A nuclear North Korea and the limitations of US security perspectives

If the United States’ main strategic policy priority on the Korean peninsula has been preventing the North Korea from developing a nuclear capability, US policy has failed manifestly. How did we get here? What is it about the ideas that lie behind the creation of US policy towards North Korea that seem to rule out, time and time again, the possibility that casting aside preconditions and engaging in serious attempts at dialogue with North Korea might once more be worth a try, with the stakes so high? In this article, I argue that a social logic of risk led to a very specific construction of the North Korean threat in US foreign policymaking under Obama, which constrained the options policymakers believed to be open to them.