Opinion: To avoid nuclear conflict, the U.S. should normalize relations with North Korea

To the editor: Robert L. Gallucci’s insightful article banks that the nuclear deterrence that kept the nuclear peace during the Cold War will work on the Korean peninsula. (“If we’re going to rule out negotiations with North Korea, we have to be ready for war,” Opinion, March 23)

In a passing remark he notes that Pyongyang’s rationality could be an issue. Indeed, North Korea is the most isolated, paranoid and belligerent nation to acquire the bomb. But irrationality may be the least of our problems.

A North Korean intelligence failure, a misjudgment, a military incident that escalates or a concern that the United States may initiate a preemptive Israeli-like strike on its nuclear facilities would be a rational foundation for nuclear use. The challenge for Washington is to reduce these risks.

It could start by accepting what it cannot change — Kim Jong-Un’s regime is going to keep the bomb, which it sees as a crutch for survival — and without lessening its defense commitment to South Korea, the U.S. should attempt to normalize relations with the North to better assure open lines of communication to prevent any event from spurring the 21st century’s first nuclear war.

Bennett Ramberg, Los Angeles

The writer served as a policy analyst in the State Department’s Bureau of Politico-Military Affairs in the George H.W. Bush administration.

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To the editor: If China is nervous about destabilizing North Korea so much that the Kim government collapses (which would lead to a North Korean refugee crisis for China), one possible solution would be for an entity (the United Nations or the United States) to pay China for any costs incurred by absorbing millions of refugees.

Whereas the U.S. has spent $1.3 billion in aid to North Korea since 1995 (with nothing to show for it), this new approach might work.

Charles Wilson, Oxnard

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