New Book by Walter Clemens: Getting to Yes in Korea
Getting to Yes in Korea by professor Walter Clemens was published last summer by Paradigm Publishers with a foreword by New Mexico’s Governor Bill Richardson. Clemens discussed the book recently with Robin Young on WBUR’s program “Here and Now.” The book will be published soon in Korea as translated by BU grad student Yurim Yi. Paradigm Publishing offers the following description of his book:
Can Northeast Asia become a zone of peace instead of a short fuse to war? With threatened satellite launches and missile tests, North Korea figured early among Barack Obama’s many challenges. President George W. Bush had pinned North Korea to an “axis of evil” but then neglected Pyongyang until it tested a nuclear device. Would the new administration make similar mistakes? When the Clinton White House prepared to bomb North Korea’s nuclear facilities, private citizen Jimmy Carter mediated to avert war and set the stage for a deal freezing North Korea’s plutonium production. The 1994 Agreed Framework collapsed after eight years, but when Pyongyang went critical, the negotiations got serious. Using more carrots than sticks, Washington and its four main partners persuaded Pyongyang to commit to disabling its nuclear weapon facilities. Each time the parties advanced one or two steps, however, their advance seemed to spawn one or two steps backward.
His book has received many accolades throughout the country.
“This book points to valuable lessons from the approaches to North Korea taken by Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton compared to those taken by George W. Bush and his entourage. Drawing on the value-creating/value-claiming framework of the Harvard Negotiation Project and his own studies of security negotiations with Moscow and with Beijing, Professor Clemens suggests guidelines for moving the Korean peninsula from a flash point to a zone of peace and cooperation. As this book makes clear, negotiations are not just possible but essential to avoiding war in Northeast Asia.”
—Governor Bill Richardson, from the Foreword
“Drawing on experiences of statesmen from Jimmy Carter to Bill Clinton, as well as insights from negotiating strategy, Walter Clemens offers a valuable toolbox for addressing North Korea’s nuclear challenge.”
—Graham Allison, Harvard University
“Walter Clemens has utilized his expertise in U.S.-Soviet relations while applying negotiating theory and the role of culture to produce a fascinating study of the North Korea nuclear problem.”
—Terence Roehrig, U.S. Naval War College