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Sovereignty, Legitimacy, and the Bomb : = A Framework for Explaining North Korea's Nuclear Decisions and Strategies.

Record Type:	Language materials, manuscript : Monograph/item
Title/Author:	Sovereignty, Legitimacy, and the Bomb :/
Reminder of title:	A Framework for Explaining North Korea's Nuclear Decisions and Strategies.
Author:	Hutchinson, George A.
Description:	1 online resource (491 pages)
Notes:	Source: Dissertations Abstracts International, Volume: 84-11, Section: A.
Contained By:	Dissertations Abstracts International84-11A.
Subject:	Public policy. -
Online resource:	click for full text (PQDT)
ISBN:	9798379536718

Sovereignty, Legitimacy, and the Bomb : = A Framework for Explaining North Korea's Nuclear Decisions and Strategies.
Hutchinson, George A.

Sovereignty, Legitimacy, and the Bomb :A Framework for Explaining North Korea's Nuclear Decisions and Strategies. - 1 online resource (491 pages)

Source: Dissertations Abstracts International, Volume: 84-11, Section: A.

Thesis (Ph.D.)--George Mason University, 2023.

Includes bibliographical references

North Korea has come to be a de facto nuclear weapons state. Kim Jong Un continues to build and add to an increasingly formidable triad of air, land, and sea-based nuclear weaponry, the use of which is governed by a new doctrine of preemption and backed by Kim's open declaration to never denuclearize. The attainment of Kim's "treasured sword" caps a many-decades journey through which North Korea weathered mostly U.S.-led efforts initially meant to prevent, and then later, to dismantle its atomic weapons program. The limits to U.S. coercion vis-a-vis North Korea are generally well understood. Wanting to avoid the calamitous destruction of war on the Korean Peninsula, the U.S. has been unable to fully back coercive diplomacy with military force and no combination of carrots or sticks has been capable of inducing North Korean denuclearization. There is much less consensus, however, regarding the Kim dynasty's nuclear motivations and the factors that have shaped them.While there is widespread scholarly agreement on defensive rationale, namely "regime survival" and "deterrence," to explain North Korea's nuclear motivations, many are reluctant to push beyond this. This dissertation posits that the defensive explanation is incomplete at best, and perilous at worst for South Korea. While the co-existence of two separate, sovereign Koreas has settled into normative acceptance within the current international system, the question over Korean legitimacy remains caught in a state-on-state rivalry where questions over survival and security remain trapped in a powder keg-the "Korea question" remains unresolved. Thus, to capture the full range of motivations, this dissertation looks through a Realist lens to address the particularities of North Korea's pursuit of nuclear weapons. A novel conceptual framework is employed in a single case study to longitudinally trace major nuclear decisions and identify strategies used to advance North Korea's nuclear program.Several hypotheses derived from the theoretical assumptions of Offensive Realism are tested against the causal chains developed in the case study. Results suggest that nuclear weapons do help to ensure the survival of the Kim regime through the security provided in the form of deterrence. However, North Korea's layered deterrence-directed at the U.S. mainland, the region, and South Korea-not only shields it from attacks, but also provides the freedom to escalate or de-escalate and probe below the threshold of armed conflict. Nuclear weapons also give North Korea-a country that has struggled with legitimacy as a "rogue" in the current international system-de facto "nuclear state" status, optimizing its power within the region and arming it with the potential, should regional political, military, and economic conditions within the changing international system turn in its favor, to compel South Korea and allow it to gain total sovereign control as the hegemon of the Korean Peninsula-a very real possibility should the U.S. lose its footing in Northeast Asia. This would practically guarantee survival of the Kim regime.Based on the findings in this dissertation, the following recommendations are offered for policymakers, strategists, and other practitioners in the fields of foreign policy, defense policy, and nuclear proliferation to consider for incorporation or further study: (1) Recognize and appreciate the limitations of U.S. coercive policy; (2) avoid U.S.-DPRK "arms control talks"; (3) understand and appreciate North Korea's true negotiating objectives; (4) thoroughly grasp North Korea's increasingly offensive motives; and (5) study the possibility of supporting South Korean nuclear parity.

Electronic reproduction.
Ann Arbor, Mich. :
ProQuest,
2024

Mode of access: World Wide Web

ISBN: 9798379536718Subjects--Topical Terms:

1002398
Public policy.
Subjects--Index Terms:

Agreed frameworkIndex Terms--Genre/Form:

554714
Electronic books.

Sovereignty, Legitimacy, and the Bomb : = A Framework for Explaining North Korea's Nuclear Decisions and Strategies.
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