The four-generation conflict between North Korea and the United States has entered a new phase as the post-Cold War unipolar era draws to a close. In “Surviving the Unipolar Era,” which is available here, A.B. Abrams examines how North Korea weathered its most challenging period – from the Soviet Union’s collapse to the present day – through a combination of unique strengths and strategic decisions. As Washington’s global dominance faces unprecedented challenges and North Korea achieves new military capabilities, the book offers a timely analysis of how one of America’s smallest but most resilient adversaries has fundamentally altered the international security landscape.
Daily NK: What inspired you to write Surviving the Unipolar Era?
As North Korea’s long war with the United States approaches three quarters of a century in length, the conflict’s entry into a fundamentally new phase warranted a detailed assessment of the now ending post-Cold War unipolar period. The year 2024 marks 35 years since the end of the Cold War, which saw the beginning of North Korea’s isolation as the Soviet Bloc disintegrated and Pyongyang’s adversaries dominated the international order. The current emergence of an international order in which Western power is much more constrained, and America and its allies again face fully peer level economic, technological and military challenges, places the conflict between Pyongyang and Washington in an entirely new context, thus marking the end of an era.
With the post-Cold War unipolar era having seen the United States and its allies capitalize on their unchallenged global dominance to reshape the world and maximise pressure on their remaining adversaries, the end of the unipolar era marks a suitable time to assess how North Korea’s unique strengths and policy decisions allowed it to survive this particularly difficult period. It was important to highlight the factors and the consistent trends in policy thought which distinguished North Korea from other countries targeted by the West such as Iraq and Yugoslavia, as well as the primary turning points in the conflict and major decisions taken across multiple U.S. administrations which were key to placing the two adversaries on their current trajectories.
Daily NK: You describe North Korea as a unique adversary to the United States. Could you elaborate on what distinguishes this conflict from other Cold War and post-Cold War confrontations?
Multiple factors make the conflict between North Korea and the United States entirely unique. One is its longevity, with all other major U.S. adversaries from the first half of the 20th century having either ceased to exist, having been absorbed into the Western sphere of influence, or in the cases of China and Russia having seen significant periods of rapprochement when they were no longer considered to be in conflict with Washington. Another important factor is that the United States led a coalition in September 1950 attempting to invade North Korea and effectively end its existence, but was militarily prevented from doing so. Against no other adversary has the U.S. gotten as far as launching a full scale invasion, only to be thwarted militarily and forced to accept the adversary state’s continued existence.
A further factor is the more total nature of the conflict, with the U.S.-led Western world having achieved significantly greater penetration of all other adversaries. Diaspora ties, cultural exports, and educational ties have bound China, Russia, Iran and others to the Western world in ways that do not apply for North Korea, with the unique lack of Western penetration of the country’s information space making it a very different kind of conflict. Other factors are manifold, ranging from the particularly strong impression made by North Korea’s armed forces in conventional conflict, both during the Korean War and in engagements since, to Pyongyang’s entirely unique capability among small states to launch intercontinental strategic nuclear strikes on the U.S. mainland and thus maintain a very high level of mutual vulnerability.
Daily NK: How has the prolonged military standoff between North Korea and the U.S. influenced their respective military doctrines and force structures?
This is a complex question which could be answered across several chapters. For the United States, although North Korea is militarily the third most potent of its potential adversaries, it is just one of over a dozen such countries, meaning the U.S. Armed Forces are far less extensively shaped by the need to prepare for war with the Korean People’s Army than vice-versa. Although North Korean capabilities have had a greater influence on American military planning than the large majority of other U.S. adversaries have, periods of high tensions when American military assaults against the country were very seriously considered have not lasted long enough to more significantly influence doctrine and force structures.
