Reddit reviews Failed Diplomacy: The Tragic Story of How North Korea Got the Bomb

Thanks for the serious and academic reply!

Regarding their program being a bargaining chip - it was this way when they offered to reverse their decision during the 90s (after having left the NPT). They were of course serious then about building nuclear weapons - though willing to bargain it away for the assurances they felt they could have if they were build. If a state intends to use weapons capabilities as one of their bargaining chip they have to be serious about actually pursuing the capabilities or the threat has no teeth in the diplomacy. But anyway, the nuclear program began long, long before bilateral diplomacy (they had asked both China and the Soviet Union for help decades prior).

In the 90s they had intended to develop nuclear weapons because they saw the Soviet Union and the protection offered by great power balance collapse and because the US and ROK had been refusing international inspections programs to prove that they had themselves been removing nuclear warheads from the peninsula.

And NK did seriously suspend their nuclear program during the Agreed Framework under the Sunshine Policy - were serious about abandoning it for security assurances. NK had used their pursuit of a nuclear weapon as a bargaining chip for security assurances. US Ambassadors and Diplomats from Charles Pritchard to Wendy Sherman evaluate this as having nearly succeeded but for the massive change from the Clinton to Bush administrations, where Bush had tried to simultaneously use coercion and persuasion (these don't work well together), tactics to collapse the regime and prevented the US from fulfilling its side of the agreements. This curtled the DPRK trust in the United States, and they doubled down on their program, seeking deterrence from capability rather than deterrence from agreement. I wouldn't call progress on their program slow by any measure.

That's to say it's crucial to understand that the North had been bargaining for security against the actions it feared it needed to pursue nuclear weapons for in the first place.

"Nukes=sovereignty" isn't an equation I think anyone, including officials in the North would condone. Nukes contribute to certain security garuntees against particular types of military engagements. And in fact the ones they have now still wouldn't be capable of full deterrence. In the longer term, North Korea hopes to pursue a full nuclear triad - which gives much stronger deterrence guarantees. But they don't ensure diplomatic security, they don't ensure security against economic warfare, and they don't secure the regime against externally source destabilization operations. We both know that MAD alone isn't a reasonable or realistic metric. Agreed that the cost imposition is a real deterrent.

So anyway, agreed entirely it isn't black-and-white. It's just very much not right to say that strategic deterrence isn't a primary feature of the programme.

The opportune times in history to wipe out NK have been equally inopportune. In the mid 60s through early 80s, due to unpopular, brutal and expensive land wars in Asia, subsequent presidents were promising to remove US presence from the peninsula - and it was only through a very think ringer of bribes that military presence was kept. During the 80's there was some effort but NK was not a priority - having been off the front roster of the still ongoing Cold War for some time. Probably the best time would have been after the Soviet Union collapsed - but at this point the United States and ROK were engaged to try to include NK into the rest of the world economy and to build a peaceful coexistence. It's only when real efforts to collapse and occupy the regime went into affect that they abondoned the diplomatic track. We might have been able to pull it off then as well, except that expensive, brutal and unpopular ground wars in the Middle East kept our full attention.

> The two Koreas were separately admitted as member states to the UN in 1991.

> Having two separate seats despite a single language, culture and history is clearly not normal.

> This year marks the 25th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall. But the Korean Peninsula remains stifled by a wall of division.

> …

> I call on the international community to stand with us in tearing down the world’s last remaining wall of division.

> …

> A unified Korea will be the starting point for a world without nuclear weapons, offer a fundamental solution to the North Korean human rights issue, and help unlock a stable and cooperative Northeast Asia.

> …

> The founders of the UN were not deterred by the heat of war from looking to the future and planning for a peaceful post-war world.

President Park Geun-hye in an address to the UN on Korean Unification

Though I might also link her (very rare) public appeal to the ROK, in which she pitched occupation of the North a "bonanza". And the ROK's efforts to reeducate youth on the importance of reunification by altering school textbooks.

China created the rogue nuclear states of NK and Pakistan. It was brilliant on how it came about.

China gave their nuclear bomb designs to Pakistan, and missile technology to North Korea. Then NK and Pakistan swapped each other's technologies and acquired a full nuclear launch capability. All the while China claiming plausible deniability. This is classic back stabbing China. No surprise really.

>Although the Chinese profess to be against nuclear proliferation, documented evidence illustrates just the opposite -- as a means of asserting Chinese hegemony, complicating American security policy and undermining American influence.


Both North Korea and Pakistan are the bane of their existence to their neighbors. All thanks to China. What China has done to destabilize global security is unimaginable if not unpardonable.


Must read books on the subject.

Failed Diplomacy: The Tragic Story of How North Korea Got the Bomb

Eating Grass: The Making of the Pakistani Bomb

The China-Pakistan Axis: Asia's New Geopolitics

North Korea's Serious New Nuclear Missile Threat


Don't be surprised if one of these two rogue terrorist countries detonates the next nuclear weapon. Either intentional or stolen by jihadis. Just a matter of time. We can all thank China then.

Edit - word.