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The Us Security Policy And North Korea Nuclear Programme, 2000 – 2008
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For Chanlett-Avery (2012), North Korea has been among the
most vexing and persistent problems in U.S. foreign policy in the
post-Cold War period. Negotiations over North Korea’s nuclear weapons
program have consumed the past three U.S. administrations, even as some
analysts anticipated a collapse of the isolated authoritarian regime.
North Korea, according to the writer, has been the recipient of well
over $1 billion in U.S. aid and the target of dozens of U.S. sanctions.
As U.S. policy toward Pyongyang evolved through the George W. Bush
presidency and into the Obama Administration, the negotiations moved
from mostly bilateral to the multilateral Six-Party Talks (made up of
China, Japan, Russia, North Korea, South Korea, and the United States).
To this end, the writer maintained that although the negotiations have
reached some key agreements that lay out deals for aid and recognition
to North Korea in exchange for denuclearization, major problems with
implementation have persisted. With talks suspended since 2009, concern
about proliferation to other actors has grown. The Obama Administration,
like its predecessors, faces fundamental decisions on how to approach
North Korea.
Did the US government perceive North Korea Nuclear Programme as part of its war on terror, between 2000 and 2008?
Our
major concern in this segment of the literature review is to find out
whether the US government perceives North Korea Nuclear Programme as
part of its war on terror. To this end, Ifesinachi (2006) sees the
US-led war on terror in terms of unilateralism. According to him, the
trajectories of the phenomenon of terror derive from political
motivation. To this effect, he maintains that political terror has
served the ends of political struggle and as such, sovereign recognition
and intervention are products of political struggles which reflect the
contradictions of material condition at every phase of human history.
Berating America’s military crusade against terrorism, the writer
rightly and logically argues that terrorism as a political problem will
subsist (notwithstanding America’s seemingly efforts to stamp it) since
the political problem that induces it persist. Accordingly, Ifesinachi
writes:
…terrorism as a political problem will persist as long as the
political problem that induces it persists. The solution to terrorism
is not just to punish terrorists but in seeking out common political
solutions to the political malaise prompting terrorism. The
rationalization of state terrorism in terms of the war on terror is seen
to be sterile and redundant. It is in this context that the need for
defining anti-terrorism campaigns as a global problem becomes contingent
on the restructuring of the global order (Ifesinachi, 2006: 7).
As
for Gardner (nd), Al Quaida, instead of regressing during the fight on
terrorism, is increasing its membership greatly worldwide. More
alarming, according to the writer, is that it has decentralized even
more after 9/11; it has more popular support among young Arabs and
non-Arab Muslims and Osama is to many Muslims what “Che†was for many
Latin Americans. Now many Muslims and non-Muslims alike see more clearly
the comparison between Israel’s occupation and treatment of
Palestinians and U.S. occupation and treatment of Iraq. This brings into
question the limits of the military solution as the ultimate option,
and the Bush administration’s failure to appreciate the complexity of
terrorism as a manifestation of deeper societal problems combined with
adamant opposition to western imperialism. More so, the writer insists
that because terrorism has existed for centuries in one form or another,
one would think that intelligent people working in Washington D.C.
today would realize that the best method of containing it is to
understand its root causes and then to provide a long-term political
solution. This does not mean that armed forces should not be utilized,
but if that is the only solution, it leads to more terrorism and an
endless cycle of political violence that costs the status-quo state more
than it costs the terrorists, he concludes
Contributing, Marszka
(2009) wondered whether the Bush Doctrine has increased asymmetric
warfare in the form of terrorism or whether it has been an effective
policy against it. He, therefore, insists that if the United States can
justify preemption and unilateralism in defense of its national security
with Security Council authorization, that would be catastrophic in most
cases as other nations would equally be attempted to attack and justify
their actions as preempting. The writer, therefore, bemoaned the Bush
administration for favoring this seemingly counterproductive foreign
policy strategy.
In another development, Okolie (2005) investigates
the changing pattern of terrorism and its implications for global
security. To this effect, the writer avers that terrorism is escalating
and posing threats to peace and security. Continuing, the writer
maintains that the September 11, 2001 incident compelled the then
President of United States, George Bush to refocus US foreign and
security policies on two distinct, if not cross-cutting missions:
defeating ‘terrorism with a global reach’ and ‘keeping the worst weapons
out of the hands of the worst people’. According to him, at the heart
of the above policies is the policy of preemptive use of force. However,
rather than American hegemony and unilateralism, the writer advocates
for a new global security codes that would be ratified and agreed upon
and enforcement done under the auspices of the United Nations.
On the
other hand, Mamdani (2004) avers that events after the collapse of the
Soviet Union and the Cold War suggest that America’s low intensity
conflict against militant nationalist regimes continued thereafter, even
up to 9/11. According to him, by 9/11, the methods changed drastically,
from low-intensity proxy war to high intensity direct warfare; the
shift which was made possible by a changed political climate in post
9/11. More so, the author insists that the trajectory of proxy war in
the rough decade from the end of the Cold War to 9/11 is best
illuminated on the ground of Iraq where the Bush administration saw a
golden opportunity to shed the inhibitions of the Cold War and declare
open season of militant nationalism. However, as the writer argues,
whereas the Taliban had been pinpointed as hosts of al-Qaeda, there was
little legitimate effort to connect the invasion of Iraq to the terror
that was 9/11. For the author therefore the war on terror had moved on
from addressing broadly shared security concerns to targeting militant
nationalism, and the war against militant nationalism would conclude the
unfinished business of the Cold War. However, the author concludes
that:
…the two adversaries in the war on terror: the United States
and al-Qaeda are both veterans of Cold War. Both see the through lenses
of power….Caught in a situation where both adversaries in the war on
terror claim to be fighting terror with weapons of terror, nothing less
than a global movement for peace will save humanity. If we are to go by
the lesson of the last global struggle for peace, that to end the war in
Vietnam, this struggle, too, will have to be waged as a mass movement
inside each country, particularly the democratic countries, and
especially in the United States and Israel (Mamdani (2004: 257-258)
Falode
(2002), prior to the attack on America in 2001, the political interplay
in the Middle-East and South-East Asia had been a very volatile one,
speckled with distrust and suspicion as well as America’s passivity.
Continuing, the writer stated that while factors of economy, territory,
irredentism and religion essentially accounted for these volatile
relationships, the coordinated terrorist attack on America on September
11, 2001 impacted profoundly on this fragile and political balance. The
implication of this, according to the writer was the fact that America
was forced to jettison the multinationalist and isolationalist approach
for the more flexible, uncompromising unilateralist approach. And this
meant that America would no longer seek the views of the allies before
embarking on any political adventure or misadventure in the
international
environment.
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ABSRACT - [ Total Page(s): 1 ]This study examines the interface between the US security policy and North Korea nuclear programme. The thrust of the study however is to find out if the US government perceived North Korea nuclear programme as a threat to its national security on the one hand and part of its war on terror, between 2000 and 2008 on the other. The study also investigated whether the US government security policy on North Korea nuclear programme relegates multilateral intervention on nuclear weapon development wit ... Continue reading---