Historically, North Korea’s early military success in the Korean War, forcing the U.S. Army into a weeks long retreat despite overwhelming material disadvantages, had a profound influence on American thought on the utility of nuclear weapons. After open hostilities ended in 1953 the need to combat a large and well equipped North Korean force without maintaining an unaffordably large permanent contingent on the peninsula was an important factor influencing the decision to deploy hundreds of nuclear weapons in South Korea from the late 1950s – peaking at 950 warheads. Throughout the period of high tensions in the 1990s, tactical nuclear weapons were considered by U.S. military officials to be critical to America’s ability to defeat North Korean forces, with a successful North Korean counterattack to capture Seoul considered a high possibility in the event of war should nuclear strikes not be launched.
When attacks on the country were considered in the early 2000s, nuclear bombs were also highlighted as a key means of penetrating the country’s deep fortifications. Rapid recent modernisation of North Korea’s ground forces is likely to further stimulate greater attribution of importance to such strikes as a means of leveling the balance of forces on the ground. A number of sources have highlighted that the effective collapse of South Korean forces in early 1950, and the similarly rapid collapse of South Vietnamese forces in 1975, have been an important factor stimulating a perceived need for American tactical nuclear weapons within range of the peninsula as a means of insurance. Nevertheless, North Korea’s recent development of its own tactical nuclear weapons could be an important factor that seriously limits America’s ability to rely on tactical nuclear strikes and deters the U.S. Armed Forces from launching them.
The uniquely heavily fortified nature of North Korean positions across the country has been an important factor stimulating American interest in acquiring advanced penetrative munitions, most notably the world’s largest bomb the GBU-57. The challenges posed by North Korea’s defences, namely its underground fortifications and increasingly advanced multi-layered air defences, has provided an argument in favour of pursuing the F-35 stealth fighter program and B-21 stealth bomber program, with both optimized to penetrating heavily defended airspace and dropping high diameter “bunker buster” bombs. North Korea’s proliferation of advanced underground fortifications to its strategic partners such as Iran and Hezbollah has also influenced this.
North Korean missile capabilities have also consistently influenced American investments in missile defence, with the Ground Based Midcourse Defence (GMD) system designed to shoot down ICBMs having seen its costs justified almost solely on the basis of a need to defend against attacks from the country. The system is considered to have very limited utility against Chinese or Russian strikes due to the sizes and sophistication of their arsenals, while no other potential U.S. adversary fields ICBMs. Nevertheless, the very significant progress made in modernising and expanding the North Korean ICBM arsenal has also increasingly threatened to leave the system redundant. Deployment of air defence systems elsewhere, most notably THAAD and AEGIS Ashore systems on Guam which will be followed by other systems, the AN/TPY-2 radar in Japan, and increasingly advanced anti-missile systems on American destroyers, also represent a part of this.
While the aforementioned American programs other than the GMD and possibly the GBU-57 would likely have been pursued regardless of the conflict with North Korea, the conflict has been an important contributor to calls for such investments.
Daily NK: Your book delves deeply into the George W. Bush and Barack Obama eras. How do you assess their respective policies toward North Korea? Do you think they missed any key opportunities for peace or escalation?
The United States was at the height of its power vis-a-vis North Korea in the early 1990s, with opportunities for a favourable resolution to the ongoing conflict having been significant throughout the decade, but diminished from the early 2000s before reaching a turning point under the Trump administration. The book highlights how Washington appears to have nevertheless overestimated its strength consistently, and rather than constraining its objectives to seeking denuclearisation and an end to the ongoing state of war in Korea, it has consequently sought a more total victory ending in the full penetration of North Korea and likely its absorption into the south.
