The Bargaining Theory of War and North Korea: Why the Peninsula is More Stable than the Conventional Wisdom Suggests

North Korea is mad, bad and sad. The government is uniquely evil, malevolent and belligerent. The North Koreans are planning to fire missiles armed with nuclear bombs on Alaska. North Koreans are politically indoctrinated robots whose highest ambition is for their children to serve the fatherland in a life of endless privation and unsmiling devotion to a God-like figure in the person of the state leader, Chairman of the National Defence Commission, Kim Jong Un. The conception of the Democratic People's Republic ofKorea (DPRK – more commonly known asNorthKorea) as so far off the planet that itmight as well be in outer space prevails in almost any report aboutNorthKorea in the so-called quality press fromround the world. This is despite the fact that many of the claims about North Korea are as bizarre and illogical as the picture they are supposed to portray. There are over 24 million North Koreans – do they really all think the same? The dominance of the ‘conventional wisdom' on North Korea drowns other perspectives to the extent that it would be surprising if the average, reasonably well-informed member of the public did not automatically view North Korea as alien and inexplicable. Yet North Korea is far from unique and not a very difficult country to explain. North Korea has an authoritarian government that rules over an economically struggling society. North Korea is not a pleasant society to live in if you are poor, old, ill-connected, religious and/or a political dissident. Should North Koreans be brave enough or foolish enough to engage in political criticism of the government, they face brutal treatment, including imprisonment and internal exile. North Korea, like many other countries in the early twenty-first century, is undergoing a transition from socialism to capitalism. This fitful and somewhat reluctant process nevertheless represents a very profound transformation of society. The country's economy is irreversibly marketised even though the government's political philosophy and rhetoric hangs on to some vestiges of its foundational socialist rhetoric.

The conventional wisdom in explaining North Korean foreign policy focuses on elites, ideology and attitudes, and domestic variables. This view tends to see the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK) as an atavistic state whose ideology and political regime are heading for the ashheap of history, and scholars argue that North Korea has been a pariah state with a cult of personality surrounding the late Kim Il Sung, and an aberrant and unpredictable foreign policy. This essay argues that, contrary to popular belief, North Korea's foreign policy is neither irrational nor impenetrable to systematic explanation. Using a framework derived from neorealism, I argue that North Korea's foreign policy, when separated from the misperceptions that surround it, is neither surprising nor aberrant. Two principal questions undergird this study. First, how well does the conventional wisdom explain North Korean foreign policy, and second, can an analysis derived from neorealist theory explain North Korea better than the conventional wisdom? I attempt to show that not only can neorealism explain North Korea's foreign policy and the long-peace on the Korean Peninsula, but also that neorealism can subsume many of the decision-making explanations. The article consists of three sections. The first reviews the dominant approach to the study of North Korea in which I select five widely accepted facts about North Korea, and discuss methodological concerns regarding their use. The second section shows that these stylized views are both logically and empirically untenable, and presents an alternative viewpoint based on structural approaches to international relations. The final section considers the effect that nuclear weapons might have on North Korea's actions,

