Shifrinson in FA on Nuclear-Armed North Korea
Joshua Shifrinson, Assistant Professor of International Relations at the Frederick S. Pardee School of Global Studies at Boston University, recently published an article exploring the upside of a nuclear-armed North Korea.
Shifrinson’s article, entitled “Learning to Love Kim’s Bomb,” was published in Foreign Affairs on October 3, 2018.
From the text of the article:
Upon returning from the Singapore summit with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un in June, U.S. President Donald Trump declared theNorth Korea problem “solved.” Many experts did not share his optimism. Pyongyang,they argued, had done nothing to indicate that it was committed to “complete, verifiable, and irreversible denuclearization.” And nothing since then—up to and including the recent meeting between U.S. and North Korean officials on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly in New York—has indicated otherwise. Trump, in other words, was fleeced.
The president’s North Korea critics are right: Pyongyang has taken no steps to denuclearize in the last three months, and there’s no reason to think that it will anytime soon. Such critics are wrong, however, to assume that this is necessarily bad news. In fact, Kim’s nuclear arsenal may be more opportunity than threat. It makes a new balance of power possible in Northeast Asia—one that could make the region more stable and reduce the risk of war. Ironically, such a settlement can succeed only if the Trump administration’s North Korea policy keeps failing.
Joshua R. Itzkowitz Shifrinson’s teaching and research interests focus on the intersection of international security and diplomatic history, particularly the rise and fall of great powers and the origins of grand strategy. He has special expertise in great power politics since 1945 and U.S. engagement in Europe and Asia. Shifrinson’s first book, Rising Titans, Falling Giants: How Great Powers Exploit Power Shifts (Cornell University Press, 2018) builds on extensive archival research focused on U.S. and Soviet foreign policy after 1945 to explain why some rising states challenge and prey upon declining great powers, while others seek to support and cooperate with declining states.