The Bush administraiton appeared to have overextended itself by withdrawing from the Agreed Framework reached under its predecessor. The Framework had forced North Korea to halt work at its Yongbyon heavy water nuclear facility and cease construction of two new much larger heavy water facilities in exchange for full relief from sanctions, full normalisation of economic and political ties, delivery of two “proliferation proof” light water reactors, and delivery of oil until these two were activated. The United States was in the 1990s unanimously found to have fallen far short of meeting these terms, providing negligible sanctions relief and only some delayed oil deliveries, and failing to meet any other obligations. The fact that Pyongyang was in a particularly weak position, and thus highly valued the Agreed Framework despite very poor U.S. adherence to its terms, made it favourable for Washington to maintain the agreement and effectively freeze the country’s nuclear program in exchange for limited oil shipments. The Bush administration’s suspension of oil shipments, which predictably collapsed the Agreed Framework, thus ended a major opportunity to cut Pyongyang’s nuclear weapons ambitions short at a very low cost to the United States. The fact that this was done at a time when Washington was prepared for military intervention in Iraq, and had decided against prior plans to attack North Korea before Iraq, meant its ability to apply military pressure to force Pyongyang into making greater concessions was limited at the time of the withdrawal. The collapsing of the Agreed Framework thus appearing to have been poorly timed, while the premises used for doing so would appear increasingly dubious with time.
The Agreed Framework was a major missed opportunity for both sides, and although the U.S. meeting its obligations would have seriously reduced pressure on North Korea, thus reducing the possibility of the state’s collapse and destruction, it also would have led to a considerable fall in tensions and likely resulted in a state of relations unrecognizable from that seen today. There were multiple more minor missed opportunities where the United States could have negotiated terms that would today seem highly favourable, as Washington’s negotiating position has rapidly diminished. Key turning points which strengthened North Korea’s position over time included gradual economic recovery from the 1990s, the bogging down of U.S. forces in Iraq, the development of much more capable missile and nuclear deterrents, the construction of additional nuclear facilities, and the subsiding of Pyongyang’s isolation as ties with Beijing and other major economies have improved.
Daily NK: How have North Korea’s missile and nuclear programs altered the balance of power in East Asia and globally?
The most significant achievement of North Korea’s nuclear and missile programs is to set an entirely new precedent of a small state being able to deter a superpower great distances away without relying on a great power protector. North Korea’s ability to launch strategic nuclear strikes on a very large and growing scale against cities across the American mainland, which was demonstrated in 2017, marked a turning point in American discourse on potential military options against the country. Five separate administrations had separately come close to taking such options since the Korean War ended, with the Obama administration having very seriously considered them. This historically unprecedented achievement would notably be referred to by Vice Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and former Commander of the U.S. Strategic Command John Hyten as having “changed the entire structure of the world.”
Much as China’s economic and technological successes have highlighted how prosperity need not necessarily come hand in hand with cultural and political westernization, so, too, has North Korea’s improving security situation and gradual economic recovery from the 1990s demonstrated that alternatives to integration and compromise with the West can bring favourable results. This remains a lesson which the fates of Iraq, Libya, and to a lesser extent Iran have further driven home, and will likely cause significant further difficulties for the Western world in seeking to reign in future adversaries among small and medium sized states in future. The major shift in U.S. and Western discourse on North Korea, Washington’s pressing for talks where it had previously imposed extensive preconditions, and the near full disappearance of talk of offensive military options from prevailing discourse, had send a strong message that Pyongyang’s path has been highly successful, and that even in the Pacific where American forces are heavily concentrated there are serious limits to its power even against smaller states. At a time when the Western world faces growing difficulties aligning the international community behind it – on issues ranging from condemnation of alleged Chinese human rights abuses, to the Russian-Ukrainian War – the extent of North Korea’s successes in its defiance has further contributed to this trend.
Daily NK: The U.S. has been at war with North Korea for over seven decades without a formal resolution. Do you think a peace treaty is a realistic possibility, and what conditions would need to be met for that to happen?
