Critical Studies on Security

ISSN: 2162-4887 (Print) 2162-4909 (Online) Journal homepage: http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/rcss20

A nuclear North Korea and the limitations of US

security perspectives

Danielle Chubb

To cite this article: Danielle Chubb (2017): A nuclear North Korea and the limitations of US
security perspectives, Critical Studies on Security, DOI: 10.1080/21624887.2017.1409560

To link to this article: https://doi.org/10.1080/21624887.2017.1409560

Published online: 02 Dec 2017.

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 CRITICAL STUDIES ON SECURITY, 2017
https://doi.org/10.1080/21624887.2017.1409560

ARTICLE

A nuclear North Korea and the limitations of US security

perspectives
Danielle Chubb
School of Humanities and Social Sciences, Deakin University, Burwood, Australia

ABSTRACT KEYWORDS
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If the United States’ main strategic policy priority on the Korean North Korea; construction of
peninsula has been preventing the North Korea from developing a security; critical security; US
nuclear capability, US policy has failed manifestly. How did we get foreign policy; risk; nuclear
here? What is it about the ideas that lie behind the creation of US diplomacy
policy towards North Korea that seem to rule out, time and time
again, the possibility that casting aside preconditions and enga-
ging in serious attempts at dialogue with North Korea might once
more be worth a try, with the stakes so high? In this article, I argue
that a social logic of risk led to a very specific construction of the
North Korean threat in US foreign policymaking under Obama,
which constrained the options policymakers believed to be open
to them.

In 2017, tensions between North Korea and the United States rose to new levels. For its
part, North Korea launched a series of missile tests, demonstrating trajectories that could
reach the continental United States, and conducted its sixth nuclear test, producing a
yield far exceeding previous tests. In response, President Trump expressed his frustration
via twitter, threatening to respond with ‘fire and fury’.
Back in 2007, Roland Bleiker (2007, 215) warned that continued escalation between
North Korea and the United States would ‘substantially increase the risk of a nuclear
arms race in the region and an escalation of the security situation with possible global
consequences’. He identified US policy as the key source of insecurity on the Korean
Peninsula, arguing that the confrontational approach adopted by the Bush administra-
tion escalated tensions, undermined South Korea’s efforts at engagement and ultimately
perpetuated the security dilemmas confronting the Korean peninsula. We must, Bleiker
(2007, 226) concluded, recognise the ‘interactive dynamics entailed in security dilemmas’
and deal with North Korea as it is, not as we might wish it to be.
Bleiker’s analysis has proven remarkably prescient. In the intervening decade, North
Korea’s nuclear ambitions have been realised, throwing the security regime on the
peninsula into crisis. This has happened in the context of a relatively static American
response; the security perspective that shapes US policy towards North Korea has failed
to take into account the interactive nature of the conflict and has thus not significantly
changed. In the article to follow, I argue that, while the Obama administration moved
away from an outwardly confrontational posture towards North Korea, the underlying

CONTACT Danielle Chubb danielle.chubb@deakin.edu.au

© 2017 York University
 2 D. CHUBB

pathologies that informed US policy during this time hindered an adequate under-
standing of what was required to shift Pyongyang’s resolution to develop a nuclear
capability.
If the United States’ main strategic policy priority on the Korean peninsula has been
preventing the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK) from developing a nuclear
capability, US policy has failed manifestly. How then did we get here? What are the ideas
that inform US policy and how do they preclude the possibility of dialogue, without
preconditions? A common refrain, heard in Washington DC and other strategic policy
circles, is that North Korea – a detestable, norms-violating, human-rights abusing state –
does not play by the rules of the game. There is of course little to commend the North
Korean regime, especially with regard to its human rights record. Yet, a refusal to
recognise North Korea as a legitimate negotiating partner on these grounds has
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moved us further away from peace and stability on the Korean peninsula. When it
comes to overcoming the entrenched patterns of conflict that threaten so many lives,
the inability of successive administrations to cast aside ideas about the kind of state
North Korea might be, and deal with the pressing security questions at hand, has proven
dangerous.
Is the answer to the question raised above (how did we get here?) simply that, for a
state such as the United States – with its liberal institutions and ideational framework –
engaging with an aggressively and proudly illiberal state was out of the question? In
John Owen’s (1997, 22) formulation, the source of the idea that North Korea is a threat to
the United States is liberal ideology: ‘liberalism pulls liberal states away from war with
some states, and sometimes pushes them toward war with others’. But while liberal
ideology has undoubtedly played a role in the foreign policy choices made by the
Obama administration (discussed further below), this alone cannot explain why this
same ideological infrastructure prioritised dialogue in some instances (Iran, Cuba) but
not others (North Korea). In this article, I argue that a social logic of risk (Clapton and
Hameiri 2012) led to a very specific construction of the North Korean threat in US foreign
policymaking under Obama, which caused certain risk scenarios to dominate and
constrain the imagination of policymakers. A social logic of risk, then, and the conco-
mitant threat constructions that risk analysis involves, was at the heart of security
approaches to North Korea during the Obama administration. This is evident in both
the discourse and policy of the United States, in its efforts to curb the country’s nuclear
ambitions.

