Staying the course: Denuclearization and path dependence in the US's North Korea policy (original) (raw)
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Staying the Course: Denuclearization and Path Dependence in U.S.'s North Korea Policy
North Korean Review, 2021
Purpose–The purpose of the article is to analyze the US’s foreign policy framework towards North Korea in the post-Cold War era. Design, Methodology, Approach–We employ process-tracing technique and comparative sequential method across successive administrations and find that the US’s foreign policy towards North Korea is one of self-amplifying process. Findings–We argue that the US’s foreign policy towards North Korea has remained remarkably consistent over the course of three decades. Furthermore, the policy has both hardened and narrowed in its focus on denuclearization. Practical Implications–As the US deepens its pursuit for denuclearization as an end, the misalignment of goals between Washington and Pyongyang persists and even grows. Originality, Value–Through our analysis, we contribute to existing work that identifies North Korea’s liability for the engagement failures and add texture to the understanding of the current deadlock in negotiations.
Rogue States Conundrum: An Exploration of the United States' Foreign Policy Toward North Korea
African Journal of Culture, Philosophy and Society: Aworom Annang, Vol. 3, No. 1, pp. 12-22., 2013
This article examines the United States' foreign policy toward North Korea since the end of the Cold War, adopting the Rational Actor model as framework of analysis and attempting a conceptual elucidation of the rogue state. The paper contends that, following the collapse of the Soviet Union and the concerns over suspected North Korean nuclear aspirations in the early 1990s, the focus of the U.S. foreign policy toward North Korea shifted from the Cold War containment policy to nuclear non-proliferation through constructive engagement, appeasement and negotiations. And that, though North Korean nuclear development/enrichment has serious regional and global consequences adverse to the U.S. vital interest in East Asian region, the classification of DPRK as rogue state by the U.S. is more or less a justification for imperialism and a useful word for propaganda. It is recommended that, the U.N. Security Council should negotiate with DPRK as part of its responsibility to maintaining international peace and security, based on the concept of mutually reducing threats and disarmament in general.
Pacific Focus, 2004
The purposes of this paper are: 1) to examine and analyze how the two presidents' policy goals in dealing with North Korea actually materialized; 2) to illustrate how these two Presidents implement their policy goals toward North Korea; 3) to discuss the Congressional responses to the president's policy goals toward North Korea; and 4) to provide comparative analysis of the two presidents' handling of North Korea. This study shows that different Presidents have dealt with North Korean issues in different ways. Two such presidents, Bill Clinton and George W. Bush, tried at the beginning of their terms as president to ignore the brewing problems in North Korea. However, both were forced to solve the North's nuclear issues early on in their respective administrations. Their decisions in dealing with North Korean nuclear capabilities help to define their early reputations as foreign policy makers. Yet, the domestic as well as international contexts that President Clinton and Bush faced were somewhat different. President Clinton maintains that the North's nuclear crisis arose from North Korea's security fears: Abandoned by its two Cold War patrons, economically bankrupt, and internationally isolated, the North Korean government saw the pursuit of nuclear weapons and ballistic missiles as the only path to survival and security for their regime. In this regard, Clinton's actual efforts to resolve the issues surrounding the North's nuclear program appeared ambiguous and inconsistent. This led to the temporary suspension of the North's nuclear ambitions through an Agreed Framework. However, President Bush stuck to more of a hardnosed approach. He continues to demand a complete, verifiable and irreversible dismantling of the nuclear program first, before any provision of economic or humanitarian assistance is extended toward North Korea. Bush favors multilateral negotiations, which leads the DPRK to feel more isolated than before. Although the second six-party talks ended without a major breakthrough, it seems that all parties except the North think the meeting was successful in terms of lowering tensions in Korea. This case study demonstrates several observable features that characterize the president's role in shaping North Korean policy. A president who wants to take a new approach to some element of U.S. policy can be caught between the diplomat's desire for flexibility and the power of domestic political forces. The president can achieve success, but only if the new direction in policy finds acceptance on Capitol Hill.