A peace treaty remains unlikely, but not impossible. A primary requirement would be for the United States to abandon its intention to effectively collapse or deeply remake North Korea by transforming its governance, which has been consistent particularly since the end of the Cold War when such an outcome is considered more viable. Should the United States foreign policy establishment conclude that abandoning such a course is favourable, it would require the preparation of public opinion to accept an agreement that treats North Korea as a “normal country,” and that domestic legislation requiring changes related to internal governance in the country such as the North Korean Human Rights Act be repealed. This would require a fundamental psychological shift and coming to terms with the fact that decades of efforts to end North Korea’s existence have fallen short, and that normalization of relations is in fact a favourable course for the U.S. to take.
Should the United States be prepared to establish a more normal relationship with North Korea, much as it gradually came to terms with the need for normalized ties with China and Vietnam, a removal of sanctions and normalisation of trade ties could be negotiated in exchange for access to local markets and the much coveted low cost and high skilled labour force. Access to mining opportunities for American firms, and some constraints on North Korea’s ICBM arsenal, could potentially also be negotiated. While negotiations a decade ago could have prevented ICBM development altogether, and two decades ago could have prevented nuclear weapons development entirely, the failure to prioritize denuclearization earlier on means any normalization and peace agreement today will be far less favourable to U.S. interests on this issue than would previously have been the case.
Daily NK: The book also explores North Korea’s international relationships beyond the U.S. How has North Korea managed to maintain support or neutrality from countries like China and Russia in such a complex geopolitical environment?
While the beginning of the book assesses how the end of the Cold War transformed the conflict between Pyongyang and Washington, its final two chapters assess how recent geopolitical trends and the diminishing of Western global dominance are playing a central role in weakening America and its allies’ positions against North Korea. China has indisputably been by far the most central country driving such trends, and arguably represents a more important relationship for North Korea than all its other foreign relationships combined due to its exceptionally strong economic, technological and military standings. For Beijing, relations with Pyongyang provide a wide range of benefits, ranging from a highly skilled and very low cost labour force for Chinese firms, to vast deposits of gold and minerals for import, and political stability and dependability – an area where many other important partners have been sorely lacking. As a treaty ally, North Korea’s significant military potential has also been highly valued particularly after the Obama administration’s Pivot to Asia initiative, while systematic, historical and cultural commonalities bind the two countries together. Thus although China is forced to balance between its need to maintain ties with North Korea and to assuage the concerns of larger partners such as the United States and South Korea, the relationship remains of fundamental importance for Beijing.
North Korea’s relations with Russia have been far more complex due to Moscow’s strong emphasis on integration into Europe and the Western world in the post-Cold War years, and the lack of cultural or political commonalities. Relations have thus only improved proportionally to Russia’s perception of itself as being under assault from the Western world, which has pressed it into a partnership of convenience with Pyongyang.
Daily NK: Based on your research, what scenarios do you envision for North Korea’s future in terms of economic development, international relations, and military posture?
My assessment of North Korea’s future is strongly influenced by research done for two of my recent books covering broader prevailing geopolitical trends in an era of escalating geopolitical contest between China and the United States. As by far the most sanctioned country in the world, a particularly important factor for North Korea is the declining effectiveness of Western sanctions, both as growing alternative means of trade are established which bypass the West, such as China’s Cross-Border Interbank Payment System, and as China emerges as a competitive alternative for a broader range of products and services from semiconductors to electric cars. While North Korea was willing to make very extensive concessions for normalization of trading ties and sanctions relief in the 1990s, today the importance of attaining this is far more limited.
China today files approximately half of the world’s patents, leads the world in 84 percent of key strategic technologies, and has an economy around 25 percent larger than that of the U.S. The fact that the global economy is led by a country which is not hostile to Pyongyang, and to the contrary is an immediate neighbour, ally and strategic partner with similar cultural and political values, bodes highly positively for the future of North Korea’s economy, tech sector and information space. China’s emergence as a leading military power, one which outstripped the U.S. in defence acquisitions spending in 2020 and acquires 2-2.5 times as many fifth generation fighters for its air force as America does, also places North Korea in a far more secure environment where previously its immediate region was dominated by an undisputedly hostile power. This today arguably contributes at least as much to Pyongyang’s security against the United States as nuclear weapons do.
