C/P/33. United States and North Korea: Analysis of Foreign Policies

The essay analyzes foreign policies of the United States and North Korea from a liberal perspective, accounting for domestic pressures on policy makers, political culture, ideology, bureaucratic factors and the role of personality. The author finds that all of these factors contribute to a varying extent to formulation and implementation of foreign policies in Pyongyang and Washington, though domestic constraints are of practically no relevance for the North Korean leadership. Theses are demonstrated with reference to US and North Korean handling of the Korean War, the Pueblo crisis, and the current nuclear crisis. The essay concludes that a liberal tool-kit for analyzing foreign policies of both developing and developed states is to be preferred to the rigid realist approach to international politics.