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Nuclear North Korea: A Debate On Engagement Strategies
by Victor D. Cha

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<a href="http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/202347.Nuclear_North_Korea_A_Debate_On_Engagement_Strategies?utm_medium=api&amp;utm_source=blog_review" style="float: left; padding-right: 20px"><img alt="Nuclear North Korea: A Debate On Engagement Strategies" border="0" src="http://s3.amazonaws.com/photo.goodreads.com/books/1172640993m/202347.jpg" /></a> <a href="http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/202347.Nuclear_North_Korea_A_Debate_On_Engagement_Strategies?utm_medium=api&utm_source=blog_review">Nuclear North Korea: A Debate On Engagement Strategies</a> by <a href="http://www.goodreads.com/author/show/117965.Victor_D_Cha">Victor D. Cha</a> 
 <a href="http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/1017787?utm_medium=api&utm_source=blog_review"><h3>My review</h3></a>
 rating: 4 of 5 stars In this book Victor Cha and David Kang promise to apply social science to the debate of how to engage with North Korea, and step back from the histrionics [to] offer a reasoned, rational, and logical debate on the nature of the North Korean regime and the policy that should be followed by the United States, Japan, and South Korea?(4). Cha calls his position hawk engagement,?and it is that as North Korea becomes poorer, more castigated and generally more a vestige of a bygone era, it becomes more likely to lash out with force. Through prospect theory,Cha shows that North Korea is particularly susceptible to double-or-nothing logic, and that preemptive lashing out on its part would not be surprising. He believes, therefore, that North Korea should be engaged to mitigate potential risky behavior by North Korea. Kang, on the other hand, believes that because containment has worked so far, there is no reason to fundamentally change it. 
 
 Kang takes a more traditionally realist/deterrence approach in that he believes that because the DPRK has no real chance of winning a war against the ROK, it would never launch one. Engagement should be based on the belief that North Korea would like to terminate its rogue status. On balance, Kang's view and engagement proposal toward North Korea is more optimistic than Cha's. Cha stresses the punitive measures that should be taken against North Korea, should engagement fail to curb its nuclear appetite. Kang, on the other hand, believes that the DPRK is truly trying to reform itself, would like to be a part of the community of nations, and does not touch on issues regarding North Korean belligerence. 
 
 Kang and Cha do, however, agree on many issues, and they collaborate to write the last two chapters of the book. The most interesting contribution is their view on the future regional stability should the Korean peninsula reunify. They stress that better U.S-Japan-Korean trilateral relations are crucial to regional stability. They reject the notion that a threat must be present for alliances to exist. This strikes me as overly optimistic, and naive. They countenance such criticism by pointing to the alliances that exists between the U.S. and the U.K., and the U.S. and Australia. Perhaps also taking a page from the continued existence of NATO after the fall of the USSR, they state that such alliances can become permanent unions after the threat disappears because the alliances have identities based on common liberal-democratic values, norms, and institutions(180, 185). Aside from the many problems with such thinking, Cha himself wrote a book on the U.S.-Japan-Korean alliance and showed that Korea and Japan became closer only when the U.S. backed away from its commitment to Asian stability. They answer such criticism by stating that "the American position in Asia should therefore be recessed enough in this new arrangement to impart responsibilities on the allies to consolidate their relationship, but not so recessed that Japan and South Korea choose self-help solutions outside the alliance framework . . . "(176) 
 
 Such an assertion seems based more on hope than solid theory. The dynamic that Cha analyzes in the aforementioned book whereby Korean and Japanese relations improved when American commitment was on the wain existed during the Cold War when a bipolar system was in effect. In today's multipolar, or perhaps unipolar, world the same dynamic may not, and probably does not, exist. More thinking on alliance behavior in a multipolar environment needs to be done before we can begin to speculate on the best American options in a post-unified Korean Asia.
 <a href="http://www.goodreads.com/review/list/33765?utm_medium=api&utm_source=blog_review">View all my reviews.</a>

Justin's review
rating:
recommended for: North Korean Policy Nerds

In this book Victor Cha and David Kang promise to apply social science to the debate of how to engage with North Korea, and step back from the histrionics [to] offer a reasoned, rational, and logical debate on the nature of the North Korean regime and the policy that should be followed by the United States, Japan, and South Korea?(4). Cha calls his position hawk engagement,?and it is that as North Korea becomes poorer, more castigated and generally more a vestige of a bygone era, it becomes more likely to lash out with force. Through prospect theory,Cha shows that North Korea is particularly susceptible to double-or-nothing logic, and that preemptive lashing out on its part would not be surprising. He believes, therefore, that North Korea should be engaged to mitigate potential risky behavior by North Korea. Kang, on the other hand, believes that because containment has worked so far, there is no reason to fundamentally change it.

Kang takes a more traditionally realist/deterrence ...more In this book Victor Cha and David Kang promise to apply social science to the debate of how to engage with North Korea, and step back from the histrionics [to] offer a reasoned, rational, and logical debate on the nature of the North Korean regime and the policy that should be followed by the United States, Japan, and South Korea?(4). Cha calls his position hawk engagement,?and it is that as North Korea becomes poorer, more castigated and generally more a vestige of a bygone era, it becomes more likely to lash out with force. Through prospect theory,Cha shows that North Korea is particularly susceptible to double-or-nothing logic, and that preemptive lashing out on its part would not be surprising. He believes, therefore, that North Korea should be engaged to mitigate potential risky behavior by North Korea. Kang, on the other hand, believes that because containment has worked so far, there is no reason to fundamentally change it.

Kang takes a more traditionally realist/deterrence approach in that he believes that because the DPRK has no real chance of winning a war against the ROK, it would never launch one. Engagement should be based on the belief that North Korea would like to terminate its rogue status. On balance, Kang's view and engagement proposal toward North Korea is more optimistic than Cha's. Cha stresses the punitive measures that should be taken against North Korea, should engagement fail to curb its nuclear appetite. Kang, on the other hand, believes that the DPRK is truly trying to reform itself, would like to be a part of the community of nations, and does not touch on issues regarding North Korean belligerence.

Kang and Cha do, however, agree on many issues, and they collaborate to write the last two chapters of the book. The most interesting contribution is their view on the future regional stability should the Korean peninsula reunify. They stress that better U.S-Japan-Korean trilateral relations are crucial to regional stability. They reject the notion that a threat must be present for alliances to exist. This strikes me as overly optimistic, and naive. They countenance such criticism by pointing to the alliances that exists between the U.S. and the U.K., and the U.S. and Australia. Perhaps also taking a page from the continued existence of NATO after the fall of the USSR, they state that such alliances can become permanent unions after the threat disappears because the alliances have identities based on common liberal-democratic values, norms, and institutions(180, 185). Aside from the many problems with such thinking, Cha himself wrote a book on the U.S.-Japan-Korean alliance and showed that Korea and Japan became closer only when the U.S. backed away from its commitment to Asian stability. They answer such criticism by stating that "the American position in Asia should therefore be recessed enough in this new arrangement to impart responsibilities on the allies to consolidate their relationship, but not so recessed that Japan and South Korea choose self-help solutions outside the alliance framework . . . "(176)

Such an assertion seems based more on hope than solid theory. The dynamic that Cha analyzes in the aforementioned book whereby Korean and Japanese relations improved when American commitment was on the wain existed during the Cold War when a bipolar system was in effect. In today's multipolar, or perhaps unipolar, world the same dynamic may not, and probably does not, exist. More thinking on alliance behavior in a multipolar environment needs to be done before we can begin to speculate on the best American options in a post-unified Korean Asia....less

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