North Korea and the Bomb: A Case Study in Nonproliferation.

AuthorCrawford, Timothy
PositionReview

North Korea and the Bomb: A Case Study in Nonproliferation Michael J. Mazarr (New York: St. Martin's Press, 1995, 1996) 290 pp.

In North Korea and the Bomb: A Case Study in Nonproliferation, Michael J. Mazarr provides a detailed account of U.S. efforts between 1990 and 1994 to negotiate an end to North Korea's nuclear weapons program. Mazarr also draws on U.S.-North Korea negotiations to distill important lessons on the broader topic of nuclear proliferation. To facilitate this analytical approach, Mazarr's introductory chapters provide both a historical background of the North Korean nuclear program and a brief primer on the causes of proliferation and different approaches to managing it. Thus the case study which follows can be read within the context of the wider debates about proliferation and nonproliferation policy.

The author's discussion of the causes of proliferation merits close attention, for it emphasizes an aspect of proliferation that technological explanations tend to ignore; namely, the political motives driving nuclear ambitions. We are reminded that proliferation is neither wholly nor even mostly a response to technological opportunity. Rather, it is a policy response usually motivated by deep perceptions of insecurity If the primary causes of proliferation are not technical, neither are the solutions. The author's message is clear: Nonproliferation success will depend primarily on changing motivations and only marginally on surveillance technology, monitoring and transfer controls. When diplomacy fails, he argues, technical solutions will not bring determined proliferants to heel (pp. 208-209).

Mazarr provides a detailed description of the four-year negotiations which in October 1994 produced an Agreed Framework in which North Korea canceled its threat to withdraw from the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) inspection regime, the United States retracted its nuclear threat against North Korea and the United States and South Korea agreed to provide the North with Light Water civilian nuclear reactors. His account of the talks is impressively comprehensive, and if the narration of events is occasionally repetitive, it is only because Mazarr is faithful to the subject. Real progress in the negotiations was quite rare and, as subsequent events demonstrated, fleeting. This is not surprising, for North Korea's nuclear ambitions presented--and continue to present--U.S. policymakers with an extraordinarily complex set of challenges...

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