Interpreting North Korea: risk, threat and securitisation

In security studies, when it comes to the study of North Korea, shifting the question from
‘what can the international community do to stop North Korea’s belligerent, bellicose
behaviour?’ to ‘what is the relationship between the international community and North
Korea and how might this be contributing to North Korea’s belligerent, bellicose
behaviour?’ is still viewed as deeply radical: naive at best and potentially dangerous.
While critical scholarship on security policy towards North Korea is sparse, some scholars
have examined the evolution of North Korea in US security thinking and highlighted a
particular tendency towards the securitisation of the North Korean threat through a
rogue state narrative (Bleiker 2003; Homolar 2011; Smith 2000).1 This scholarship
 CRITICAL STUDIES ON SECURITY 3

challenges dominant approaches (which tend to take the extant security dilemmas on
the peninsula as a by-product of North Korea’s inevitable reversion to nuclear brinks-
manship) by offering an alternative formulation of the dilemma, which highlights the
intersubjective nature of threat perceptions and the ways in which problematic identity
constructs that portray North Korea as a ‘rogue state’ lead to an inexorable situation of
insecurity. The work shares a concern that the designation of North Korea as a rogue
state delimits discussions of policy alternatives. It argues that the perceived distinctive-
ness of the North Korean threat and the risk it poses is at least partly the result of the
ideas adopted by policymakers and their advisors as they seek to portray North Korea as
a ‘special case’ with distinctive characteristics. It is to this small but important body of
work that this article contributes.
During the Bush administration, and particularly in the early years (2001–2005), US
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policy towards North Korea developed as a product of the hawkish beliefs driving key
personalities within the new leadership. Rather than building on the experiences of the
Clinton administration in its attempts to negotiate with North Korea and steer the
country away from its proliferation path, the new defence and security policy cohort
chose to take a hard-line stance on North Korea. North Korea policy during these years
was largely steered by individuals who had been openly disdainful of the 1994 Agreed
Framework as a way to deal with North Korea’s nuclear ambitions: Dick Cheney, Donald
Rumsfeld, Paul Wolfowitz, Richard Perle and John Bolton (Chinoy 2008, 37–45; Moore
2012, 145–125; Pritchard 2007, 45–56).2 Vice President Cheney expressed particularly
strong views in this regard and argued that the only way to prevent proliferation on the
peninsula was through regime change (Clemens 2010, 137). The Perry Report was
abandoned and was disregarded, and a new review into North Korea commissioned.3
Not all Bush administration officials were hardliners, and there was some rivalry
between those within the administration who were opposed to the Agreed
Framework and thought that the United States could achieve its goals more efficiently
by acting unilaterally, and those – like Secretary of State Colin Powell and Special Envoy
for talks with North Korea, Charles (Jack) Pritchard – who were willing to give engage-
ment a try as the ‘least bad option in dealing with Pyongyang’ (Wit, Poneman, and
Galluci 2004, 377; Moore 2012, 125).4 Ultimately, however, in the months following the
September 11 terrorist attacks, President Bush labelled North Korea as part of the ‘axis of
evil’ and suggested that pre-emptive strikes were on the table. By the time Assistant
Secretary of State5 James Kelly visited Pyongyang in 2002, confrontational rhetoric had
escalated. And while details of what exactly happened in Pyongyang after North Korea
acknowledged the existence of its Highly Enriched Uranium Program remain hazy,6 in
the months to follow the visit the Agreed Framework fell completely apart (Wit,
Poneman, and Galluci 2004, 377–379).
US security perspectives on North Korea shifted in the matter of just a few years, from
a sometimes clumsy, but nonetheless relatively nuanced effort to recognise North Korea
as a plausible negotiating partner (under Clinton), to one that viewed North Korea
unequivocally as a hostile, untrustworthy rogue, with whom deal-making was impossible
(under Bush). This took place against a broader backdrop of US unilateral action on the
world stage, in direct abrogation of international law, which had caused great damage
to America’s global reputation.7 As Presidential candidate, Barack Obama declared he
would work to repair this damage, naming North Korea as a target of renewed dialogue
 4 D. CHUBB

and engagement (Raum 2007). Yet, despite the new President’s professed desire to
move away from what Smith (2000) calls the securitised discourse of North Korea as
‘mad’ and ‘bad’, the relationship between the two countries remained at a standstill for
the entirety of Obama’s two Presidential terms. How can we understand the inability of
US policymakers during this period to arrest the trajectory of North Korea’s nuclear
programme? There was more at play than simply a deeply internalised securitisation
framework. As I suggest above, a social logic of risk thinking has structured security
policy towards North Korea, prioritising particular responses to North Korean provoca-
tions while ruling out others. In the next section, I briefly review the concept of risk in
security studies scholarship before turning to the social logic of risk argument and a
description of the methodological approach that informs the article’s final section.
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Risk and security

