The Disappointments of Disengagement: Assessing Obama's North Korea Policy on JSTOR

The Disappointments of Disengagement: Assessing Obama's North Korea Policy on JSTOR




The Disappointments of Disengagement: Assessing Obama's North Korea Policy
John Delury
Asian Perspective
Vol. 37, No. 2 (Apr.-June 2013), pp. 149-182 (34 pages)
Published By: None

https://www.jstor.org/stable/42704824
As a presidential candidate, Barack Obama boldly promised to enhance US engagement with North Korea (Democratic People's Republic of Korea; DPRK). But in his first term as president, his administration was determined to significantly lower the foreign policy priority of North Korea and carried out a policy of concerted disengagement, an approach the administration called "strategic patience."

The strategy of disengagement showed disappointing results by late 2010, and so the United States made a begrudging, tactical adjustment by starting tentative bilateral talks with the DPRK. 

When the preliminary result of those talks — the "Leap Day Deal" — fell apart in 2012 over the satellite launch controversy, the wrong lesson was learned: that neither sanctions nor engagement works with Pyongyang. 

The real lesson of Obama ' s North Korea policy is the failure of disengagement.

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