The Analysis On Bush Administration's Policy Toward North Korea

To the United States, the Korean Peninsula possesses a lot of strategic values. In general, the fundamental thinking of the US's policy toward the North Korea can be summed as"one purpose","two aspects"and"three emphases"in Post-Cold War. The"one purpose"is that the US want to keep peace and stability in Peninsula and insure the leading status in Northeast of Asia through managing the threat form the North Korea. The"two aspects"are the policy toward the North Korea itself and the policy toward the surrounding countries, which are the fundamental starting point of policy-making of US. The"three emphases"include coping with the North Korea's nuclear issue, changing the regime of North Korea and controlling those great powers around North Korea.Based on the different cognition of above-mentioned policy targets and policy priority, different governments of the US adopted different policies. The Old Bush administration adopted the policy of pushing contact between the North and South and pursuing the unification of the Peninsula. The Clinton administration took the policy of coping with North Korea's nuclear and missile as emphasis in his two presidential terms. The policy toward North Korea made in Bush administration has a comprehensive and multi-aspected feature. In Bush administration, the policy toward North Korea had undergone three phases in each presidential term. In Bush's first term, the Neo-Conservatives prevailed over the others and the policy toward the North Korea took on tough features, which was called as"hawk contact"in order to make Kim Jong Il's regime collapse. In the second term of Bush administration, with the Neo-Conservatives fading, Condoleezza Rice, the Secretary of State, and Cristopher Hill, the Assistant Secretary of State who won the leading power of policy-making toward North Korea took a more flexible policy and Pragmatic measure at achieving progress in nuclear issue. In spite of that, the strategic intention to dominate the Korean Peninsula and the Northeast Asia has never changed.In the rest of the presidential term, the Bush administration would push forward the settlement of the North Korea nuclear issue coming into substantial phase in the framework of Six Party talks. On the other hand, the total settlement of the issue seems impossible in the two years to come. In this case, there is a long way to go for the normalization of the United States and North Korea's relation.