Promote Domestic Consensus to Enable Policy Continuity

Abstract

T here are three elements of U.S. policy in East Asia that will command the attention of the new president: the Korea issue, the Taiwan issue, and the U.S. forward strategic presence in East Asia. In each case the new administration is inheriting policies that promote U.S. interests and longterm stability. The challenge is to sustain a domestic consensus that enables policy continuity. In the first term of the George W. Bush administration, the United States wielded economic and military coercion to try to roll-back North Korea’s nuclear program. But North Korea’s nuclear capability only expanded. The administration then turned to the six-party talks and reached agreement for North Korea to disable its nuclear facilities. But it is highly unlikely that the United States will be able to persuade North Korea to give up the nuclear capability Pyongyang already possesses. In these circumstances, U.S. policy has amounted to an “exit strategy” from Washington’s commitment to North Korean nuclear nonproliferation. The United States has abandoned coercive diplomacy and has increasingly ceded to China the burden of dealing with a nuclear North Korea. Rather than expend U.S. prestige and diplomatic capital on what is likely an unobtainable objective, the new president should maintain his predecessor’s low-profile negotiating strategy and prepare for a stalemate in the negotiations. The ongoing leadership succession in North Korea will make a stalemate even more likely. The challenge for the new administration will be to deflect domestic criticism of the very same policy pursued by its predecessor. A policy that disengages the United States from a responsibility for nonproliferation in North Korea could well be a lightening rod for criticism from Republican hawks. Having constituted a major obstacle to policy reform in the Bush administration, this group will strive in opposition to mobilize congressional and public opinion against the new administration. Policy continuity will