Strategic patience meets strategic delinquency

Abstract

Abstract Chapter 5 focuses on North Korea’s nuclear behaviour during the Obama administration, between 2009 and 2016. This period offers a counter-case to the idea that delinquent behaviour with respect to the global nuclear order and international order will bring beneficial outcomes. This chapter underscores how, confronted with a conservative administration in South Korea, the Obama administration did not wish to be seen as rewarding North Korea’s delinquent behaviour, even if its own foreign policies diverged from the approach of the Bush administration. Yet, through the United States’ pursuit of an approach of ‘strategic patience’, North Korea’s delinquency, in fact, intensified, not least given how the rewards reaped by the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK) were minimal. As such, this chapter examines how North Korea’s heighted nuclear ambitions were a product of the transition of power to Kim Jong Un in 2011 and the DPRK’s disdain for the ‘strategic patience’ policy, coupled with a reaction by North Korea to the growing imposition of unilateral and multilateral sanctions. Despite the trade-offs between the costs and benefits of delinquent behaviour, North Korea was willing to accept the material costs and the lowering of its international status. It conducted four nuclear tests during the two terms of the Obama administration and, between 2012 and 2016, over seventy missile tests.