The designation of a risk in any given context is intrinsically an interpretive act for, as
Campell argues, ‘not all risks are equal … there is such an abundance of risk [in modern
society] that it is impossible to objectively know all that threatens us’. As such, desig-
nated risks, like North Korea, earn their title ‘only through an interpretation of their
various dimensions of dangerousness’ (Campbell 1992, 2). The processes that have led to
the assignation of North Korea as ‘risk’ can usefully be conceptualised as socially
embedded. Uncovering the ways in which the North Korean security problem is con-
stituted through the framework of risk allows us to better understand why certain
responses to North Korea’s proliferation activities tend to emerge rather than others,
as well as the ways in which these responses are both contextually and temporally
bound.
The starting point for much risk-security analysis is Beck’s (1992) ‘world risk society’
(Risikogesellschaft): a ‘systematic way of dealing with hazards and insecurities induced
and introduced by modernisation’. Beck (1999, 2007) argues that this ‘modernisation’, in
a post-Cold War environment, is characterised by less stable power structures, growing
secularisation, greater interdependence and significant advancements in technology.
Risk society is thus equated with uncertainty, danger and unpredictability and the
concept of risk has been adopted by Western governments as a way of coming to
terms with the insecurity of modern society. Scholars of strategy see this risk society as
central to understanding the rationale behind contemporary Western security, where
governments turn to strategies such as precaution and pre-emption in the face of risk
strategy (Edmunds 2012; Rasmussen 2006, 2–3).
When it comes to a critical application of Beck’s insights to security studies, con-
structivist scholars in the international relations tradition run into problems with Beck’s
‘constructionist realism’. While risk identification and management may be the product
of social contestation, Beck argues that risks are necessarily materially real. Distinct from
this ‘weak’ Beckian social constructionist perspective is a stronger version that places the
question of culture at the centre. This draws on the work of cultural anthropologist Mary
Douglas who examines the role that risk plays as a strategy for identifying difference and
maintaining external borders.8 The sociocultural approach associated with Douglas
brings with it the insight that identity-formation influences risk perception and helps
uncover the ways in which the situated context of risk assessments should be taken
 CRITICAL STUDIES ON SECURITY 5

seriously. Rather than engage in debate over the ontological nature of risk, this article
draws on these ideas around identity formation and adopts risk as an interpretive
framework.9 In doing so, I seek to answer three central questions: what is the situated
context of risk? How do the discourses and practices around risk operate in the
construction of subjectivity?10 How has a risk logic enabled or constrained certain policy
responses to North Korea during the Obama administration?
In order to uncover whether treatment of North Korea as risk constrains possible
policy responses, we must first identify whether a social logic of risk is at play. According
to the social logic that underpins risk thinking, as identified by Clapton and Hameiri
(2012), failing states are seen as ‘riskised’ states and subject to risk management
(Clapton 2011). Riskiness in this sense is defined as ‘the absence or weakness of state
capacity’ and is underpinned by a social logic that supports hierarchical relationships in
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international society: undemocratic states thus constitute security risks (Clapton and
Hameiri 2012, 61). While the North Korean regime exerts significant control within the
country, it fulfils the ‘failing state’ definition, where the legitimacy of the North Korean
state is tied up with undemocratic control. Its capacity relies on the continued subjuga-
tion of its population; it is a ‘failing’ state in terms of its tenuous and conditional hold on
power. In the 2017 Fragile States Index, North Korea received a maximum score of 10.0
for political legitimacy, placing it at the top of this category for state failure.11 The North
Korean state’s nuclear posturing is often read through this risk lens, seen as an effort by
the regime to assert itself domestically as well as internationally. In a 2015 YouTube
interview, for example, Obama (The White House 2015) linked the repressive nature of
the regime and its military infrastructure:

North Korea is the most isolated, the most sanctioned, the most cut off nation on earth. And
the kind of authoritarianism that exists there you almost can’t duplicate anywhere else. It’s
brutal, it’s oppressive and as a consequence the country can’t really even feed its own
people…. Our capacity to effect change in North Korea is somewhat limited because you
have a million person army, and they have nuclear technologies and missiles, that’s all they
spend their money on essentially, is on their war machinery.

Implicit in statements like this is an understanding that the longevity of the North
Korean regime is contingent upon ability to retain its legitimacy domestically, through
a combination of repression and propaganda. What remains unknown is how far the
regime is prepared to go, to secure its own survival. It is not just North Korea’s
possession of a nuclear capability that is worrisome; the world has long lived with states
possessing nuclear weapons outside the institutional proliferation structure. Rather,
North Korea has been riskised for reasons that go beyond the normal realm of security
politics.
The ‘rogue state’ analytical framework helps uncover instances in US foreign policy
where global threats were perceived through a binary conception of good and evil. It
is less helpful in trying to explain policy under Obama, where the state department
reached out to other formerly ‘rogue’ states such as Iran and Cuba. The risk logic
applies to North Korea, as a state whose ‘risky’ domestic policies, lack of neoliberal
internal governance and tenuous, but brutal, hold on power renders North Korea a
security risk (Clapton and Hameiri 2012, 66). The social logic of risk thus underpins
the hierarchical relationship the Unites States sees itself as having with North Korea.12
 6 D. CHUBB

North Korea is ever the more threatening in its refusal to submit to such a hierarchy.
Faced with the social logic of risk, whereby the absence of liberal structures embodies
riskiness, Western governments have narrowed for themselves the range of ‘appro-
priate’ responses. As Clapton (2011, 56) argues, we cannot fully comprehend risk
management ‘without first examining the centrality of Western values of liberty and
democracy to the process of anticipating and defining risks and the selection of
appropriate responses to them’.