190BOOK REVIEWS Two Koreas—One Future? A Report Preparedfor the American Friends Service Committee, edited by John Sullivan and Roberta Foss. Lanham, Maryland, and London: University Press of America, 1987. Pp. 167. Cloth, $22.50. Paper, $11.50. One can usually count on the American Friends Service Committee to offer fresh and at times controversial perspectives on current issues. This volume on Korea is no exception. Aside from a brief introduction and conclusion by the editors, the volume consists of six contributions on history, economics, politics, the military, major power perspectives, and a personal Korean view. Most of the contributors are scholars well known not only for their expertise in Korean studies but also for their independence of judgment. The first contribution is by Bruce Cumings and deals with the division of Korea in 1945. His "revisionist" view of the immediate postwar period is that it is the United States that should shoulder most of the blame for Korea's division. An American policy that saw a separate noncommunist state in South Korea— the position advanced successfully by "nationalists" as opposed to "internationalists " in the military government and the Department of State—prevailed during the period through the Korean War. I place the word revisionist in quotation marks because by now it is this view, taken from his longer work, The Origins of the Korean War, which has become the standard treatment of the period. This short piece essentially captures the main arguments he makes in that work. Jon Halliday next compares the North and South Korean economies. In an account that exhibits considerable sympathy for the economic policies of the DPRK, he notes that the highly industrial and largely self-sufficient (the Korean word chuch'e is used to describe this policy of autarky) nation suffers from a number of problems, most notably a difficult-to-calculate external debt. He gives a grudging nod to the economic success of the South, but also points out its external dependence on capital and markets. His chapter represents a counterweight to the highly hagiographie accounts of the South's economy and the often facile assumptions concerning that of the North. The debunking of conventional wisdom on Korea continues unabated in the third selection by Stephen Goose on the military situation on the peninsula. His argument is that the threat from the North is greatly exaggerated and that the South could quite easily defeat an attack because of its defensive posture, greater defense spending, superior weaponry, larger population, and more advanced industrial base. Following this logic, Goose proceeds to argue that the U.S. troop presence is superfluous and that the removal of U.S. troops would defuse antiAmerican feelings among South Korean students and foster the growth of democracy. In one of his last contributions to the Korean debate before his untimely demise, Gregory Henderson attributes much of the postwar political landscape to the Japanese colonial legacy that replaced Confucianism with military and anticommunist values. He then gives a brief political history of both North and BOOK REVIEWS191 South Korea, concluding with an adroit discussion of indoctrination efforts in the South. In the North there was less dissent, not because of superior policies, but rather because most of the dissenters had fled south before and during the Korean War. Predictably Henderson is critical, but he also suggests that the future for the South is bright, since at the time of his writing there was a trend toward liberalization. One suspects that recent events in South Korea would not substantially revise his overall assessment. Ilpyong Kim's chapter on the role of the major powers begins with the assumption, somewhat overdrawn, that it is the four major powers (China, Japan, the United States, and the Soviet Union) which will largely determine the success or failure of inter-Korea dialogue. His contribution is a relatively straightforward account organized around the "Northern Triangle" (North Korea, China, and the USSR) and the "Southern Triangle" (South Korea, the U.S., and Japan). The only real "revisionism" comes in his conclusion that the U.S. hard-line policy toward North Korea must change before peace and stability can be assured on the peninsula. The final chapter by Kyungmo...

In March 2010, a North Korean submarine fired a torpedo against the South Korean ship Cheonan, which resulted in the deaths of 46 sailors. Is its surprise attack justified? The academic examination has rarely been made over whether North Korea’s use of military force is justified in this battle. As the just war theory to date has dealt mostly with major wars, it also can guide us to judge whether this limited warfare is just or not. The just war principles are composed of three axes: before, in and after wars. First, North Korea’s provocation had neither right cause nor right intension because it attacked the Cheonan preventively, not preemptively, and was intended to achieve its domestic objective, the stable succession of the Kim regime. Second, North Korea also did not observe in-war principles in the sense that it attacked and sank the Cheonan unproportionally to maximize the effectiveness of revenge. Third, North Korea was not interested in post-battle settlements but intended to aggravate tensions in the region, which is not compliant with post-war principles. The examination sheds some light on the need to expand the scope of just war principles from war to limited warfare and battles particularly in the sense that it helps restrain unethical warfare and maintain the rules-based international order. This expansion also will contribute to not only the richness of the just war theory but also further leading it to evolve into a grand theory of war.

North Korea, a Cold War remnant in East Asia, has long been treated as an impenetrable mystery and an excruciatingly difficult subject to comprehend given its closed system, under which it has maintained its isolation even from its closest allies and neighbours. The idiosyncrasies that revolve around North Korea do pose challenges for understanding the country through the “conventional wisdom.” Nonetheless, as acknowledged by the scholarly works reviewed in this article, the regime in Pyongyang must be dealt with as it is and as it is becoming so as to better understand both the challenges and opportunities for the country. The difficult task for the United States (US) and its allies in East Asia, however, is to be pragmatic in terms of dealing with the regime in Pyongyang and to project strength in a way that promotes long-term regional and global peace as well as the betterment of people in the country. The books reviewed are Charles Armstrong, Tyranny of the Weak: North Korea and the World, 1950−1992, Andrei Lankov, The Real North Korea: Life and Politics in the Failed Stalinist Utopia and the collection edited by Kyung-ae Park and Scott Snyder, North Korea in Transition: Politics, Economy, and Society.

