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Leveraging towards restraint: Nuclear hedging and North Korea's shifting reference points during the agreed framework and the Six-Party Talks

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  31 July 2019

Soul Park Open the ORCID record for Soul Park [Opens in a new window]  and
Kimberly Peh Open the ORCID record for Kimberly Peh [Opens in a new window]
Soul Park*
Affiliation:
Department of Political Science, National University of Singapore
Kimberly Peh
Affiliation:
Department of Political Science, University of Notre Dame
*
*Corresponding author. Email: polsp@nus.edu.sg
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Abstract

The emergence of new nuclear aspirants has posed a great threat to the post-Cold War global non-proliferation regime. These states have adopted a nuclear hedging strategy that has been deemed both strategically risky and politically difficult to maintain. Yet, hedging has not automatically resulted in nuclearisation. We analyse the conditions under which a nuclear hedger shifts its nuclear policy towards one of restraint. Drawing insights from prospect theory, we argue that a nuclear policy shift occurs when a nuclear hedger gains an asymmetric leverage vis-à-vis its adversary. Specifically, a hedging strategy that is based on loss aversion will only be abandoned when a shift in the nuclear aspirant's reference point occurs during negotiations. To test our theoretical arguments, we conduct an in-depth case study of North Korea's nuclear policies throughout the 1990s and 2000s. The empirical study of the changes in North Korea's negotiating stance during the Agreed Framework negotiations and the Six-Party Talks supports our asymmetric leverage thesis. We conclude with broad policy implications for the non-proliferation regime.

Keywords

Nuclear HedgingNuclear RestraintAsymmetric LeverageAgreed FrameworkSix-Party TalksNorth Korea
Type
Research Article
Information
European Journal of International Security , Volume 5 , Issue 1 , February 2020 , pp. 94 - 114
Copyright
Copyright © British International Studies Association 2019

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References

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95 Mansourov, ‘The origins, evolution, and current politics’, p. 36.

96 Joo, ‘Deciphering what Pyongyang wants’, p. 26.

97 Wit, Poneman, and Gallucci, Going Critical, pp. 298, 328–30.

98 ‘North Korea was not about to be bluffed. Nor was it about to comply first and hope to reap the benefits later. Only when Washington satisfied its concerns did Pyongyang relent. A strategy of cooperative security, not coercive diplomacy, accounts for the success of diplomacy in Korea.’ Sigal, Disarming Strangers, p. 9.

99 Pollack, No Exit, p. 118.

100 The guarantee further lacked congressional commitment without which the president did not have much room to maneuver. Wit, Poneman, and Gallucci, Going Critical, pp. 266–7.

101 Kim, The North Korean Nuclear Weapons Crisis, p. 32; Konstantin Asmolov, ‘US-DPRK: How the US “observed” the 1994 “Agreed Framework”’, Global Research, available at: {https://www.globalresearch.ca/us-dprk-how-the-us-observed-the-1994-agreed-framework/5619927} accessed 28 November 2017.

102 Kelsey Davenport, ‘Chronology of U.S.-North Korean Nuclear and Missile Diplomacy’, Arms Control Association, available at: {https://www.armscontrol.org/factsheets/dprkchron#2008} accessed 14 August 2018.

103 Martin, Curtis H., ‘Lessons of the Agreed Framework for using engagement as a nonproliferation tool’, The Nonproliferation Review, 6:4 (1999), p. 44CrossRefGoogle Scholar; ‘Korea Peninsula Energy Development Organization (KEDO)’, Nuclear Threat Initiative, available at: {http://www.nti.org/learn/treaties-and-regimes/korean-peninsula-energy-development-organization-kedo/} accessed 12 April 2017.

104 ‘H.Amdt.324 to H.R.2415’, Library of Congress, available at: {https://www.congress.gov/amendment/106th-congress/house-amendment/324} accessed 9 January 2018; Charles Kartman, Robert Carlin, and Joel Wit, ‘A History of KEDO 1994–2006’, Center for International Security and Cooperation (June 2012), p. 12, available at: {https://fsi-live.s3.us-west-1.amazonaws.com/s3fs-public/A_History_of_KEDO-1.pdf} accessed 9 January 2018; Jeffrey Lewis, ‘Revisiting the Agreed Framework’, 38 North, available at: {http://www.38north.org/2015/05/jlewis051415/} accessed 9 January 2018; Martin, ‘Lessons of the Agreed Framework’, p. 44.

105 ‘Korea Peninsula Energy Development Organization (KEDO)’, Nuclear Threat Initiative; Pollack, No Exit, pp. 136–7.