Risk, security and North Korea

The existence of a social logic of risk underpinning US policy towards North Korea is
evident through an examination of US policy responses to North Korean actions. I first
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explore the situated context of risk by surveying the degree to which risk plays into
the strategic frameworks that guided US policy during the Obama administration. By
asking ‘what is the situated context in which North Korea is defined as a risk?’, it is
possible to uncover some of the problematic patterns of thinking about North Korea
that may have led to a narrowing of possible policy futures. I then examine the
discourses and practices of risk, by parsing the official statements issued by the
White House in response to North Korean provocations, as well as interpreting
American reactions to North Korea in response to various missile and nuclear tests.
What characteristics of North Korea are highlighted in these statements? Are they
simply objective assessments of relevant information regarding North Korea’s strategic
policy and likely nuclear doctrine? Or do subjective assessments of North Korea’s
identity find their way into responses to security crises?

The situated context: risk and security perspectives under Obama

The White House’s 2015 National Security Strategy, which guided US strategic doctrine
during the Obama administration’s second term, is replete with references to risk. In the
paper’s foreword, President Obama opens with the counter positioning of a strong
America against ‘the risks of an insecure world’. The word risk then appears three
times on the first page of the Security Strategy proper. It begins with an immediate
reference to risk (‘risks to our security remain’), quickly listing nuclear proliferation and
economic slowdown among these risks and placing US effectiveness at responding to
risk in the context of the cooperation of ‘major powers’. While the 2015 Military Strategy
favours the more concrete ‘threat’ referent rather than ‘risk’, it does not shy away from
the idea that unknowability is a feature of world politics. Indeed, a feature of the 2015
Military Strategy is the frankness with which it acknowledges the high level of uncer-
tainty within which US foreign and defence policy operate. Like the 2015 Security
Strategy, the 2015 Military Strategy begins with reference to unknowability: ‘Today’s
global security environment’, cautions the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, ‘is the
most unpredictable I have seen in 40 years of service’. Such unpredictability, the paper
makes clear, stems from two sources: ‘violent extremist organizations’ and ‘revisionist
states that are challenging international norms’. While it stays away from the inflamma-
tory ‘axis of evil’ language that featured in early Bush administration rhetoric, the 2015
Military Strategy openly identifies states that it accuses of ‘attempting to revise key
 CRITICAL STUDIES ON SECURITY 7

aspects of the international order and … acting in a manner that threatens our national
security interests’: Russia, Iran, North Korea and, with some caveats, China.
The treatment of North Korea as risk under the Obama administration came
despite strong statements, during the election campaign, regarding the need to
change track on what Obama saw as the damaging isolation of US adversaries. He
promised a more nuanced foreign policy approach that would allow room for
dialogue with so-called rogue nations. From the beginning of his campaign, Obama
expressed willingness to meet with leaders of the United States’ biggest foreign
policy adversaries, listing North Korea alongside Iran, Syria and Cuba, among others.
‘The notion that somehow not talking to countries is punishment to them – which
has been the guiding diplomatic principle of this [the George W. Bush] administra-
tion – is ridiculous’, he said during a Democratic Primary debate. As Presidential
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candidate, Obama continued to push for what he called ‘tough, direct diplomacy’
(2008a) arguing that Pyongyang’s nuclear weapons programmes ‘only expanded
while we refused to talk’ (2008b).

2009: Obama, Prague and the rocket launch

Of course, Pyongyang greeted the newly inaugurated Obama administration with a
long-range rocket test, followed by a second nuclear test, just months into its first
term. It was an inauspicious start for US–North Korea relations. The initial rocket launch
took place hours before Obama was scheduled to deliver a set of public remarks in
Prague. In this speech, he would lay the foundations for his administration’s commit-
ment to achieving a nuclear-free world through working with international institutions,
one of the cornerstones of his foreign policy agenda.
The rocket launch seemed to break any resolve within the Obama team to invest
political or diplomatic capital into its relationship with the DPRK. Following the
Presidential election and prior to Obama’s inauguration, members of his transition
team had met with North Korean diplomats through the ‘New York channel’, to discuss
informally the future of US–DPRK relations. The message transmitted to Pyongyang was
that the new President was serious in his intention to engage in dialogue at the highest
levels. This message was accompanied by an urging to not put this opportunity of
rapprochement in jeopardy through provocative actions such as rocket or missile tests.13
The rocket launch in direct contravention of this advice thus placed a pall over the
prospect of a closer US–DPRK relationship.
Perhaps unsurprisingly, the rocket launch was treated as a provocation and
explicit signal from the North Koreans that they were not interested in dialogue
and did not intend to abide by the rules of the liberal international order. This
interpretation failed to account for other possible explanations for the ill-timed test:
an attempt by Kim Jong Il (recovering from a stroke) to signal domestically his
strength as leader or the rocket being simply ready to launch and the DPRK decid-
ing – ill-advisedly – to stick to its predetermined testing schedule. What matters for
this analysis is that, no matter the reasoning behind the actions, the illiberal beha-
viour of the DPRK was particularly damaging for newly inaugurated President
Obama, who had sought to differentiate himself on foreign policy by stressing the
importance of international norms, laws, regimes and institutions. In his speech in
 8 D. CHUBB

