North Korea: A Crisis in the Making
Abstract
The policy problem of how to stop North Korea's programs for acquiring weapons of mass destruction and missiles without starting a disastrous war on the peninsula likely will continue regardless of controlled tacks toward more accommodation or further intimidation. The vast majority of expert analyses, which has analyzed all manners of "carrots" and "sticks" for changing North Korean behavior, largely ignores the systemic level of analysis. While many do consider the positions of different states in the region -especially South Korea, Japan, China, and Russia- few highlight properties of the overall system of interactions that lie outside any one state's control. In the face of such persistent oscillation in policy, a more explicit accounting of system effects shows that U.S. officials are trapped not in another Cuban Missile Crisis, but rather in a Vietnam-like quagmire. They find themselves stuck in the same incrementalism, with alternate steps toward peace then war, for the same types of reasons. It may be that the North Korean quagmire is infinitely preferable to Vietnam because so far, at least, it involves hundreds of millions of dollars rather than hundreds of thousands of casualties. Still, there is a nagging gap in logic that predicts naval operations for the new Proliferation Security Initiative and the intercession of China-all examples of carefully calibrated squeezing-will have more decisive results on Kim Jong II than limited bombing and Soviet mediation had on Ho Chi Minh.
Document Details
- Document Type
- Technical Report
- Publication Date
- Aug 01, 2004
- Accession Number
- ADA521632
Entities
People
- Damon Coletta
Organizations
- Naval Postgraduate School