106 Pritchard, Charles L., Failed Diplomacy: The Tragic Story of How North Korea Got the Bomb (Washington, DC: Brookings Institution Press, 2007), pp. 2–3Google Scholar; Snyder, Scott, ‘U.S.-North Korean negotiating behavior and the Six-Party Talks’, in Joo, Seung-ho and Kwak, Tae-Hwan (eds), North Korea's Second Nuclear Crisis and Northeast Asian Security (Hampshire: Ashgate, 2007), p. 152Google Scholar; Pollack, No Exit, p. 131.

107 Pritchard, Failed Diplomacy, p. 4; Hur, The Six-Party Talks on North Korea, pp. 30–1.

108 Pritchard, Failed Diplomacy, p. 137; Snyder, ‘U.S.-North Korean negotiating behavior and the Six-Party Talks’, pp. 152–3; Pollack, No Exit, pp. 131–2; Hur, The Six-Party Talks on North Korea, p. 35.

109 Moon, Chung-in and Bae, Jong-Yun, ‘The Bush Doctrine and the North Korean nuclear crisis’, in Gurtov, Melvin and Van Ness, Peter (eds), Confronting the Bush Doctrine: Critical Views from the Asia-Pacific (London: Routledge, 2004), p. 40Google Scholar; Edward A. Olsen, ‘The Bush administration and North Korea's nuclear policy’, in Joo and Kwak (eds), North Korea's Second Nuclear Crisis and Northeast Asian Security, pp. 45–64; Jackson, Rival Reputations, pp. 160-1; Cha, Victor, The Impossible State: North Korea, Past and Present (London: Bodley Head, 2012), p. 255Google Scholar.

110 Park, John S., ‘Inside multilateralism: the Six-Party Talks’, Washington Quarterly, 28:4 (2005), pp. 76, 79–80CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Hur, The Six-Party Talks on North Korea, p. 39.

111 Moreover, with North Korea having broken its side of the bargain also provided the early basis for US insistence on CVID. Cotton, James, ‘North Korea and the Six-Party process: Is a multilateral resolution of the Nuclear Issue Still Possible?’ Asian Security, 3:1 (2007), p. 38CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

112 Former ambassador to ROK, Donald Gregg, recalls in his 2002 meeting with DPRK General Ri Chan-bok stating his concerns of potential US attacks on North Korea. Hur, The Six-Party Talks on North Korea, p. 107–08.

113 Habib, Benjamin, ‘North Korea's nuclear weapons programme and the maintenance of the Songun system’, Pacific Review, 24:1 (2011), pp. 56–9CrossRefGoogle Scholar. See also Woo, ‘Pyongyang and the world’, pp. 192–3.

114 Lee, Jae-Bong, ‘US-deployment of nuclear weapons in 1950s South Korea & North Korea's nuclear development: Toward denuclearization of the Korean peninsula’, Asia-Pacific Journal – Japan Focus, 7:3 (2009), p. 14Google Scholar; Pollack, No Exit, p. 144; Cha, Victor, ‘North Korea's weapons of mass destruction: Badges, shields, or swords?’, Political Science Quarterly, 117:2 (2002), pp. 29–30CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

115 Pritchard, Failed Diplomacy, p. 2.

116 Hur, The Six-Party Talks on North Korea, p. 110.

117 Dae-Kyu Yoon, ‘Issues and Expectations for the 2nd Round of Six-Party Talks’, The Institute for Far Eastern Studies, available at: {http://ifes.kyungnam.ac.kr/kor/PUB/PUB_0202V.aspx?code=FRM1010_000103} accessed 24 February 2014, emphasis added.

118 The Six-Party Talks took place over six rounds: preliminary trilateral (US-China-DPRK) talks (23–5 April 2003); round 1 (27–9 August 2003); round 2 (25–8 February 2004); round 3 (23–6 June 2004); round 4 (26 July–7 August, 13–19 September 2005); and round 5 (session 1: 9–11 November 2005, session 2: 18–22 December 2006, and session 3: 8–13 February 2007). Pritchard, Failed Diplomacy, pp. 85–6.

119 Park, ‘Inside multilateralism’, p. 76.

120 Quote in Pritchard, Failed Diplomacy, p. 102. See also Hur, The Six-Party Talks on North Korea, p. 86.

121 Martin, Curtis, ‘G. W. Bush and North Korea: a levels of analysis view’, Pacific Focus, 22:1 (2007), pp. 112–14Google Scholar.

122 Snyder, ‘U.S.-North Korean negotiating behavior and the Six-Party Talks’, p. 155.

123 Cheney reportedly said: ‘I have been charged by the president with making sure that none of the tyrannies in the world are negotiated with. We don't negotiate with evil; we defeat it.’ Pritchard, Failed Diplomacy, pp. 103–05.