Prague that very day, Obama (2009a) made his foreign policy position towards North
Korea clear:
We go forward [towards a nuclear free world] with no illusions. Some countries will break
the rules. That’s why we need a structure in place that ensures when any nation does, they
will face consequences. Just this morning, we were reminded again of why we need a new
and more rigorous approach to address this threat.… Now is the time for a strong interna-
tional response, and North Korea must know that the path to security and respect will never
come through threats and illegal weapons.

The response from the United States to the rocket launch was thus unambiguous: we
have no tolerance for rule-breaking. Following this, efforts to mend the US–DPRK
relationship seemed to be relegated to a lower priority on the Obama administration’s
‘to-do’ list. For, despite continually listing North Korea as a high foreign policy priority
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and problem, the Obama administration has, for the most part, exhibited little energy or
motivation to move forward with such a difficult negotiating partner and has turned its
attention elsewhere (Delury 2013, 149, 156). The 2009 nuclear test, which closely
followed the rocket launch, firmly closed the lid on any prospects for immediate
dialogue.

Talking about risk: liberal governance, the ‘rules’ of engagement and the logic of
‘strategic patience’
The de-prioritisation of North Korea under Obama is often explained through the lens of
inevitability. That, despite clear signals that Obama was willing to deal directly with
Pyongyang in good faith, Pyongyang destroyed any chance of this happening with its
provocative actions, clearly directed at the country’s ongoing proliferation, which flew in
the face of one of the US President’s major foreign policy objectives and constituted such
a high risk to American security that a strong, punitive reaction was required (Cha 2009).
Otherwise put, North Korea blew its chance at becoming a high priority negotiating target
of the Obama administration. This reading of history suggests that the United States had
no other choice but to react the way it did.
An alternative reading rejects the assumption of inevitability and instead takes
seriously the situated context in which North Korea has been designated a risk. This
speaks to the questions raised by Lupton (1999, 33) which seek to uncover how under-
standings of risk are ‘constructed and acted upon’. Importantly, she asks how ‘rules’,
which emerge in certain historical moments and contexts, ‘prescribe certain ways of
talking about risk and exclude others’. The Obama administration became entrenched in
a position that required the United States to react punitively to any North Korean
abrogation of international law, usually through the imposition of further sanctions.
We now know that even before the 2009 rocket launch and nuclear test, disillusion-
ment seemed to be setting in among Washington insiders regarding the prospect of
significantly adjusting US policy towards North Korea. Efforts to reach out to North Korea
through the New York Channel notwithstanding, there seemed to be ‘little appetite’ in
the US capital for the amelioration of US–DPRK relations (International Crisis Group 2009;
Snyder 2009). Bader (2012, 28), who served the Obama administration on the National
Security Council, recounts that ‘the consensus both within the Obama administration
 CRITICAL STUDIES ON SECURITY 9

and within the intelligence community was that North Korea was determined to main-
tain its nuclear weapons program, regardless of its commitments’. In a risk society,
diplomacy is predicated on a social logic of risk whereby riskised states are expected
to submit to the hierarchy of international society (Clapton and Hameiri 2012, 68). When
North Korea refuses to accept these norms, the social logic of risk places it outside
normal diplomatic practice.
Obama’s framing of his global leadership in terms of international legal norms ended
up functioning as the ‘rules’ that determined how the United States would talk about,
and act upon, North Korea. The Prague speech on a nuclear-free world, given just
8 hour's after the rocket launch, became an important part of Obama’s personal foreign
policy legacy and was a decisive factor in the Nobel Committee’s decision to award him
the 2009 Nobel Peace Prize. In his Nobel Prize acceptance speech, Obama (2009b) spoke
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of the central role that international institutions, treaties and declarations play in helping
avoid the use of force. He focused in particular on the importance of the Non-
Proliferation Treaty (NPT), a commitment to which would act as a ‘centrepiece’ in his
foreign policy agenda. And he reminded the international community that it is incum-
bent ‘upon all of us’ to prevent states such as North Korea from breaking the rules:
‘Those who claim to respect international law cannot avert their eyes when those laws
are flouted’ (Obama 2009b). During the United States’ closing statement at the 2010 NPT
review conference, the US representative again made clear the administration’s scepti-
cism towards negotiating with North Korea. ‘North Korea’s behaviour’, she declared,
‘particularly its failure to implement its commitments under the Six Party Talks … calls
into question the utility of negotiations with North Korea’. Further, the representative
made clear that future dialogue would only take place ‘if North Korea takes early and
irreversible steps to return to compliance with the NPT … and establishes through
action its credibility as a negotiating partner’ (U.S. Department of State 2010). This
insistence on North Korea making unilateral progress on disarmament before any type
of engagement could take place, as well as a refusal to acknowledge the role the United
States played in the breakdown of the six-party talks, was a theme that repeated itself
through the two terms of the Obama administration.
With a social logic of risk structuring strategic policy towards North Korea, the Obama
administration found itself with very few tools at its disposal for dealing with the reality
of Pyongyang. Importantly, the designation of North Korea as risk implied that there was
no space for trust, as the regime responsible for the risk proliferation has by its nature
rejected the core liberal tenants of trust and cooperation that international institutions
and laws are predicated on. The idea that meaningful dialogue can only occur if North
Korea first takes unilateral steps towards denuclearisation is born directly of the idea of
North Korea as risk. It prescribes how policymakers and officials talk about North Korea,
and forecloses other options, including those advocated by a series of long-time North
Korea analysts.
Outside the White House, such options were advocated by East Asia security experts.
In a briefing paper published in anticipation of the 2009 rocket launch, the International
Crisis Group’s Seoul office warned the international community of the dangers of over-
reaction to any prospective launch, observing that the Bush administration’s tactic of
switching between hard-line approaches and diplomatic overtures had the net effect of
exacerbating insecurity in the region. While noting that there would be little tolerance
 10 D. CHUBB

