The president and international security: Korea, containment, and change (Jimmy Carter, Ronald Reagan, George Bush, Bill Clinton)

This study explores how presidents of the United States have overseen policy toward the Korean Peninsula: how they shaped, attempted to alter, and had responsibility for it. Each president had his own foreign policy goal, and used a distinctive strategy to enforce it in Korea, but with differing views of Korea's importance. Each president faced the confrontation between the two Korea's in a different historical context, with different domestic and international challenges. This study examines how the president, as the architect of American foreign policy, regarded the Korean Peninsula to be a key security issue. Presidential powers remains crucial for successful implementation of U.S. foreign policy toward Korea. When it is effective, his engagement provides the means to transcend external, limitations to shape the environment, to gain his agenda and carry out his preferred strategies. This study focused on the presidencies of Jimmy Carter through Bill Clinton, a period when American policy experienced significant transformation. The case studies demonstrate several observable features that characterize the president's role in shaping foreign policy in general and Korea policy in particular. This study clarifies the strong desire of the ROK for a lasting U.S. involvement in their security affairs, and depicts the president as a strong, though not omnipotent world leader. The Congress's role in shaping Korea policy was indirect, but no less critical. This study yields important implications for the interaction of the president and Congress to shape policy abroad. This dynamic carries great relevance for scholars of Korean history and affairs, of the Pacific region, of American defense against totalitarianism, and for researchers on the conduct of American foreign policy. The experience of these presidents to conduct and direct American policy toward the Korean Peninsula reveals much about American diplomacy toward the Korean Peninsula and the future of the U.S. in the Pacific region. It contains interesting revelations, as well, about the powers of the American presidency.