The Two North Korea Nuclear Crises From The Repeated Prisoner's Dilemma Perspective

It is no doubt that Korea issue is "a frozen active volcano" in East Asia, and North Korea nuclear issue is one of the significant issues involved the peace and stability of the Asian-Pacific region. During the first nuclear crisis broke out in the early 1990s and the second one took place in October 2002, the United States, as the only superpower across the globe, had not reach its ideal goal——the dismantling of North Korea's nuclear program, the maintenance of the nonproliferation regime and the stability of the Korea Peninsula. On the contrary, during the bargain process between the United States and the North Korea, the latter had successfully pressed the former to reach two agreements which contributed to the detente, the U.S.-North Korea Agreed Framework in 1994 and the "2·13" Joint Agreement in 2007. What bargain process is which contributing to the signature of the two agreements? What kind of tactics they selected during the process from confrontation to the agreements? What the features of the bargain pattern are between the two? This is what the author wants to focus on.Based on the theory of Robert Axelrod's the evolution of cooperation, a politics professor in the University of Michigan, this dissertation analyzes the repeated prisoner's dilemma process centering on the North Korea nuclear issue between the United States and North Korea, and according to the defined level evaluation of tough or cooperation of the United States and North Korea during the process, this paper would draw the model diagrams describing the bargain process. Lastly, based on these diagrams and analysis, this paper will conclude their behavioral characters and the bargain pattern between the two countries. The paper is divided into 5 chapters, starting from the bargain theoretical structure to analyze the U.S.-North Korea bargain through the origination, development and solution of the crisis. Chapter 1 is an overall account of the analytical framework. Chapter 2 is the explanation of the tactics the two countries face and their interest objectives. Chapter 3 and chapter 4 deal with the bargain process between the United States and North Korea during the two crises, and analyze the tactics and policy trend according to the diagrams, and make a selective analysis on how the two resolve "the interest bargain" before and after the detente. Chapter 5 analyzes the behavioral characters of the two countries during the crisis.The paper argues that the bargain pattern between the two countries conform to the repeated prisoner's dilemma process, and prove the effectiveness of Axelrod's the evolution of cooperation theory. On the one hand, the America's North Korea policy making and implementation is a kind of two-level game product. On the other hand, North Korea's America policy and its bargain tactic have demonstrated somewhat synchronicity with the America's North Korea policy. Particularly, after the tit for tat tactics employed by North Korea, the America had eventually realized the hard-line stand held by North Korea and returned to the negotiating table. Then the detente had come to the peninsula.The regional situation in Northeast Asia has changed greatly after the signature of the "2·13" Joint Agreement, which rejected a number of new elements to the resolution of the nuclear issue. If the two countries deal with the issue in the way things were, the crisis would stay in the dilemma of mutual mistrust.