Conventional Wisdom and the Next Unknown

North Korea remains a puzzle to Americans. It is difficult for the general reader to assess the real danger North Korea and its current enigmatic leader, Kim Jong Un, pose. How did North Korea, one of the poorest and most isolated countries in the world in the crosshairs of every U.S. administration during the past 30 years, progress from no nuclear weapons in 2001 to a threatening arsenal of 30 to 50 weapons in 2021? Hinge Points posits that the conventional wisdom that America's good faith diplomatic efforts were circumvented by the North's repeated violations of diplomatic agreements is neither true nor helpful. The book takes a different look at the problem, one of critical introspection that combines rigorous analysis of political and technical developments. Based on his visits to North Korea and an in-depth analysis of the political and technical developments, Hecker argues that decisions should have been based on technically informed risk/benefit analysis that sought to manage the risks as best as possible, instead of trying to drive them to zero. Hinge Points reviews common-mode failures of the three administrations, including a needlessly heavy reliance on Beijing, ineffective utilization of sanctions as a policy tool, the lack of a holistic approach to peace on the Korean Peninsula, and the failure to properly prioritize and recognize the seriousness of the North Korean nuclear threat. The book describes the political landscapes in the Bush, Obama, and Trump administrations that led to "hinge points," and provides detailed assessments of North Korea's nuclear and missile programs at those times to demonstrate how Washington's response missed the mark, leading to the crisis we face today.

The experience gained from dealing with North Korea from 1993-2000 is largely forgotten. During those years, the US and the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK) logged thousands of hours of contact. The inability of most observers to remember the legacy of these contacts is the central reason for the sterile nature of diplomacy since 2001. Conventional wisdom remains the same: It is impossible to deal with the North Koreans. A large percentage of those talks ended in agreements, almost all of which went beyond the declaratory stage to concrete implementation. The range of subjects expanded, moving past the 1994 Agreed Framework and finally culminating in the October 2000 US-DPRK Joint Communique, which laid a foundation for new progress. Nevertheless, lessons were learned and put to good use. These lessons the new administration discarded in favor of its own mythology when it took office in January 2001. Keywords: Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK); North Korea; US

As a result of doing A study on China``s military intervention in the Collapse of North Korea from the perspective of just war theory, it was found that in time of a sudden turn of events in North Korea, China``s military intervention is limited in its legitimacy. However, it shouldn``t be overlooked that China could invoke the rule of their just war theory as a cause for military intervention. In addition, we cannot exclude the fact that the US armed forces, which is currently stationing in Korea, could make a military intervention in this Peninsula under the cause of elimination of weapons of mass destruction[WMD]. Accordingly, Korea is required to establish the three political alternatives which can fulfill peaceful unification for its counteraction by putting the alternatives in stabilization operation rationally, actively and single-handedly in time of North Korea``s sudden turn of events. First, Korea is required to make clear the principle that it objects to a certain country or international organ``s intervention in time of North Korea``s sudden turn of situation and to make diplomatic efforts to independently solve the sudden turn of events. Second, after the unification of the Korean Peninsula, Korea is required to convert the existing landscape of competition between the US, China, and Russia to the strategic partnership by developing the policy that can remind those countries that Korea``s unification will serve to change the influence on the boundary issue between Russia and China in more stable and friendly direction. Third, Korea is also required to do continuous discussions and persuasions by modifying the relevant laws that can afford the basis of Korea``s single-handed execution of stabilization operation with the acquiescence of the US, China, and Russia and by looking for the feasible plans even in view of international law while making preparations in order that North Korea``s sudden turn of situation won``t progress into the situation where our national security is threatened.

