Rival Reputations: Coercion and Credibility in US-North Korea Relations

by Van Jackson

Overview

Charting the turbulent history of US-North Korean affairs from the 1960s through to 2010, Rival Reputations explores how past incidents and crises can be relied upon to help determine threat credibility and the willingness of an adversary to resort to violence. Using reputation as the framework, this book answers some of the most vexing questions regarding both US and North Korean foreign policy. These include how they have managed to evade war, why North Korea - a much weaker power - has not been deterred by superior American military power from repeated violent provocations against the United States and South Korea, and why US officials in every administration have rarely taken North Korean threats seriously. Van Jackson urges us to jettison the conventional view of North Korean threats and violence as part of a 'cycle' of provocation and instead to recognize them as part of a pattern of rivalry inherent in North Korea's foreign relations.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781107133310
Publisher:	Cambridge University Press
Publication date:	02/19/2016
Pages:	228
Product dimensions:	6.20(w) x 8.90(h) x 0.80(d)

About the Author

Van Jackson is an associate professor at the Daniel K. Inouye Asia-Pacific Center for Security Studies, Honolulu and an adjunct senior fellow at the Center for a New American Security. He is a former Council on Foreign Relations International Affairs Fellow and has taught at Georgetown University and the Catholic University of America, Washington DC. From 2009 to 2014, Dr Jackson held positions in the Office of the Secretary of Defense (OSD) as a strategist and policy advisor for the Asia-Pacific, senior country director for North Korea, and working group chair of the US-Republic of Korea Extended Deterrence Policy Committee.

Table of Contents

1. Introduction; 2. The 'reputations in rivalry' framework; 3. The USS Pueblo crisis (1968); 4. The EC-121 shoot-down (1969); 5. The Panmunjom crisis (1976); 6. The North Korean nuclear crisis (1993–4); 7. Nuclear conflict and North-South provocations; 8. Implications for theory and policy; Bibliography; Index.