دانلود کتاب کره شمالی، ریسک‌پذیری هسته‌ای و ایالات متحده

Why has the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea1 become determined to challenge the United States by going nuclear, although it is a much weaker nation? Why has Pyongyang confronted the United States with its own nuclear weapons program, and how and why has Pyongyang so far changed its nuclear policy toward Washington? In fact, the North Korean nuclear crisis has not been a bilateral issue between Pyongyang and Washington but rather an international concern, including the whole international community. However, this book focuses on Pyongyang’s nuclear policy toward Washington since the end of the Cold War, because Pyongyang has constantly insisted on negotiating bilaterally with Washington, arguing the nuclear issue on the Korean peninsula was originally generated by America’s antagonistic nuclear policy toward North Korea during the Cold War.2 Furthermore, Pyongyang’s main policy regarding the nuclear issue has continuously focused on the relations with the United States, even though international organizations such as the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) and the United Nations (UN) and regional powers such as South Korea, Japan, China, and Russia have participated in this issue. The North Korean nuclear crisis began to rise to the surface after the end of the Cold War.3 As North Korea’s security environment suddenly worsened after the collapse of the Soviet Union and the Chinese diplomatic reformulation, North Korea began to challenge the U.S. nuclear nonproliferation policy. According to Dale Copeland (2000: 37–42), a state in decline like North Korea can adopt one of two foreign policy options: (1) to accommodate its enemy at the risk of war in the long term or (2) to adopt a hardline stance at the risk of war in the short term. Although it does not appear that North Korea intended to go to war against the United States, the most powerful nation in the world, the North has often escalated and de-escalated the nuclear crisis with its unique nuclear policy. Consequently, North Korea reached the brink of being attacked militarily by the United States due to its reluctance to follow the international demand for nuclear inspections. In June 1994, the United States was making every diplomatic effort to have UN sanctions imposed on North Korea and was also considering a few military options, including preemptive strikes on the North’s nuclear facilities.4 The crisis might have ended in war at the time if Pyongyang had chosen to accept the risk of continuously escalating the situation, but it did not. North Korean leader Kim Il Sung suddenly changed his course of action in June 1994 by switching his nuclear policy from confrontational brinkmanship to conciliatory engagement. The crisis was resolved without any direct military confrontation after former U.S. president Jimmy Carter visited Pyongyang and got Kim Il Sung’s agreement to freeze Pyongyang’s nuclear weapons program in return for U.S. compensation. Why did Kim suddenly change his nuclear policy, suspending the North’s independent nuclear weapons program in response to international threats, and accept the risk of damaging his dignity and the Juche ideology of self-reliance that he had valued so long?5 Did he suddenly recognize that to suspend the nuclear program and improve relations with the United States was less risky than continued escalation of the crisis? If so, why did he not initially reach out to Washington and avoid the risk of confronting the superpower? Although Pyongyang had opted for neither direct confrontation nor any real accommodation during the crisis, its policy focus was evidently seen to move from one to the other. Kim Jong Il and Kim Jong Un were not much different in changing their nuclear policies. Kim Jong Il agreed to the Joint Statement of the Six-Party Talks on September 19, 2005, but soon scrapped it and conducted two nuclear tests in 2006 and 2009. Kim Jong Un showed consistently the confrontational nuclear policy by conducting more nuclear tests after he took power in December 2011, but he has also followed his grandfather and father’s nuclear policy. In his 2018 New Year’s address, Kim Jong Un suddenly called for a new transformation of inter-Korean relations, and North Korea participated in the Pyeongchang Winter Olympic Games.6 He even had several historic summit meetings with South Korean president Moon Jae-in and U.S. president Donald Trump in 2018 and 2019. Kim Jong Un was trying to change the order of the Korean peninsula through a new charm offensive. In short, why did Pyongyang shift its footing from confrontation to cooperation and back again instead of maintaining a single nuclear policy? Then, which policy option did North Korean leaders perceive to involve greater risk? Given that every foreign policy option involves a certain amount of risk, the answer depends on the North Korean leadership’s assessment of the relative degrees of risk associated with each policy. In international relations, the case of the North Korean nuclear crisis raises the question of why a weaker nation often accepts the risk of challenging a stronger opponent despite the unfavorable balance of power. War is very costly and risky to all states, so it must be even riskier and potentially catastrophic to weaker states, given the power gap. Thus, the conventional wisdom in international relations posits that a weaker nation is less likely to challenge a stronger nation and risk war because no nation wants to start a losing war (Waltz 1979; Organski and Kugler 1980; Mearsheimer 1983; Kugler and Lemke 1996; Mearsheimer 2001). However, it should also be noted that the weaker may choose to fight against the stronger because they sometimes prefer saving face to being bullied. In reality, there have been a number of cases in which the weaker challenged and actually fought the stronger, and scholars have sought to explain such asymmetric conflicts on the basis of diverse theoretical frameworks (Paul 1994). This book addresses this issue by focusing on the concept of risk, that is, how national leaders of a weaker nation perceive the relative riskiness of foreign policy options and how the risk influences those leaders’ decision-making processes. Thus, the theoretical questions of this book are as follows: when do national leaders of a weaker state choose to take the risk of confronting a much stronger opponent, and when do they not? Why do they sometimes change their policy halfway through the crisis, although the initial condition leading to the policy did not change? To answer these questions, this book focuses on how leaders perceive and respond to risk in their foreign policy decision-making.