On 24 December 2017, the UN Security Council imposed its toughest sanctions yet on North Korea. The measures, intended to thwart nuclear ambitions, are some of the most extensive sanctions imposed in recent times. They place severe restrictions on the export of crude oil and refined petroleum to that state, ban the export of arms, dual use equipment, rocket fuel, natural gas, luxury goods and financial services, ban the import of coal, iron, gold, seafood and textiles from North Korea, and include asset freezes and travel bans for targeted individuals. Economic sanctions raise serious moral issues, not least because if properly enforced they can cause significant harm to their targets. How should we assess their moral permissibility? Several authors have pointed out analogies between economic sanctions and war and then applied the just war principles (just cause, proportionality, etc.) to the problem. This approach has faced little critical scrutiny. I argue that the straightforward application of just war principles to sanctions is misguided. There is a significant difference between war and economic sanctions: war is constituted by bombing, shooting or stabbing but economic sanctions are constituted by refusing to trade. While there is a strong pro tanto duty to not bomb, shoot or stab individuals, there is no comparable pro tanto duty to trade. That does not mean sanctions are always morally permissible, only that the moral issues involved are very different. We have no reason to believe that moral principles developed to govern war are also appropriate for governing sanctions. This approach to the ethics of economic sanctions ought to be abandoned.

ASIANPERSPECTIVE, Vol. 23, No. 1,1999, pp. 205-214 Book Review Dealing With 'Rogue' States: Cooperation versus Coercion? Leon Sigal, Disarming Strangers: Nuclear Diplomacy With North Korea (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1998) When India and Pakistan's indulged in their bouts of nucle­ ar machismo last year the US response was wholly predictable. Mandatory sanctions were immediately imposed on both states. While this may have made some American members of Congress feel better and conceivably may have deterred other states contemplating going nuclear, the sanctions were an exer­ cise in futility as far as India and Pakistan were concerned. Both states had successfully tested their nuclear weapons and neither planned more explosions. Sanctions - and the hostile American rhetoric that accompanied their imposition - only served to increase popular support for the nuclear programs in both Pak­ istan and India. To many outsiders America's indignation seemed both inconsistent and self-serving. Washington was simultaneously claiming that the handful bombs in South Asian hands were a deadly threat to regional and global stability, while the many thousands of nuclear weapons in American hands were a force for world peace. Critics argued that at best this was gross hypocrisy; at worst racism. Leon Sigal's engaging study, Disarming Strangers: Nuclear Diplomacy With North Korea, says nothing about India or Pak­ istan, yet there are uncanny parallels between the Korean and South Asian nuclear dramas. In each case American inattention and misperception made effective diplomacy difficult if not impossible in the early stages. In each case Washington signally 206 AndrewMack failed to see how its self-righteous rhetoric and blustering served only to infuriate the hyper-nationalist regimes it sought to coerce. In both cases US responses to the crisis were driven by domestic politics in ways which seriously impeded attempts at crisis resolution. The Korean case was also very different, of course. India was a democracy of sorts, Pakistan was an erstwhile American ally; North Korea was a totalitarian enemy. The mainstream conventional wisdom in the US security community in the early 1990s depicted the North as a ruthless, aggressive and irrational 'rogue' state implacably hostile to the US, bent on acquiring nuclear weapons, and willing to cheat on its international obli­ gations to do so. Sigal, by contrast, sees a weak, somewhat para­ noid North Korea, prickly and difficult to deal with to be sure, but prepared to reach an accommodation with Washington and to abandon its nuclear weapons program in return for a package of diplomatic and economic concessions. American security mindsets meant that Pyongyang's signals of willingness to cooperate were either ignored or seen as tricks, while North Korean bluster and threats confirmed Pyongyang's 'rogue' image in American eyes. This in turn dictated what Sigal calls the 'crime and punishment' strategy that Washington used to coerce Pyongyang into giving up its bomb program. 'Rogues' who ruled by terror at home and promoted it abroad were, by definition almost, were simply not amenable to rational persua­ sion; only coercion. In dealing with Pyongyang, denial of high level political contacts and economic assistance, threats of sanctions and even military strikes against the North's nuclear facilities, were the favoured weapons in Washington's diplomatic armoury. Posi­ tive inducements were relegated to the sidelines. The problem was that the coercion approach simply didn't work. By the summer of 1994 a combination of US impatience and North Korean intransigence had brought the Korean penin­ sula to the very brink of war. The antecedents of the crisis went back at least to 1985 when the North started to build a small research reactor at its nuclear facility in Yongbyon. There was nothing particularly suspicious about this. Many countries start their civilian nuclear programs by building research reactors to get practical experience in non­ Dealing With 'Rogue'States 207 military nuclear technologies. The fact that Pyongyang had joined the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) in 1985 was also reassuring. In joining the NPT, the North had undertaken not to make nuclear weapons and had also agreed to admit International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) inspectors to monitor its nuclear facilities. The main task of the safeguards' inspectors was to ensure that no plutonium - the...

