Policy Forum

John Feffer, author of ”North Korea, South Korea,” and a contributor to Foreign Policy In Focus, writes: “It’s time for the United States to stop fantasizing about an imminent North Korean collapse. Let’s support instead the Korean reunification happening right before our eyes.”

Walter Russell Mead, a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations and the author, most recently, of “Power, Terror, Peace and War: America’s Grand Strategy in a World at Risk”, wrote: “A nuclear arms race across East Asia would be hugely dangerous and destabilizing. Far better that the Bush administration convince China that the wiser course is to prevent a nuke race by telling Pyongyang the time has come for a deal.”

Bruce Klingner, Korea analyst for Eurasia Group, an independent research and consulting firm that provides global political risk analysis, wrote: “A test would remove the strategic ambiguity that allows Beijing and Seoul to avoid acknowledging North Korea as a nuclear state. A test would likely derail any potential diplomatic resolution to the nuclear impasse, encouraging a range of more aggressive US strategies.”

Discussion of “Dealing With the North Korean Nuclear Threat” Discussion of “Dealing With the North Korean Nuclear Threat” Policy Forum Online 05-49A: June 14th, 2005 Discussion of “Dealing With the North Korean Nuclear Threat” by Don Oberdorfer Copyright (c) 2005 Nautilus of America/The Nautilus Institute CONTENTS I. Introduction II. Comments on “Dealing with the North […]

Don Oberdorfer, Distinguished Journalist in Residence and adjunct professor of international relations at the Johns Hopkins University’s Nitze School of Advanced International Studies, wrote: “The United States didn’t like the leaders of the Soviet Union — but we found ways to engage them. We didn’t like the Chinese in the era before the 1970s, but we found ways to engage them also. I believe that ways can be found to seriously engage the North Koreans, difficult as it might be. Whatever means are chosen to deal with it, the problem of nuclear weapons in the divided Korean peninsula is too dangerous to be left to fester.”

Read comments on Dealing With the North Korean Nuclear Threat.

I. Introduction Selig S. Harrison, who has visited North Korea nine times, most recently in April, and is the author of “Korean Endgame“, wrote: “For now the hard-liners are in charge in Pyongyang. Pending normalized relations, North Korea is unlikely to reduce its nuclear arsenal, if it actually has one, at any price or to […]

Policy Forum Online 05-41A: June 9th, 2005 Discussion of “U.S. Can’t Act Alone in North”   Joong-Ang Ilbo Editorial Copyright (c) 2005 Nautilus of America/The Nautilus Institute CONTENTS I. Introduction  II. Comments by Jeong Cp  III. Nautilus invites your responses Go to Joong-Ang Ilbo Editorial (May 17th, 2005)  Go to Policy Forum Online index   […]

L. Gordon Flake, Executive Director of the Mansfield Foundation, writes: “The U.S.-ROK alliance, however, was built on the foundation of a common nightmare, the threat from North Korea. How the two nations address that nightmare, and how the current crisis on the Peninsula is resolved, will ultimately determine what dreams Korea and the United States will share in the future.”

This speech by U.S. Representative James A. Leach, Chairman of the House Subcommittee on Asia and the Pacific, was delivered to the CSIS and Chosun Ilbo Conference on “Prospects for U.S. Policy toward the Korean Peninsula in the Second Bush Administration” on May 17th, 2005. Representative Leach said, “A credible change in strategic direction away from isolation, repression, and nuclearization would put the DPRK’s international footing on a basis of amity and cooperation, with prosperity in close reach. One of our many tasks in the weeks ahead is to make that previously unthinkable possibility easier for the North Korean leadership to imagine.”

This editorial appeared in the Joong-Ang Ilbo, a South Korean newspaper. The editorial states: “The United States probably knows full well that in a real emergency, it would be impossible to act without South Korea. Nor could we cope with an emergency in the North without U.S. support. South Korea and the United States must wisely resolve this discord in a spirit of alliance.”