124 Martin, ‘G. W. Bush and North Korea’, p. 124. Prior to the start of negotiations in August 2003, State Secretary, Colin Powell, was the only one who signalled intentions to provide some form of security assurances that would be satisfactory to Pyongyang. Kurata, Hideya, ‘A conceptual analysis of the Six-Party Talks: Building peace through security assurances’, Asian Security, 3:1 (2007), p. 18CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

125 Moon and Bae, ‘The Bush doctrine and the North Korean nuclear crisis’, p. 39.

126 Cotton, ‘North Korea and the Six-Party process’ p. 28.

127 Quote from Volpe, Tristan, ‘The unraveling of North Korea's proliferation blackmail strategy’, in Kim, Sung Chull and Cohen, Michael D. (eds), North Korea and Nuclear Weapons: Entering the New Era of Deterrence (Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press, 2017), p. 82Google Scholar; Kurata, ‘A conceptual analysis of the Six-Party Talks’, p. 19.

128 Cotton, ‘North Korea and the Six-Party process’, p. 29; Pritchard, Failed Diplomacy, p. 106; Snyder, ‘U.S.-North Korean negotiating behavior and the Six-Party Talks’, pp. 161–2; Moon and Bae, ‘The Bush doctrine and the North Korean nuclear crisis’, p. 40.

129 Hur, The Six-Party Talks on North Korea, p. 98.

130 Kurata, ‘A conceptual analysis of the Six-Party Talks’, p. 23.

131 Pollack, No Exit, p. 148.

132 Snyder, ‘U.S.-North Korean negotiating behavior and the Six-Party Talks’, p. 156; Pritchard, Failed Diplomacy, p. 109; Pollack, No Exit, pp. 146–7.

133 Pritchard, Failed Diplomacy, p. 119; Cotton, ‘North Korea and the Six-Party process’, pp. 29–30.

134 Department of State, ‘Joint Statement of the Fourth Round of the Six-Party Talks’, available at: {https://www.state.gov/p/eap/regional/c15455.htm} accessed 2 July 2018.

135 Kwak, Tae-Hwan, ‘Resolving the North Korean nuclear issue through the Six-Party process: a creative formula’, The Journal of East Asian Affairs, 20:1 (2006), pp. 7–10Google Scholar.

136 Armstrong, Charles K., ‘South Korea and the Six-Party Talks: the least bad option?’, Joint US-Korea Academic Studies, 21 (2011), p. 169Google Scholar; Cotton, ‘North Korea and the Six-Party process’, pp. 31–2; Pritchard, Failed Diplomacy, pp. 121–3.

137 The spokesman further noted that ‘once US nuclear threats are removed and the US nuclear umbrella for South Korea disappears, we will not need nuclear weapons, … [but] as long as the United States hostile policy toward the DPRK and nuclear threats are not fundamentally eliminated, we will never give up our nuclear weapons first, not even in a hundred years’. Pollack, No Exit, p. 159, emphasis in original. See also Cotton, ‘North Korea and the Six-Party process’, p. 34.

138 Amanda Lilly, ‘Why the Six-Nation Talks?’, Washington Post, available at: {http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/06/18/AR2009061802560.html} accessed 27 June 2018.

139 Nikitin, Mary Beth D., Chanlett-Avery, Emma, and Manyin, Mark E., Nuclear Negotiations with North Korea: In Brief, R45033 (Washington, DC: Congressional Research Service, 2017), p. 8Google Scholar.

140 Leon V. Sigal, ‘Looking for leverage in all the wrong places’, 38 North, available at: {https://www.38north.org/2010/05/looking-for-leverage-in-all-the-wrong-places/} accessed 13 April 2019; Tae-Hwan Kwak and Seung-Ho Joo, ‘The U.S. financial sanctions against North Korea’, Pacific Focus, 22:1 (2007), pp. 95–6.

141 Mike Chinoy, ‘Bush on North Korea: Wrong again’, 38 North, available at: {https://www.38north.org/2010/11/bush-on-north-korea-wrong-again/} accessed 26 July 2018; Siegfried S. Hecker, Robert L. Carlin, and E. A. Serbin, ‘A Technical and Political History of North Korea's Nuclear Program Over the Past 26 Years’, Center for International Security and Cooperation, Stanford University, p. 7, available at: {https://fsi-live.s3.us-west-1.amazonaws.com/s3fs-public/narrativescombinedfinv2.pdf} accessed 8 July 2018.

