Abstract
The United States has employed a wide range of foreign policy tools to try to stop North Korea’s nuclear weapons program, including two cooperative agreements that ultimately failed to produce the intended outcome. The breakdown of the 1994 Agreed Framework and the Six Party Talks process in the 2000s has led many to conclude that North Korea’s nuclear weapons program cannot be constrained through cooperation. According to this view, Pyongyang violated its previous commitments once it received economic and political benefits and will do so again. The underlying assumption is that Washington was smoothly implementing its own commitments until Pyongyang broke the deal. Is this true, or did U.S. domestic politics complicate the implementation of the agreements?
This dissertation explores this question through a four-part case study using three analytical lenses: a rational actor model, an institutional interests model an individual mindset model. It finds that the United States moved away from full cooperation with North Korea not just because of Pyongyang’s actions, but also due to domestic political considerations. Washington reduced its level of cooperation when tolerance for concessions was low in the domestic system, sometimes because of institutional interests and sometimes due to political maneuvers by individuals who favored stronger coercive measures and higher levels of concessions from North Korea.
The study shows that domestic politics impacts not only the negotiation and ratification stages of international cooperation agreements, but also their implementation phase. The findings also suggest it is incorrect to assume that past engagement efforts did not work solely due to North Korean actions. While whether a more fully implemented engagement policy would have led to North Korea’s denuclearization is beyond the scope of this study, any assessment of such policy should include the possibility that it has not been applied consistently to North Korea.