among US legislators to move forward with engagement after a launch, the Crisis Group
briefing argued that Washington did indeed have a choice: wait a few months and
proceed with diplomatic processes (International Crisis Group 2009). Throughout the
course of 2009, further options for engaging North Korea were also proffered.14 None of
these, however, fitted with how the Obama administration had framed its pursuit of
non-proliferation, and North Korea was singled out as a risk to this regime. The result
was what became known as ‘Strategic Patience’, an approach to North Korea that
avoided unnecessary antagonism on behalf of the United States, instead focusing on
the imposition of sanctions in response to violations of international law, and a will-
ingness to wait for North Korea to change before any progress in US–DPRK relations
could be made.
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Failed attempts at dialogue: 2011 and 2015

To argue that a social logic of risk underpinned US policy is not to discount the fact that
real debates have been taking place among policymakers, advisers and Washington
insiders since the early 1990s regarding the utility (or futility) of various approaches to
North Korea. It is evident that there were those within the Obama administration who
resisted the framework imposed by a social logic of risk and argued for meaningful
engagement with North Korea. In late 2011, for example, the United States resumed
negotiations with North Korea. In what is now known as the ‘Leap Day deal’ (but was in
reality a pair of parallel, unilateral statements following bilateral talks), the United States
promised specific food aid while the DPRK agreed to a moratorium on missile launches
and nuclear activities, alongside the return of International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA)
inspectors.15 There was a promise of more bilateral negotiations to come (Economist
2012). This all fell apart after the United States reacted strongly to North Korea’s two
satellite launches in 2012, after which the DPRK followed up with a nuclear test in
February 2013. The satellite tests were hailed by engagement sceptics within US foreign
policymaking circles as evidence that negotiations with North Korea are doomed to fail.
As a result, rather than treating the launches as a frustrating set-back, the entire leap day
deal was abandoned.
In the context of widespread international speculation about the durability of the
new leader and the North Korean state, the 2012 satellite launches were in fact entirely
consistent with North Korean behaviour and thus should not have brought down the
entire scaffolding of the Leap Day deal. The Obama administration’s approach to non-
proliferation, and its legitimacy in this regard, was tied up with a strictly legalistic
interpretation of acceptable behaviour. The social logic that underpinned the decision
to abandon efforts at engagement in response to the launch, rather than review policy
in the way the Clinton administration did in 1998 through the Perry Report, privileged
the idea that North Korea is a risk precisely because of its refusal to conform. The
Leap Day deal broke down because of a social logic that saw rule breaking through one
lens only: that of a risk-prone, illiberal outlier, with whom negotiating was futile.
In late 2015, the United States once again claimed to have dropped preconditions for
talking to North Korea, with US envoy to North Korea, Ambassador Sung Kim, offering to
meet with North Korean officials ‘anytime, anywhere’ for exploratory talks. The aim,
according to Ambassador Kim, was to ‘sit down with the North Koreans to test their
 CRITICAL STUDIES ON SECURITY 11

commitment … [and] reaffirm their commitment to denuclearization’ (Chang 2015).

Ultimately, these talks did not come to fruition, again stymied by North Korea’s insis-
tence that a peace treaty should be the first order of business, as well as by the United
States continuing to demand unilateral progress on denuclearisation before any dialo-
gue on peace mechanisms. North Korea’s unwillingness to compromise on these prin-
ciples in late 2015 stands in contrast to the attempts made by Pyongyang, earlier in
the year, to modulate its hard-line position. Then, the DPRK had offered a provocative
bargain: it would suspend nuclear testing in return for the suspension of the annual US–
South Korea joint military exercises. Rather than seeing the ‘freeze for a freeze’ proposal
a starting point for negotiation, the United States rejected it out of hand, calling it an
‘implicit threat’ (U.S. Department of State 2015). A few weeks later, in a live-streamed
YouTube interview, President Obama spoke openly of his belief that the North Korean
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regime would eventually collapse and that this was something ‘we’re constantly looking
for ways to accelerate’ (The White House 2015).

