CIAO DATE: 08/2012

Can North Korea nuclear crisis be resolved?

March 2012

Center for International Security and Cooperation

Abstract

I am optimistic in the long term but pessimistic in the short term that the nuclear crisis on the Korean peninsula can be resolved. The reason for my optimism in the long term is that Northeast Asia is the most dynamic, rapidly growing economic region of the world. North Korea is an island of instability in this sea of stability and growing prosperity. There is simply too much at stake for the surrounding countries to allow the nuclear crisis to destabilize the region and descend it into chaos. This situation is very different from Iran, the other current nuclear hotspot in the world. Iran represents a much greater global challenge because it is an island of instability in a sea of instability and turmoil, namely the greater Middle East. The reason I am pessimistic about resolving the North Korean nuclear crisis in the short term is that it will take time for Washington and Pyongyang to overcome the mistrust built up by five decades of enmity and two decades of contentious nuclear diplomacy. Moreover, the nuclear crisis cannot be resolved in isolation. It is imperative to address the long-standing problems created by the division of the Korean peninsula and the remnants of the Korean War. Pyongyang developed its nuclear program to help assure regime survival and, today, appears to be using it to forge an outcome far beyond what Pyongyang could achieve economically or through conventional military means. Pyongyang has survived by playing its poor hand to perfection in large part because the countries working to denuclearize the Korean peninsula have differing and conflicting interests in North Korea and the region.

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