Foreign Affairs - The Long Road to Pyongyang - Michael J. Mazarr

This critique of Bush's policy toward North Korea is a useful reminder not to get too carried away with the current seeming success given the overall failure and, yes unsurprisingly, total incompetence of the policy

Foreign Affairs - The Long Road to Pyongyang - Michael J. Mazarr:

But a look back at the history of the Bush administration's approach to North Korea highlights a somewhat different aspect of the White House's foreign policy. The portrait that emerges is not one of a confrontational, militaristic administration; what instead becomes apparent is an image of a White House with extremely poor conceptual strategies and decision-making processes.

From the beginning, President George W. Bush, as the nation's chief strategist, has failed to articulate a coherent policy for dealing with North Korea. The administration as a whole entered office without a clear foreign policy doctrine. The president himself appears to have been attached to a number of basic principles: the importance of strength and credibility, the universal appeal of democracy, a Reaganite belief that dictatorships are morally reprehensible and cannot be trusted. But beyond those core attitudes, in the North Korean case the basic elements of strategy -- ends, means, and the balance between them -- were not lucidly expressed or rigorously debated at the most senior levels of the U.S. government. The result was a strategic muddle, a swirling debate not guided by any clearly calculated long-term vision. And after six years, the process has wound up almost exactly where it started -- except now North Korea appears to have tripled the amount of nuclear weapons material in its possession and has become a declared nuclear power.

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