\Smart Policy": Applying Lessons from the Cold War Toward Engaging North Korea
How can the United States more eectively engage North Korea and deter this state from violating international norms? Because the DPRK pos- sesses nuclear weapons, it is a danger to stability on the Korean penin- sula, the region, and the world. This essay revisits the traditional model of deterrence theory, and reassess the extent to which it is applicable in a post-Cold War context. Despite recent shifts in U.S. policy toward increased diplomatic engagement, it has not fully taken advantage of a number of deterrent tools. We use these tools to make three proposals \smart policy": (1) that the U.S. increase its nuclear forensics capabil- ities to establish a more credible means to identify, monitor, and verify nuclear proliferation activity; (2) that the U.S. rigorously engage North Korea with diplomacy; and (3) that the U.S. revitalize Kim Dae Jung's \sunshine policy" by facilitating codependent energy production and con- sumption between North and South Korea.
Why do states that make a deliberate effort to pursue rapprochement sometimes fail? This article shows how certain types of elite discourse can shape and constrain the outcomes of major policy initiatives. In the case of the fleeting US-North Korea rapprochement, which lasted from 1994-2002, a consensus among U.S. foreign policy elites about the threat that North Korea posed "shaped and shoved" the US approach to North Korea in ways that strongly favored a collapse of rapprochement and a reversion to a mutually acrimonious relationship. The case examined is both a deviant case for theories of rapprochement and a plausibility probe of the article's threat consensus discursive framework.
U.S. Foreign Policy Towards North Korea
International Studies. Interdisciplinary Political and Cultural Journal, 2018
The U.S. relations to Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK) are since the end of the Cold War revolving around achieving a state of nuclear free Korean peninsula. As non-proliferation is a long term of American foreign policy, relations to North Korea could be categorized primarily under this umbrella. However, the issue of North Korean political system also plays role as it belongs to the other important, more normative category of U.S. foreign policy which is the protection of human rights and spreading of democracy and liberal values. In addition, the North Korean issue influences U.S. relations and interests in broader region of Northeast Asia, its bilateral alliances with South Korea (Republic of Korea, ROK) and Japan as well as sensitive and complex relations to People’s Republic of China. As the current administration of president Donald J. Trump published its National security strategy and was fully occupied with the situation on Korean peninsula in its first year, th...
The Last Stake to the Palisade: How to Engage with North Korea
Marcellus Policy Analysis, 2023
The United States faces a worsening balance of power against China and should partner with North Korea (officially the Democratic People's Republic of Korea, or DPRK) to address it. Washington succeeded in turning adversaries into partners to face a greater common threat together in the past and can do this again with Pyongyang. Historical instances of normalization with former adversaries-most notably Yugoslavia-can serve as a blueprint to engage with North Korea while maximizing U.S. interests. First, this paper explains why the United States should engage with North Korea. In recent years, China has increasingly swayed the Indo-Pacific region's balance of power in its favor. Beijing has translated its massive wealth into a more formidable military and threatens to achieve regional hegemony. Worsening the situation, China can count on the now nuclear-armed North Korea to support its ambitions. Although Washington has sluggishly reinforced its regional posture and partnerships to contain Chinese power, it has difficulty following China's breathtaking military build-up. A less adversarial North Korea would serve U.S. interests by helping Washington counterbalance China's growing capabilities. Then, this paper proposes a typology of past engagement with former adversaries. It discusses several types of alignment options and their associated benefits and costs, illustrating these alignment types with historical examples. Based on this typology, quiet, non-institutionalized security cooperation resembling the Yugoslav model would maximize U.S. interests while limiting potential costs. The paper makes the case that Washington should discontinue its confrontational stance toward Pyongyang in favor of a Yugoslav-like rapprochement. The paper proposes three realistic policies to kick-start rapprochement.
This article uses theoretical insights from neoclassical realism to explain how the end of the Cold War shaped North Korea's domestic political structures and foreign-policy strategies. It suggests that political leaders are uniquely positioned at the nexus of domestic politics and international politics and employ two different strategies: utilizing international politics for domestic political gain and mobilizing domestic resources to further international ambitions. In the politicking process, political leaders are interested in maximizing both the state security and the regime security; leaders' concern for regime security outweighs their protection of the national interest when threats to the regime appear more serious. In North Korea, the end of the Cold War forced Kim Jong-il to adopt military-first politics, in which the political power and authority of the Korean Worker's Party waned and the Korean People's Army gained the upper hand in the governing process. In foreign policy, Kim Jong-il and his son Jong-un pursued nuclear weapons to maximize national security at a lower cost and to secure the legitimacy of their rule through successful nuclear tests and mobilization of international threats.