Dismantling North Korea's Nuclear Weapons Programs

Dismantling North Korea's Nuclear Weapons Programs
Author: David J. Bishop
Publisher: Strategic Studies Institute
Total Pages: 32
Release: 2005
Genre: History
ISBN:

This study examines the choices available to the United States for dismantling North Korea's nuclear weapons programs. The options range from doing nothing, to executing policies of engagement, containment, or preemption. Each option has advantages and disadvantages and there are numerous factors influencing the problem. The major factors include U.S. national interests, the role of China, the ROK-U.S. alliance, the difficult nature of North Korea, and the U.S. war on terror. Engagement is less risky in the short term because it reduces the risks of miscalculation and escalation by preventing the conditions that support North Korea seeing war as a rational act. However, it is risky in the long term because it allows North Korean nuclear weapons development to proceed unchecked. This could lead to proliferation to terrorists and rogue states. Containment's main advantage is that it takes a direct path to solving the problem. Its major disadvantage is that it could cause North Korea, a failing state, to view war as a rational act. Containment also is not supported by friends and allies in the region. Preemption is the most direct method to ensure elimination of North Korea's nuclear weapons. However the risks associated with this option could lead to catastrophic loss of life and devastation and ultimately to loss of U.S. influence in the region. The optimal course of action is not one policy in particular, but a combination of engagement and containment. Furthermore, preemptive action will invite foreign policy disaster for the U.S. and should only be used as a last resort. Specific policy recommendations to improve implementation of a hybrid policy of engagement and containment include:strengthening the ROK-U.S. alliance, supplementing multilateral talks with bilateral talks, offering a formal security guarantee to North Korea, broadening the Proliferation Security Initiative to include China, and improving national intelligence capabilities. If preemption must be used, national leaders must know what conditions would trigger the decision and they must prepare in advance the necessary protocol for warning and informing friends, allies and other concerned parties.

No Exit

No Exit
Author: Jonathan D. Pollack
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 156
Release: 2017-10-03
Genre: History
ISBN: 1351225243

This book chronicles the political-military development of the Korean Peninsula since 1945, with particular attention to North Koreas pursuit of nuclear technology and nuclear weapons, and how it has shaped Northeast Asian security and non-proliferation policy and influenced the strategic choices of the United States and all regional powers. I focus on North Koreas leaders, institutions, political history, and the systems longer-term prospects. How has an isolated, highly idiosyncratic, small state repeatedly stymied or circumvented the policy preferences of much more powerful states, culminating with its withdrawal from the Non Proliferation Treaty (the only state ever to do so) and the testing of nuclear weapons in open defiance of adversaries and allies alike? What does this portend for the regions future? Unlike most of the literature that focuses on US non proliferation policy, this is a book about decision making in North Korea and the states survival in the face of daunting odds. It draws on extensive interviews with individuals in China, South Korea, Japan, Russia, and the EU who have had ample experience in and with North Korea, additional interviews with former US policy makers, and the results from two visits to the North. The author makes extensive use of archival materials from the Cold War International History Project, enabling a far fuller rendering of North Korean history than appears in most of the literature on the North Korean nuclear weapons issue.

Domestic Constraints on South Korean Foreign Policy

Domestic Constraints on South Korean Foreign Policy
Author: Scott A. Snyder
Publisher: Council on Foreign Relations
Total Pages: 106
Release: 2018-01-01
Genre: International relations
ISBN: 0876097336

These essays support the argument that strong and effective presidential leadership is the most important prerequisite for South Korea to sustain and project its influence abroad. That leadership should be attentive to the need for public consensus and should operate within established legislative mechanisms that ensure public accountability. The underlying structures sustaining South Korea’s foreign policy formation are generally sound; the bigger challenge is to manage domestic politics in ways that promote public confidence about the direction and accountability of presidential leadership in foreign policy.

The Education of Kim Jong-Un

The Education of Kim Jong-Un
Author: Jung H. Pak
Publisher: Brookings Institution Press
Total Pages: 22
Release: 2018-02-06
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 0815735235

North Korea's opaqueness combined with its military capabilities make the country and its leader dangerous wild cards in the international community. Brookings Senior Fellow Jung H. Pak, who led the U.S. intelligence community's analysis on Korean issues, tells the story of North Korean leader Kim Jong-un's upbringing, provides insight on his decision-making, and makes recommendations on how to thwart Kim's ambitions. In her deep analysis of the personality of the North Korean leader, Pak makes clearer the reasoning behind the way he governs and conducts his foreign affairs.