The traditional structural-power approach falls short of accounting for North Korea’s nuclear strategies. Contrary to conventional wisdom, North Korea has been engaged in balancing acts against the United States, employing internal balancing, soft balancing, and omnibalancing strategies, while deviating from bandwagoning, the dominant strategy of small states. The present analysis of the North Korean case also demonstrates that a state’s behavior is not merely a response to the international structure of power distribution, but also a reaction to a state’s domestic situation. In addition to changes in the international power structure and perceived security threats, North Korea’s flagging economy, guiding ideology, competition with the South, and regime legitimacy have all compensated for the asymmetry of power between North Korea and the United States.

This article aims to assess the strategic implications of North Korea's nuclear development. It calls into question the conventional wisdom that Pyongyang's atomic weapons will not only undermine the state of deterrence on the Korean peninsula, but also will trigger a nuclear domino effect throughout East Asia. A nuclear-armed North Korea, I argue, still cannot win a major victory over the South and the United States; Pyongyang's bombs somewhat decrease—rather than increase, as many believe—the risk of US preventive attack. And the regional US military presence as well as the available missile defence technology is sufficient to persuade Seoul and Tokyo not to pursue nuclear arsenals for the foreseeable future. While I reject the alarmist view, I find that North Korea's armament nevertheless carries two significant—albeit less grave—risks that have received little scholarly scrutiny. First, I argue that the risk of inadvertent war through pre-emption will increase with Pyongyang's armament. I also argue that the strengthening of US alliances in the region as well as the US development of a missile defence capability in response to the North Korean threat could exacerbate the security dilemmas among major powers. I conclude, however, that these potential dangers do not markedly threaten regional stability.

This article argues that the dominant paradigm for understanding and explaining north Korean domestic and international politics is in crisis. The dominant securitization paradigm is divided into its ‘bad’ and ‘mad’ elements and is derived from the crudest of Cold War politics and theories. The paradigm no longer provides a useful frame of reference for international policy-makers having to ‘do business’ with north Korea. The intervention of the humanitarian community in north Korea since 1995 has both shown the obsolescence of the securitization paradigm and provided the foundation for two alternative approaches—the ‘sad’ and the ‘rational actor’ conceptual framework. The article concludes by arguing for the utility of a historicized and contextualized rational actor model which, it is argued, offers a realistic underpinning for international policies that seriously wish to promote peace, stability and freedom from hunger on the Korean peninsula. South Korea's ‘sunshine’ policy is cited as one example of such an approach.

The George W. Bush presidency has raised wide speculation about future United States' policy toward the Korean peninsula. The conventional wisdom among pundits in Washington, Seoul and elsewhere is that the incoming administration will switch to a ‘harder line’ regarding the Democratic Peoples' Republic of Korea (DPRK) and move away from the engagement policy practiced during the Clinton administration. In a similar vein, others have argued that Bush will place a premium on reaffirming and consolidating ties with traditional allies and friends like the Republic of Korea (ROK), Japan, and Taiwan while downplaying strategic engagement with China. The problem with such punditry is that it is usually overstated and under analyzed. Given the current state of relations, there is little incentive for dramatic changes in U.S. policy toward North Korea or with regard to the U.S.-ROK alliance. Moreover, given what is known of the Bush administration's foreign policy vision, there is little evidence upon which to predict an unadulterated hard line swing in policy toward Pyongyang.