Donald Trump and Kim Jong Un are a match made in heaven – and that could end up saving us all

The US has long resisted dialogue with Pyongyang, but there are no realistic alternatives left

Pyongyang residents watch news of the successful launch of the intercontinental ballistic missile Hwasong-14 on a big screen on Tuesday (Getty)

If peace treaties are born only when the leaders of the nations at the table are in psychological sync with one another, then it’s conceivable we might be in luck when it comes to the United States and North Korea. Donald Trump and Kim Jong Un look like two men who could have chemistry. A match made in heaven may be taking it too far, but bear with me.

I am not being flippant here. The crisis over Pyongyang’s nuclear sabre-rattling is too grave. It may still seem remote for those of us on the East Coast of the US or in Europe, but imagine waking up these days and turning on the radio news in Seoul. Or Tokyo. Or, come to that, Alaska, which potentially was within range of the intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) the North just shot off.

We’ll leave the verbal recklessness to the two aforementioned gentlemen; no one does it better than them. Indeed, they virtually vie with one another to inflame their stand-off with tweets – the American, of course – or statements delivered by state news complex. Kim takes the insults and bluster to the greater extremes. but he is speaking a language that Trump perhaps understands.

“North Korea has just launched another missile,” Trump said in a mocking tweet in the wake of the successful ICBM launch this week. “Does this guy have anything better to do with his life?” The President proceeded to speculate that China was about to “put a heavy move” on Pyongyang for its actions, without saying what that might be exactly.

During the transition, Barack Obama, in a private Oval Office meeting, warned Trump that North Korea was likely to be the most vexing foreign policy challenge of his presidency. (One day, the 45th President of the United States might give the 44th credit for getting something right.)

Since his swearing-in, Trump has blasted out more than a dozen tweets about precisely that problem, aimed at either pricking Kim or pressuring China to to rein in its troublesome neighbour. “North Korea is behaving very badly,” he tweeted in March. “They have been ‘playing’ the United States for years. China has done little to help!” On the campaign trail last year, Trump would blithely dismiss Kim, who is 33, as a “man child” and a “whack job”.

Over to the whack job. The state news agency of the DPRK – Democratic People’s Republic of Korea – described his glee at the ICBM launch, which had been timed to coincide with the July the Fourth holiday in the US – home of the “American bastards”. “With a broad smile on his face,” ​Kim urged his scientists to “frequently send big and small ‘gift packages’ to the Yankees”, it reported.

After “feasting his eyes” on the missile – named Hwasong-14 – Kim had “expressed satisfaction, saying it looked as handsome as a good-looking boy and was well made”, the agency went on.

Who else could look at a weapon capable of killing hundreds of thousands of civilians with a single direct hit and liken it to a handsome kid? There is a familiar ring to the language, isn’t there? Yes, that would be Trump, he who tweeted the other day that the Republican plan to take health insurance away from 23 million Americans, “will end in a beautiful picture”.

Kim’s mind is made up. The survival of his nation – and his regime – depends on his forcing his way into the club of nuclear nations, whether the current membership likes it or not. That is his calculation. If his populace has to suffer further sanctions and economic privations along the way, so be it. Even steps by China to strangle its economy is unlikely to deter him. He will not bend like Muammar Gaddafi, the former despot of Libya, did, because look where that got him.

Trump and his generals hint at military action to stop him. That was the message sent when the US and South Korea fired off missiles of their own in joint exercises on Wednesday. “Self restraint, which is a choice, is all that separates armistice and war,” General Vincent Brooks, the US Commander on the Korean peninsula, growled. “We are able to change our choice when so ordered … It would be a grave mistake for anyone to believe anything to the contrary.”

Resuming the Korean War is not an option, however. The risks are simply too high. Seoul is a mere 35 miles from the border and the array of North Korean hardware amassed there. “There is no military option here to destroy the nuclear programme [or] his missile programme,” former acting CIA director Michael Morell told CBS on Wednesday. “There is no option to do that that wouldn’t start a second Korean War and wouldn’t raise the possibility of him using nuclear weapons against his neighbours. The risks are extraordinarily high in a military standoff.”

Trump may have done the world a service by shaking up the status quo. America is no longer deluding itself the problem can be contained or ignored. Bill Clinton began the process with his 1994 accord with Pyongyang under which it was promised aid in return for freezing its nuclear endeavours, which it didn’t do. Trump is calling Pyongyang out and Beijing too, signalling his impatience with China not just with words but with acts, including a big arms sale to Taiwan.

Original thinking is what we need. That may include the West acknowledging that North Korea has become a nuclear power, unfortunate though that may be, and engaging with it to ensure that as such it can begin to act responsibly. That sounds naive. It involves accepting a terrible precedent. But what other choice is there?

And if serious dialogue between the US and North Korea is the only answer at this point, it might not be a bad thing if their leaders – whacky or otherwise – speak the same language.