Social Origins of Nuclear Policy: A Niebuhrian Dilemma of the U.S. Policies toward North Korea

Abstract

IntroductionInternational efforts to stop North Korea's nuclear program are still looking for a way out. Nearly two decades have passed since the North first alarmed the world with its nuclear reprocessing facilities in 1992, but the multiple international negoDepartment tiations ever since have yet to find an effective deterrent. More perplexing than the unfruitful negotiations per se is the indeterminacy that the international community has shown throughout the process. An obvious example is the drifting policies of the U.S., the leader of the world anti-proliferation community. Throughout the administrations of Bill Clinton and George W. Bush, the U.S. policies wildly swung between containment and engagement. The ambiguity continues even today as we see the Obama government switching policy positions off and on.1Why isn't there a consistent solution to the North Korean nuclear crisis? Why are the international (the U.S. in particular) responses to the North's nuclear challenge drifting?Keeping in mind a normative origin of the policy inconsistency, this research delves into the contextual backgrounds of the uneven nuclear non-proliferation policies. Due to the controversial nature of the issues involving the nuclear crisis like sovereignty and national security, the nonproliferation efforts are supposed to call for a choice of only relatively better policy each time without any absolute solution. Borrowing Reinhold Niebuhr's insights, the North Korean nuclear crisis is a typical case of "relative justice" where a definitive behavioral principle is hard to utilize.2 Consequently an objective analysis of policy conditions is rarely available, which in turn makes a rational or institutional choice by political elites out of the question. Instead, the public perception of the issues at the bottom of the society takes its place as the matter of consequence.Ironically a social normative cause of the U.S. policy inconsistency looms large from the solid international norm for nuclear nonproliferation. Despite the solid consensus on the principle of blocking the spread of nuclear weapons at all costs, a few technical differences that rose in the middle of negotiating how to implement the norm have directed the course of negotiation. It is an irony that the methods employed to apply a principle ruled over the principle. As a response, this research asserts that some of the suggested policy means, even if they are efficient in practice, raise several fundamental social concerns that are not compatible with the norm of nuclear nonproliferation. The North Korean crisis involves two or more ideas that stand at odds with each other. The normative conflicts generate the policy indeterminacy.This research reflects on Reinhold Niebuhr's thoughts about international politics-relative justice, in essence-as the reference of normative ambiguity arising from the process of negotiation with North Korea. His ideas are helpful to identify the social context where a durable policy is hard to obtain. The North Korean nuclear challenge, seen from Niebuhr's perspective, is a typical case of lacking an absolute justice to apply. The North's nuclear adventure, though not as acceptable as the U.S. behavior to discourage it, is still excusable from its claim of national defense. To buy how much of the North's defensive concerns, this research suggests, is the determinant of the direction and level of the U.S. reaction to the nuclear challenge, while a consensus has yet to be made in American society. In addition, the U.S. policies are supposed to fluctuate given the fact that several conflicts exist within the U.S. government that involve ideational debates deep in the American society.In this paper, Niebuhr's relative justice is employed to critically review the U.S. nuclear policies toward North Korea angles in the following order. First, the literature review introduces relevant studies and points out that a normative consideration is still necessary. …