Each January in my first London column of the year, my political risk firm lays out our five major predictions for the 12 months ahead in terms of political risk. Beyond highly useful marketing, there is another, equally important reason for this process; it is an invaluable tool as a vital intellectual thought exercise for our senior staff. In any commercial analytical work such as political risk analysis, it is essential to be held really intellectually accountable, particularly to our clients but also to the interested reading public; to lay out what we think is about to happen and why, and then to defend our stance throughout the coming year. Of our five predictions for 2020, the absolutely easiest one to make by far was the coming resurrection of the hibernating North Korean nuclear crisis. As we write, “The North Korean crisis will turn septic again this year, raising the threat of yet more instability in Asia, the seat of most of the world’s future economic growth, as well as much as its future political risk.” Like a bad 1960s zombie movie, the undead North Korean crisis is set to rise from the dead, as the bromance between North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un and American President Donald Trump comes to an abrupt, if entirely predictable, end. The reason that the zombie North Korean crisis has risen from the grave, re-emerging as a significant global political risk, is that the two sides have never meant the same thing by the common words they have diplomatically chosen to negotiate over. While the atmospherics of the past sunlit year have on the surface seemed intriguingly favorable, beneath the good vibrations very little has actually changed. This is because the key phrase “denuclearization” means such very different things to Washington and Pyongyang. For the Americans, the term carries with it the straightforward meaning that Kim Jong Un must give up his entire nuclear program ahead of sanctions relief. First the North Koreans entirely disarm, then follows talks about the benefits such an unprecedented strategic castration will allow for. Once a country has successfully completed a nuclear weapons program and retains it, there is no example in the past of such a nuclear-empowered regime falling to outside forces. Dr. John C. Hulsman For the North Koreans, the term “nuclear disarmament” means something else entirely. Pyongyang’s disarmament moves are just part of the puzzle. In turn for such a radical strategic step, their leadership (at a minimum) expects the US to withdraw its forces from the Korean Peninsula (in essence leaving the prosperous South to the tender mercies of the huge conventional North Korean army), and to perhaps end over time the long-standing alliance between Seoul and Washington. A “nuclear-free Korean Peninsula” might even mean for Pyongyang the withdrawal of the South from the shelter of the long-range American nuclear deterrent umbrella. To put it mildly, the maximalist demands of both sides will assuredly not be met, short of the collapse of either regime. In practice, it seems that the offer Kim Jong Un made to Trump at the Hanoi summit of February 2019 — the dismantling of part of his nuclear program (centered around the North Korean nuclear facility at Yongbyon) in return for complete, immediate sanctions relief and a security guarantee — was the best real-world deal that Pyongyang was prepared to make. Following Trump’s refusal to countenance this partial agreement, subsequent talks between North Korea and the US over this past year have amounted to nothing, as Kim’s impatience at the lack of any economic returns for his diplomatic foray into detente has risen. Reverting to form, North Korea seems to be gravitating toward its traditional policy of nuclear blackmail in return for economic relief. Kim has long (and far too many risk analysts have dismissed his clearly enunciated change in strategy) set the end of 2019 as a deadline for the US to come up with a real counter-proposal away from its maximalist position, implicitly noting that a failure to do so would end the present shaky detente between the two. In reality, the basic Trump-Kim deal in place has amounted to no North Korean long-range missile or nuclear tests, in exchange for the US and South Korea postponing the large-scale military maneuvers that so rattle the Pyongyang regime. This fragile, partial, unwritten agreement is likely to be a casualty of the next few weeks, as the maximalist positions set by both sides remain carved in stone. The obvious, coming failure of the American-North Korean nuclear talks contains a broader, historically gloomy lesson regarding nuclear disarmament in general and about the Iranian case in particular. Once a country has successfully completed a nuclear weapons program and retains it, there is no example in the past 70-plus years of such a nuclear-empowered regime falling to outside forces. Giving up such a program (as Muammar Qaddafi’s Libya did) leads to displacement and death; retaining such a shield means outsiders will leave you alone. Kim surely knows his nuclear history, making any efforts to nudge him to abandon the totality of his nuclear program through diplomacy highly unlikely to succeed. It is well this stern lesson is learned by the rest of the world; an Iran with a bomb would also be highly unlikely (to say the least) to voluntarily ever give it up. • Dr. John C. Hulsman is the president and managing partner of John C. Hulsman Enterprises, a prominent global political risk consulting firm. He is also senior columnist for City AM, the newspaper of the City of London. He can be contacted via https://www.chartwellspeakers.com. Disclaimer: Views expressed by writers in this section are their own and do not necessarily reflect Arab News" point-of-view