Tehran, Caracas... Why Not Pyongyang?

Image: Singapore Summit, June 2018 - Executive Office of the President of the United States / Wiki Commons

First published on the author's substack Thoughts from Seoul on 2 March 2026 and republished with permission.

Rethinking war against North Korea in light of Venezuela and Iran

Why didn’t Trump bomb North Korea in his first term?

I find myself revisiting that question in light of the assassination of Ayatollah Ali Khamenei in his compound in Tehran and abduction of Nicolás Maduro from his compound in Caracas.

The detailed reconstruction of Trump-Kim diplomacy by Joel Wit in his superb new book Fallout: The Inside Story of America’s Failure to Disarm North Korea, shows among other things how close the two men were to a deal at the second summit in Hanoi. But the wars against Venezuela and Iran should cause us to reconsider the other side of the coin: just how close was the United States to starting a war with North Korea?

Consider some similarities between the current wars and those days of ‘fire and fury’ between Donald Trump and Kim Jong Un.

Key Trump I advisors like HR McMaster and John Bolton viewed Kim Jong Un as violent, erratic and aggressive, and not someone who could be negotiated with. McMaster was shocked by the assassination of Kim Jong Nam in the Kuala Lumpur Airport and worried Kim was bent on reunification through force—i.e., attacking South Korea. There are parallels to Trump II views of the Ayatollah, as reported by Edward Wong for The New York Times.

Back in 2017-18, Trump I officials were debating ‘bloody nose’ ideas for strikes on the DPRK, as indicated (and opposed) at the time by Korea policy expert and former George W. Bush official Victor Cha in an op-ed for The Washington Post.

The South Korean military, meanwhile, had previously developed ‘decapitation’ plans targeting Kim Jong Un, intended to deter him from an attack, but creating temptations to ‘go first.’

North Korea accused the CIA of plotting to assassinate Kim in the spring of 2017. Historians one day in the future will have to determine the scale of clandestine activities, but we did learn last fall, thanks to reporting by David Phillips and Matthew Cole for The New York Times, that the US carried out at least one covert operation inside the DPRK that killed North Koreans.

Another “bullet-that-was-almost-fired” was Trump’s contemplation of ordering a full-scale evacuation of 200,000 Americans in South Korea in January 2018. Patrick Radden Keefe uncovered this in his profile of McMaster for The New Yorker, but in the maelstrom of news, it didn’t get much attention at the time.

And reminiscent (if not to the same scale) as the massive build-up preceding the bombing of Iran, Trump warned North Korea he was sending "an armada" its way (although in that particular case the ships turned out to be heading in the opposite direction.)

So back to the original question-- what might recent events reveal about why Trump didn’t bomb Pyongyang?

Three differences leap to mind.

First, Trump was far more restrained in use of military force overall in his first term. His instincts to ‘take out’ rivals and bomb other countries were curbed. Now they apparently have free rein. Why that is the case requires deeper investigation.

Second, North Korea—unlike Iran, let alone Venezuela—could retaliate by hitting US targets in the neighbourhood and possibly even the US mainland with nuclear weapons. You could say it was Kim’s push to ‘bolster’ his nuclear weapons arsenal and missile systems, including ICBMs that could range the US, that got Trump’s attention in the first place—Obama left office warning Trump he would have to deal with Kim, somehow. Arguably, Kim’s deterrence gamble paid off.

Third, South Korea, previous decapitation plans notwithstanding, had zero appetite for war. The obvious contrast here is with Israel, in general, but especially post-October 7 and led by Bibi Netanyahu. One wonders, if the hawkish Yoon Suk-yeol rather than negotiation-minded Moon Jae-in overlapped with Trump, could things have gone differently?

Assuming there is something to this brainstorm of three key factors inhibiting military options in the past, what risk is there going forward of war on the Korean Peninsula?

I’d say the restraining factors outweigh the enabling ones.

First, Trump might be jazzed on regime-change military ops abroad (for now), but in the near term, US global military might is stretched thin between Operation Southern Spear (Cuba on deck?) and Operation Epic Fury. It seems premature to compare killing the Ayatollah to the collapse of the Soviet Union, as suggested in The Times by Steven Erlanger. This war with Iran has only begun. It is unlikely to go as planned (and what is the plan?).

Second, Kim’s deterrence capabilities have only improved since Trump 1.0. The likelihood of a devastating North Korean nuclear retaliation against a US military strike, even a conventional and ‘limited’ one, has to be considered quite high.

Third, South Korea remains firmly opposed to military options. Unlike the situation with Israel, there is no ‘willing ally’ out here (Japan also is in no mood for another Korean war). While president Lee Jae-myung is less intent than Moon Jae-in was on a breakthrough with Pyongyang, he is committed to dialogue, de-escalation and negotiation, and opposed to military options.

Two final thoughts.

I wonder to what degree were the contentious domestic politics in Iran and Venezuela—rivals within the regime, protests on the street—conditions of possibility of the Maduro abduction and Ayatollah assassination. This might be a fourth key difference with North Korea, both during Trump 1.0 and Trump 2.0. The cleavages simply might not exist, or be inaccessible, both inside Kim’s court as well as among the broader populace. North Korea’s ‘coup proofing’ and Kim’s ability to manage the ‘dictator’s dilemma’ (see Sheena Chestnut Greitens Dictators and Their Secret Police) is arguably another factor that, perversely, is keeping the Korean Peninsula as a whole safe from war.

Lastly, the China factor. The PRC is after all is said and done a defence treaty ally of the DPRK. Beijing leaves plenty of leeway in how it would act on that treaty. But Xi Jinping would simply stand by and watch a second Korean War unfold on his doorstep, with the kind of passivity seen in China’s posture toward Russia’s war on Ukraine and the US-Israel war with Iran. If push came to shove, Xi would have levers to pull restraining either Kim or Trump. Those levers might fail—China does not control the situation. But they are another restraining factor, one lacking in the Middle East.

Related articles:

North Korea Searches for a Path Out of International Isolation (3-minute read)

Building Mutual Reassurance on the Korean Peninsula: Coordinating Japan, ROK, and US Approaches to North Korea's Nuclear Challenge (10-minute read)

When Destruction Becomes Policy: What the Munich Security Report Reveals About the Future of Global Governance (3-minute read)

International Law Meets an Age of Impunity (3-minute read)

Venezuela and the UN's Proxy War Moment (3-minutre read)

JJohn Delury is an American East Asia scholar, with special interests in the history of China, U.S.-China relations and Korean peninsula affairs. He is professor of history at Yonsei University in Seoul.