North Korea’s rapid advancements on missile and nuclear fronts has elicited international concern and condemnation. Foremost among United States national security concerns, as handed over from the Obama to Trump administrations, the North Korean challenge entails important aspects political, economic and military. Korea Society senior director and Columbia adjunct associate professor of political science, Dr. Stephen Noerper, explores the progression of the North Korea’s security challenge since the end of the Cold War and the various tacks and turns of four US presidencies. In addressing the recent Trump trip to Asia, including his messaging on India-pacific unity and North Korea, Dr. Noerper will also examine US policy and potential next-steps toward negotiation. He suggests that North Korea’s progress on WMD be seen as a challenge to the broader nonproliferation regime, and that Trump’s tweets and rhetoric lend themselves to a new and dangerous escalation, worrying allies South Korea and Japan, and requiring a de-escalation of tensions. He argues that the US and international community expand the focus on missile and nuclear development to development and human security to win new leverage at the negotiation table and establish a better foundation for peace and security.
Bio:
Dr. Stephen Noerper is Korea Society senior director, adjunct associate professor of political science at Columbia University, and a fellow with Columbia’s Weatherhead East Asian Institute and Pacific Forum CSIS. The author of more than seventy publications on US policy, Korea and Northeast Asia, Dr. Noerper taught prior as an associate professor at NYU and Hawaii’s Asia-Pacific Center for Security Studies, and as a visiting professor at American University, Waseda University and the National University of Mongolia. He is a former US State Department senior analyst and Washington representative of the Nautilus Institute. Stephen is a graduate of the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy and London School of Economics, and member of the National Committee on North Korea and Van Fleet Foundation board. He has appeared in recent months on the BBC, Bloomberg, CBC, CNN, NPR and VOA and in the Wall Street Journal, UK Guardian, and other print editions.