Disarming Strangers

Disarming Strangers
Author: Leon V. Sigal
Publisher: Princeton University Press
Total Pages: 336
Release: 1999-07-01
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 1400822351

In June 1994 the United States went to the brink of war with North Korea. With economic sanctions impending, President Bill Clinton approved the dispatch of substantial reinforcements to Korea, and plans were prepared for attacking the North's nuclear weapons complex. The turning point came in an extraordinary private diplomatic initiative by former President Jimmy Carter and others to reverse the dangerous American course and open the way to a diplomatic settlement of the nuclear crisis. Few Americans know the full details behind this story or perhaps realize the devastating impact it could have had on the nation's post-Cold War foreign policy. In this lively and authoritative book, Leon Sigal offers an inside look at how the Korean nuclear crisis originated, escalated, and was ultimately defused. He begins by exploring a web of intelligence failures by the United States and intransigence within South Korea and the International Atomic Energy Agency. Sigal pays particular attention to an American mindset that prefers coercion to cooperation in dealing with aggressive nations. Drawing upon in-depth interviews with policymakers from the countries involved, he discloses the details of the buildup to confrontation, American refusal to engage in diplomatic give-and-take, the Carter mission, and the diplomatic deal of October 1994. In the post-Cold War era, the United States is less willing and able than before to expend unlimited resources abroad; as a result it will need to act less unilaterally and more in concert with other nations. What will become of an American foreign policy that prefers coercion when conciliation is more likely to serve its national interests? Using the events that nearly led the United States into a second Korean War, Sigal explores the need for policy change when it comes to addressing the challenge of nuclear proliferation and avoiding conflict with nations like Russia, Iran, and Iraq. What the Cuban missile crisis was to fifty years of superpower conflict, the North Korean nuclear crisis is to the coming era.

Seeking the Bomb

Seeking the Bomb
Author: Vipin Narang
Publisher: Princeton University Press
Total Pages: 400
Release: 2022-01-11
Genre: History
ISBN: 0691172625

The first systematic look at the different strategies that states employ in their pursuit of nuclear weapons Much of the work on nuclear proliferation has focused on why states pursue nuclear weapons. The question of how states pursue nuclear weapons has received little attention. Seeking the Bomb is the first book to analyze this topic by examining which strategies of nuclear proliferation are available to aspirants, why aspirants select one strategy over another, and how this matters to international politics. Looking at a wide range of nations, from India and Japan to the Soviet Union and North Korea to Iraq and Iran, Vipin Narang develops an original typology of proliferation strategies—hedging, sprinting, sheltered pursuit, and hiding. Each strategy of proliferation provides different opportunities for the development of nuclear weapons, while at the same time presenting distinct vulnerabilities that can be exploited to prevent states from doing so. Narang delves into the crucial implications these strategies have for nuclear proliferation and international security. Hiders, for example, are especially disruptive since either they successfully attain nuclear weapons, irrevocably altering the global power structure, or they are discovered, potentially triggering serious crises or war, as external powers try to halt or reverse a previously clandestine nuclear weapons program. As the international community confronts the next generation of potential nuclear proliferators, Seeking the Bomb explores how global conflict and stability are shaped by the ruthlessly pragmatic ways states choose strategies of proliferation.

Countering the Risks of North Korean Nuclear Weapons

Countering the Risks of North Korean Nuclear Weapons
Author: Bruce W. Bennett
Publisher:
Total Pages: 0
Release: 2021
Genre: History
ISBN: 9781977406767

North Korea's leaders have sought to dominate the Korean Peninsula since then failure to conquer the Republic of Korea (ROK) in tine Korean War. However, they have lacked the economic, political, and conventional military means to achieve that dominance, having instead come to rely on their nuclear weapon and ballistic missile programs, Today, North Korea's nuclear weapons pose an existential threat to the ROK, and they might soon pose a serious threat to the United States; even a few of them could cause millions of fatalities and serious casualties if detonated on ROK or U.S. cities. The major ROK and U.S. strategy to moderate this threat has been negotiating with North Korea to achieve denuclearization, but this effort has failed and seems likely to continue tailing. North Korean leader Kim Jong-un, despite committing to denuclearization, has continued his nuclear weapon buildup. The authors of this Perspective argue that there is a growing gap between North Korea's nuclear weapon threat and ROK and U.S. capabilities to defeat it. Because these capabilities will take years to develop, the allies must turn their attention to where the threat could be in the mid to late 2020s and identify strategies to counter it. Doing this will help establish a firm deterrent against North Korean nuclear weapon use. The authors conclude that North Korea will be most deterred if it knows that any nuclear weapon use will be disastrous for the regime-that these weapons are a liability, not an asset. Book jacket.

Nuclear Operations

Nuclear Operations
Author: United States Air Force
Publisher: CreateSpace
Total Pages: 40
Release: 2013-04-19
Genre:
ISBN: 9781484158685

This doctrine provides guidance for Air Force nuclear operations. It is based on a body of knowledge gained from experience and lessons learned in organizing, training, and equipping nuclear forces in support of national security objectives.

North Korea

North Korea
Author: Congressional Research Congressional Research Service
Publisher: CreateSpace
Total Pages: 34
Release: 2015-06-22
Genre:
ISBN: 9781512273342

North Korea has presented one of the most vexing and persistent problems in U.S. foreign policy in the post-Cold War period. The United States has never had formal diplomatic relations with the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (the official name for North Korea), although contact at a lower level has ebbed and flowed over the years. Negotiations over North Korea's nuclear weapons program have occupied the past three U.S. administrations, even as some analysts anticipated a collapse of the isolated authoritarian regime. North Korea has been the recipient of over $1 billion in U.S. aid (though none since 2009) and the target of dozens of U.S. sanctions.