Dealing with Korea: Can the U.S. Military Take the Lead in Changing the Paradigm

摘要

A combination of crises and hardships currently threatens the North Korean regime with collapse. Accompanying this threat, however, is the opportunity to gently draw North Korea into wider engagement with the international community. Halting progress toward peaceful reunification has been achieved, but more effort from external sources is necessary to accelerate the process. Among official U.S. agencies, only the military currently possesses the ability to subtly enhance the engagement process on the peninsula without any major concessions on its part. The author summarizes the geopolitical history of the peninsula, and addresses the issues confronting North Korea. He then proposes a model with which the U.S. military could bolster North Korean confidence in the possibility of reduced tensions on the peninsula without compromising its own security or readiness in any way. He bases the model on the precedent set by NATO during the decline of the Soviet Union. Aware that discussions of troop reductions, arms reductions, and the like are beyond the exclusive purview of the military, the author recommends modification to the schedule and scope of joint/combined exercises as the appropriate tool to influence the security environment in a subtle, yet, to North Korea, highly symbolic and significant manner.