Much as is visible today in Pyongyang’s relationship with Moscow, China’s willingness to openly bolster ties with North Korea will be heavily influenced by the state of its relations with the United States and South Korea. Even at present, however, Chinese investment remains significant, while technology and equipment transfers are widely suspected of having played a key role in the modernisaton of North Korea’s economy and defence sector. Recent examples include the development of cutting edge military assets such as Non Line of Sight (NLOS) anti-tank guided missiles and tank active protection systems, which North Korea was able to develop before Russia did, with development suspected to have been facilitated by tech sector ties with China. With a highly educated workforce, Confucian values and work ethic, and close ties with the world’s technological leader across the border, North Korea appears set to increasingly restore its Cold War era position as a well developed high tech economy as the West’s ability to isolate it gradually diminishes. While South Korean assessments already indicate that current estimates vastly understate the size of the North Korean economy, citing factors such as the size of markets, the spread of advanced consumer goods and the size of construction projects, economic growth could further accelerate significantly as China more openly pursues ties, as ties with and exports to Russia yield dividends, and as the effectiveness of Western sanctions diminishes.
Daily NK: If you were advising U.S. policymakers today, what would be your key recommendations for managing the ongoing tension with North Korea, especially in light of their nuclear capabilities?
A key piece of advice would be to be clear on what the objectives are. If the sole objective was denuclearization, this could have been achieved long ago, but at the expense of relaxing pressure on the country and establishing more normalized relations. If the objective is to achieve a more absolute North Korean defeat through collapse or deep political change, the viability of this should be questioned in light of the significant geopolitical changes which have occurred since the 1990s.
If the objective is to stifle North Korea’s economic development in the longer term, due to a lack of favourable options to achieve other objectives, the price of doing so must be reevaluated. Maintaining the sanctions regime and a tough negotiating position ensures that North Korea will continue to strengthen its position as a nuclear weapons state, with hypersonic glide vehicles, multiple reentry vehicles, nuclear armed submersible drones, and nuclear powered submarines all set to be developed as the arsenal rapidly expands, thus multiplying the range of nuclear assets that need to be addressed under any future deal. Furthermore, geopolitical trends guarantee that the effectiveness of the sanctions regime will continue to rapidly diminish, thus stripping the United States of its primary leverage for achieving any of its objectives against the country.
A second piece of advice would be to be aware that the most important bargaining chip the United States now maintains is the U.N. sanctions regime. Washington’s history of reimposing sanctions it previously lifted using new pretexts, as done with Iran and Libya, or failing to lift sanctions it had pledged to lift as seen under the Agreed Framework and other agreements, means Pyongyang will be unable to make any concessions that are not easily reversible in exchange for pledges of relief from unilateral U.S. sanctions. Sanctions imposed through the U.N. Security Council, however, cannot be re-imposed once lifted unless China and Russia agree to this, which they are highly unlikely to do. The lifting of U.N. sanctions thus represents a concession which Washington can be held to despite low levels of trust between the two states, and one which can be used to secure North Korean concessions such as the demolition of nuclear weapons related facilities.
While existing sanctions imposed through the U.N. Security Council are highly valuable for the United States, they are increasingly limited in their potency due to prevailing geopolitical trends. While Western sources have since the mid-2010s lamented a lack of compliance with the sanctions regime by states across the non-Western world, the particularly brazen non-compliance with the regime by Russia since 2022, as a permanent member of the Security Council, further erodes it – as has Moscow’s disbanding of the Panel of Experts which monitored the sanctions. With the value of the U.N. sanctions regime as a “card” the U.S. has to play in negotiations set to continue to diminish, it is advisable for Washington to offer concessions on the issue in negotiations quickly before it becomes more redundant.
Please send any comments or questions about this article to dailynkenglish@uni-media.net.
