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HOME THE BOOK Praise for Excerpts About the publisher About the editor Buy the book THE AUTHOR REVIEWS CALENDAR |
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US policy and North Korea On February 10, 2005, North Korea’s state-run Pyongyang Radio informed its captive audience that the president of the United States had developed a plan to engulf the world in a sea of flames and to rule the planet through the forced imposition of freedom. In self-defense, the newsreader continued, North Korea had manufactured nuclear weapons. That evening, Rick Nieman of the Netherlands’ RTL Television asked U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice to respond to Pyongyang’s assertion that North Korea needed nuclear weapons to cope with “the Bush administration's ever more undisguised policy to isolate. the Democratic People's Republic of Korea.” Rice countered: “This is a state that has been isolated completely for its entire history...They have been told that if they simply make the decision .to give up their nuclear weapons and nuclear-weapons program, to dismantle them verifiably and irreversibly, that there is a completely new path available to them. So the North Koreans should reassess this and try to end their own isolation.” That's the official U.S. policy on North Korea: If North Korea submits to the complete, verifiable, irreversible dismantlement of its nuclear program, Washington will end North Korea's isolation and support the integration of Kim Jong-Il’s regime into the international community. If, on the other hand, North Korea persists in developing its nuclear capacity, Washington will "further deepen North Korea's isolation.” To many, this policy is grounded in common sense. If North Korea begins to behave as Washington wants, the United States should reward the regime. If it does not, Washington should further seal it off. If Kim will quiet the relentless drumbeat of war and renounce his campaign to build an arsenal of the world’s most destructive weapons, Washington should allow North Korea to escape its wretched isolation. If, on the other hand, North Korea insists on causing trouble, bargains in bad faith, ratchets up tensions in East Asia, violates its agreements, and perhaps even sells the world's most dangerous weapons to the world’s most dangerous people, the regime must be swiftly and soundly punished. Kim Jong-Il and those who administer his government must be persuaded that his broken promises and misdeeds doom his regime to perpetual quarantine. But this approach has failed to help Washington achieve its goals in North Korea. In fact, it’s produced policies that have had virtually the opposite of their intended effects. Of course, U.S. foreign policies that produce the reverse of their intended consequences are not limited to either North Korea or the George W. Bush administration. Policy failures over many decades in Iraq, Iran, Cuba, Russia, and many other states demonstrate that policymakers need an entirely new geopolitical framework, one that captures the way decision-makers within these states calculate their interests and make their choices-and one that offers insight into how more effective U.S. policies can be formulated. |
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