Policy Failure: A Comparative Study Of America 's Strategy Towards The DPRK From The Perspective Of Asymmetric Interaction (1993-2015)

My research question is: why is the United States not able to make North Korea abandon the nuclear program? This problem is derived from from the gap between the U.S. policy and the actual development path of the Korean Peninsula nuclear issue, and also a problem of foreign policy utility. Based on structural level, scholars attribute the U.S. policy failure to four reasons: the U.S. domestic conditions, the relationship between the United States and its allies, the North Korea itself, and third-party interference. These studies provide comprehensive explanations to the question, but are mostly static analysis or scenario analysis, in lack of the consideration of historical interaction, thus somewhat lacking the process-concern of strategic significance.I argue that the failure of U.S. policy toward the DPRK is caused by the cognitive asymmetry in U.S.-DPRK strategic interaction. My logic is that, due to the disparity of size and fragility, there generates cognitive asymmetry between the two powers, thus arouses asymetric attention: the big power is inattentive to the small power while the small power is overattentive the other way. As a result, there may engender asymetric expectation towards each other. Combined with the discrepancy when the two sides are fulfilling commitments, the both sides will not be satisfied with the other’s movement. Therefore in every interaction, the relationship will reach the degree of normalization, but always fail to achieve real normalcy, which is also the reason why there are still no effective policy on denuclearization.In this article, I will do my research on the basis of the U.S.-DPRK asymetric interaction. To be more specific, My research adopts the process tracing methods to review the asymmetric interactions between U.S. and DPRK over the past two decades, as well as to locate the strategies of the three administrations. The cognitive discrepancy will be observed concretely. In Clinton and Bush administrations, the two sides made some important progress, to bring the relationship to normalization level, although abortive in the process of normalcy. During the Obama administration, U.S. adopted strategic patience approach which made it impossible for normalization since the commitments of cooperation were missing, let alone normalcy.