Threat Consensus and Rapprochement Failure: Revisiting the Collapse of US–North Korea Relations, 1994–2002

Abstract

Why do states that make a deliberate effort to pursue rapprochement sometimes fail? This article dissects US–North Korea relations between 1994 and 2002 as one way to better understand how deliberate decisions to dramatically improve relations with a historical adversary go awry. This vastly understudied period in US–North Korea relations started in late 1994 with an ambitious agreement to move toward diplomatic normalization through a gradual process based on reciprocal “action for action,” abruptly ending in 2002 with mutual acrimony and the resumption of long-standing hostility. Why did reciprocity strategies by both sides in the intervening period fail to deliver the promised relational change? The seemingly obvious explanation—a lack of consensus among US policy elites about North Korea policy—does not fit with what actually happened. Moreover, theories of rapprochement that might have anticipated success in the US–North Korea case cannot readily explain why rapprochement failed without resorting to situation-specific factors, which undermines their explanatory power. At the same time, theories of rapprochement that would have correctly predicted failure, on the basis of identity incompatibility or other unfavorable conditions, offer an incomplete account of events. Such rapprochement pessimists struggle to explain why the United States would seek rapprochement with North Korea if the prospects of success were so predictably dim, why the Clinton administration would settle on the rapprochement approach it did, and why it would simultaneously pursue rapprochement while publicly promoting North Korea as a threat. …