The 2016 nuclear tests

By 2016, it was undeniable that North Korea was making significant progress on its
nuclear programme The US response remained the same: North Korea is an isolated,
irresponsible, unstable and illiberal outlier, and must be treated as such. In a press
briefing shortly after the January 2016 nuclear test, White House Press Secretary Josh
Earnest reinforced the US position that dialogue could not take place in the absence of
unilateral steps, on the part of North Koreans, towards denuclearisation. The best way to
‘reinforce that message’, he noted, is to ‘consider additional options to further isolate
them’ (Earnest 2016b). A month later, the Press Secretary highlighted that North Korea
was not only weak but also illiberal: ‘the North Korean economy is already really weak;
that there are millions of innocent North Koreans that are suffering because of the way
the government chooses to run the country’ (Earnest 2016a). Perhaps, most strikingly
was the response of President Obama himself. In an April interview with CBS host Charlie
Rose, he frames the North Korean issue as an intractable one, for which the only possible
short-term solution – a military strike – was only off the table because of the likely
humanitarian consequences, as well as geopolitical constraints:
They [the North Koreans] are erratic enough, their leader is personally irresponsible enough
that we don’t want them getting close [to perfecting a missile delivery system]…. We could,
obviously, destroy North Korea with our arsenals. But aside from the humanitarian costs of
that, they are right next door to our vital ally, Republic of Korea (Rose 2016).

The US response to the September 2016 test echoed the reactions 9 months earlier. It
highlighted the DPRK’s non-normative, erratic and illiberal nature and talked strongly in
terms of the consequences of further isolation from the community of states. The official
Presidential statement commenced with a condemnation of the test as a ‘grave threat
to … international peace and stability’ and a clear indication of ‘North Korea’s disregard
for international norms and standards of behavior’ (Obama 2016). While the language of
threat is used in both the presidential statement as well as the statement issued by
Secretary of State Kerry, the language used suggests the existence of a risk, rather than
threat, framework: both directly link concerns over the test, and the sort of response
 12 D. CHUBB

necessary, to the illiberal and unpredictable nature of the DPRK regime itself. The
President noted that North Korea’s actions have ‘served to isolate and impoverish its
people through its relentless pursuit of nuclear weapons’ while Secretary Kerry (U.S.
Department of State 2016) called North Korea’s interactions with the international
community ‘belligerent and erratic’. Kerry (2016) lays the blame for the lack of progress
in dialogue squarely at the feet of decisions made inside Pyongyang: ‘We remain open
to credible … talks…. Sadly, the DPRK has chosen a different path’.
These responses underscore the risk logic that underpinned the administration’s
narrow perception of North Korea, whereby the danger posed by that country’s actions
is elevated in the presence of a range of risk factors: the illiberal, non-normative, erratic
and vulnerable nature of the DPRK regime. Against the background of a security
doctrine, as enunciated in the 2015 National Security Strategy, that equates unknow-
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ability and uncertainty with threat and insecurity, the possibility of exploring a full range
of diplomatic options towards North Korea has evaporated. Instead, the ‘preventive
imperative of risk thinking’ (Leander 2011, 2255) has structured US policy responses to
North Korea to the extent that engaging with the risk is considered a dangerous
strategy. In addition, as evidenced by the strong language exhibited by President
Obama, this type of risk rationality puts the possibility of resolution by way of military
force back on the table.

Conclusion
Back in 2003, Kang (2003, 64) observed: ‘When we don’t know much about a country it is
easy to expect the worst’. Since 2003, the total stock of knowledge about North Korea has
increased; yet, little has changed in terms of how we talk about North Korea’s intentions and
motivations. The tendency of the Obama administration to ignore lessons from the past and
still speak of North Korea as an enigma can no longer be wholly attributed to the opaque
nature and unknowability of the North Korean state. Rather, it is the formulation of North
Korea as risk, as illiberal, rule-breaking, belligerent rogue that shaped American foreign
policy during the years 2009–2016, restricting the array of policy options available. This
article has argued that while the Obama administration was driven by a less overtly binary
view of the world than the preceding Bush administration, its approach to North Korea was
still informed by a social logic that interpreted North Korea’s behaviour through a narrow
lens and thus limited policy options. If the Trump administration is to make any progress on
the North Korea issue, it must attempt to treat North Korea as a normal state and engage in a
dialogue, to discover where starting points for negotiation may lie.
In understanding where to move beyond this paradigm, we thus need to consider
how the United States can extract itself from an interpretation of North Korea that serves
to only perpetuate the security dilemmas threatening the Korean peninsula. A more far-
sighted approach might see pathways to conflict resolution as only achievable through
a process of learning. Malici (2009) proposes Wendt’s ‘altercasting’ strategy as a pathway
by which the United States could overcome the problematic conflictual patterns that
have hindered its relations with ‘rogue’ states. Since, as Wendt (1992, 421, 422) acknowl-
edges, when seeking to change problematic intersubjective patterns ‘it is not [usually]
enough to rethink one’s ideas about self and other, since old identities have been
sustained by systems of interaction with other actors’. The practice of altercasting
 CRITICAL STUDIES ON SECURITY 13