142 Kwak and Joo, ‘The U.S. financial sanctions against North Korea’, pp. 99–102.

143 Ibid., p. 103.

144 Martin, ‘G. W. Bush and North Korea’, p. 115.

145 Kim, The North Korean Nuclear Weapons Crisis, p. 113; Department of State, ‘Joint Statement of the Fourth Round of the Six-Party Talks’, available at: {https://www.state.gov/p/eap/regional/c15455.htm} accessed 2 July 2018.

146 ‘Status of the Six-Party Talks for the Denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula’, Hearing before the Committee on Foreign Relations, United States Senate, One Hundredth Tenth Congress, Second Session, pp. 6–7, available at: {http://www.gpoaccess.gov/congress/index.html} accessed 26 July 2018.

147 Moon Chung-in, ‘The Six Party Talks and Implications for a Northeast Asia Nuclear Weapons Free Zone’, NAPSNet Special Reports, available at: {https://nautilus.org/napsnet/napsnet-special-reports/the-six-party-talks-and-implications-for-a-northeast-asia-nuclear-weapons-free-zone/} accessed 26 July 2018.

148 Christopher R. Hill, ‘North Korean Six-Party Talks and Implementation Activities’, US Department of State, available at: {https://2001-2009.state.gov/p/eap/rls/rm/2008/07/107590.htm} accessed 14 August 2018. Kelsey Davenport, ‘Chronology of U.S.-North Korean Nuclear and Missile Diplomacy’, Arms Control Association, available at: {https://www.armscontrol.org/factsheets/dprkchron#2008} accessed 14 August 2018.

149 Volpe, ‘The unraveling of North Korea's proliferation blackmail strategy’, p. 83.

150 Hecker, Carlin, and Serbin, ‘A Technical and Political History of North Korea's Nuclear Program Over the Past 26 Years’, pp. 7–8, 15.

151 Leon V. Sigal, ‘Lessons from the unhappy history of verification in North Korea’, 38 North, available at: {https://www.38north.org/2018/07/lsigal070918/} accessed 13 April 2019.

152 Lilly, ‘Why the Six-Nation Talks?’

153 ‘Status of the Six-Party Talks for the Denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula’, Hearing before the Committee on Foreign Relations, United States Senate, One Hundredth Tenth Congress, Second Session (6 February 2008), available at: {https://www.foreign.senate.gov/imo/media/doc/020608_Transcript_Status%20of%20the%20SixParty%20Talks%20for%20Denuclearization%20of%20the%20Korean%20Peninsula.pdf} accessed 2 July 2018; Cha, The Impossible State, pp. 260–3.

154 Catherine Killough, ‘Trump should heed the lessons of past U.S.-North Korea talks’, The National Interest, available at: {https://nationalinterest.org/feature/trump-should-heed-lessons-past-us-north-korea-talks-45612} accessed 9 April 2019.

155 Park, ‘Inside multilateralism’, pp. 78–9; Cha, The Impossible State, p. 263; Moon, Chung-in, ‘The Six Party Talks and implications for peninsular and regional peace and security’, in Frank, Rudiger and Swenson-Wright, John (eds), Korea and East Asia: The Stony Road to Collective Security (Leiden: Brill, 2012), p. 231Google Scholar.

156 Evans J. R. Revere, ‘Re-Engaging North Korea After Kim Jong-il's Death: Last, Best Hope or Dialogue to Nowhere?’, Brookings Policy Paper 29 (January 2012), p. 11.

157 Haejin Choi and Hyonhee Shin, ‘North Korea says denuclearization pledge not result of U.S.-led sanctions’, Reuters, available at: {https://www.reuters.com/article/us-northkorea-southkorea/north-korea-says-denuclearization-pledge-not-result-of-u-s-led-sanctions-idUSKBN1I703M} accessed 8 July 2018.

158 Adam Mount and Ankit Panda, ‘North Korea is not denuclearizing’, The Atlantic, available at: {https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2018/04/north-korea-kim-jong-un-trump-nuclear-summit-weapons-missiles/558620/} accessed 8 July 2018; Leon V. Sigal, ‘Picking up the pieces from Hanoi’, 38 North, available at: {https://www.38north.org/2019/03/lsigal030519/} accessed 13 April 2019.

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161 Thus far, this expectation appears reasonable as Kim remains open to the idea of a third summit, and as he suggests, ‘If I didn't have the will [to denuclearise], I wouldn't be here right now.’ ‘Supreme Leader Kim Jong Un makes policy speech at first session of 14th SPA’, The Diplomat, available at: {https://manage.thediplomat.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/04/thediplomat-supreme-leader-kim-jong-un-makes-policy-speech-at-first-session-of-14th-spa.pdf} accessed 13 April 2019; Kim, ‘The Hanoi summit’.

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