missiles with ranges between 312 and 3,428 miles.

Cambridge, MA – The Belfer Center welcomes Jon Wolfsthal as an Associate with the Project on Managing the Atom. Wolfsthal is the former Special Assistant to the President of the United States for National Security Affairs and Senior Director at the National Security Council for arms control and nonproliferation. Before that, he was Deputy Director of the James Martin Center for Nonproliferation Studies at the Middlebury Institute for International Studies at Monterey. He joined Monterey after having been Special Advisor to Vice President Joseph R. Biden for nuclear security and nonproliferation and as a director for nonproliferation on the National Security Council from 2009-2012.

I grew up in New York, just like President Donald Trump did, so perhaps like me he became a Star Trek fan watching reruns on WPIX at 11 p.m. every weeknight. If so, hopefully he knows about the Kobayashi Maru — a test every Starfleet cadet takes to experience a no-win scenario. If unfamiliar with the Kobayashi Maru, Trump may soon learn the lesson a different way as he decides how to manage the persistent challenge of North Korea’s advancing nuclear and missile programs.