seeks to change both sides of the intersubjective relationship through an effort by one
side – here, the United States – to change the alter’s behaviour by treating it as though
it were a productive negotiating partner (i.e. in accordance with the role it desires it to
play). This would require a transformation of behaviour on both sides but importantly
would allow for a situation in which the United States resisted the tendency to privilege
a risk-logic in its interpretation of DPRK rhetoric and action. This in turn would heighten
US resilience in its efforts to pursue productive diplomatic pathways, namely long-
lasting dialogue that resists the temptation abandon the negotiating table at the first
sign of non-normative behaviour. It would also allow the United States to see North
Korea for what it is and go some way to giving it the ‘normal state’ status that
Pyongyang seems to desire.
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Notes
1. Writing from a policy rather than a scholarly perspective, Glyn Ford also offers a critical
reading of US policy, arguing that the main impediment to workable solutions has been a
‘tendency to stereotype’ North Korea as irrational and/or a deadly security threat to the
world (Ford and Kwon 2008).
2. The roles these men played in the early days of the administration were Vice-President,
Secretary of Defense, Deputy Secretary of Defense, chairman of the Defense Policy Advisory
Board and Under Secretary of State for Arms Control and International Security,
respectively.
3. In 1998, debate within the United States over Korea policy came to a head with the
revelation that US spy satellites had discovered an underground reprocessing facility and
a solid fuel missile test. With many calling for the abrogation of the Agreed Framework,
Clinton called on William Perry to review American policy towards North Korea and come
up with options. The report advised a comprehensive, ‘two path’ negotiating strategy.
Importantly, the Perry Report was clear that the Agreed Framework should remain central
to US policy towards North Korea (Berry 2006, 7–9; Chinoy 2008, 11–15).
4. For an inside perspective on these rivalries, and how they shaped policy, see (Pritchard
2007).
5. Full title: Assistant Secretary of State for East Asian and Pacific Affairs.
6. There are reports that the North Koreans attempted to use the HEU programme as a
bargaining chip, but that the hands of Kelly and his team were tied and that they had been
sent to Pyongyang with specific instructions to not open new dialogue (Chinoy 2008,
120–126).
7. Most notably, the US’ decision to lead a coalition to invade Iraq in 2003, despite failing to
gain support for the action from the United Nations Security Council.
8. For a rigorous overview of Douglas’ sociocultural approach to risk, see: (Lupton 1999,
36–57).
9. This interpretive approach, which takes risk to be an ideational category, is distinct from
much of the recent work in critical security which focuses on risk as produced in the
materialities of security politics (e.g. Aradau and Van Munster 2007; De Goede 2008;
Mythen and Walklate 2008).
10. These questions are borrowed from Lupton (1999, 33–5).
11. See fundforpeace.org/fsi/country-data/.
12. For more on the hierarchical nature of risk, and the implications of this for international
society, see Clapton (2014) and Clapton and Hameiri (2012).
13. Author interview with Frank Jannuzi (Asia Policy advisor for the Obama presidential transi-
tion team: National Security Working Group), 31 October 2016, Washington, DC.
 14 D. CHUBB

14. In June 2009, the Senate Foreign Relations Committee held a hearing to review the present
situation in North Korea. Senator Kerry (Committee Chair) stressed that the purpose of the
review was to ‘test our assumptions and examine our options’ (Senate Foreign Relations
Committee 2009a). Leon Sigal argued for an incremental approach to engagement with
North Korea, whereby denuclearisation was brought about gradually rather than posited as
a precondition for the commencement of dialogue: ‘North Korea’, he argued, ‘may be
willing to trade away its plutonium and enrichment programs brick by brick. We should be
willing to give it some of what it wants in return. That would reward good behavior’
(Senate Foreign Relations Committee 2009b). In October 2009, former State Department
official Joel Wit (2009) produced a comprehensive strategy report which drew on back-
ground papers provided by 11 prominent experts. The report laid out a detailed set of
options for North Korea that combined tough measures with serious efforts towards
dialogue.
15. In what turned out to be an important detail, it was unclear whether satellite launches were
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included in this moratorium.

Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes on contributor
Danielle Chubb is senior lecturer in International Relations, and a member of the POLIS group in
the Alfred Deakin Institute for Citizenship and Globalisation, at Deakin University in Melbourne.
She has previously held positions at The Australian National University, Pacific Forum CSIS and
Hawaii Pacific University. Danielle’s main research interests are transnational activism, the policy
dynamics of the Korean peninsula and Australian foreign policy. Danielle’s first book, Contentious
activism and inter-Korean relations, was published by Columbia University Press in 2014. Danielle
has a forthcoming edited volume (with Andrew Yeo) on North Korean human rights activism, with
Cambridge University Press.

ORCID
Danielle Chubb http://orcid.org/0000-0003-3281-9873

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