U.S. Policy toward North Korea in Strategic Context: Tempting Goliath’s Fate
Wade Huntley
June 30, 2007
This publication is not available for download.
To purchase a copy of this publication, please visit: http://www.jstor.org/stable/4497262
Source: Asian Survey, Vol. 47, Issue 3, pp. 455–480
The collapse of the US-North Korea Agreed Framework in 2002 not only initiated a new crisis, but also qualitatively altered how North Korea’s nuclear ambitions bear on regional security relations, complicating resolution of the crisis. To better appreciate the context of the Bush Administration’s reactions to this crisis, this article examines US responses to the threats North Korea’s nuclear ambitions pose to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) and the wider array of global nonproliferation efforts that treaty spearheads. This examination indicates how the Bush Administration’s approaches to nuclear proliferation evince a particular global outlook rooted in an ideational conception of American grand strategy in the post-Cold War world. Drawing on this understanding, the article focuses on the implications of recent developments, such as the agreement emerging from the Six-Party Talks on September 19, 2005, and North Korea’s nuclear test on October 9, 2006. The article concludes that the goal to prevent emergence of a nuclear North Korea still can be achieved. But a permanent resolution will require a comprehensive approach dealing with all facets of East Asian regional security, within which the nuclear confrontation with North Korea is embedded.
