EAI Asia Security Initiative Working Paper No. 6

Author

Hyung-Min Joo is an Assistant Professor in the department of political science & international relations at Korea University. He was a visiting assistant professor in the department of political science at DePaul University in Chicago, United States. His research and teaching interests include comparative politics, international relations, and political theory. Aside from the publication of his article in the book Experiencing the State, he has published his research works in a wide range of journals, including Communist and Post-Communist Studies, Problems of Post-Communism, and Europe-Asia Studies. During the academic years 1997-1998, he served as a teaching assistant at the department of political science in University of Chicago, and during the academic year 2004-2005, he was a post-doctoral fellow at the Division of Social Sciences in University of Chicago. Prior to obtaining his PhD from the University of Chicago, he received his BA in political science in Yonsei University and MA in political science in University of Iowa.

On August 5, 1993, U.S. assistant secretary of state for political-military affairs Robert Gallucci presented a tempting proposal to North Korea—a “presidential guarantee” to provide light water reactors to replace the Yongbyon nuclear facility. Officially, the North Korean delegation complained that the presidential letter was “only a promise.” Off the record, they “took great notice.” After the initial enthusiasm subsided, however, one North Korean diplomat at the negotiation began to wonder. “What would happen if a Republican president took office?” (Wit et al., 2004: 272-274). In his question, the negotiator recognized the uncertainty built into a democratic system of government. The regular change of power typical of a democracy means frequent review, revision, and even reversal of earlier policies.

Democracy is said to have many advantages. Democracy is better because it “avoids tyranny,” “guarantees more freedom,” “brings more economic growth,” and so on (Dahl, 1998: 44-61). The advantage of democracy goes beyond domestic politics because it brings “peace” in foreign relations. The so-called democratic peace theory has been warmly embraced by politicians. According to President Bill Clinton, for instance, a key to global peace is to spread democracy, because “democracies don’t attack each other” (Economist, April 1, 1995). President George W. Bush emphasized the importance of a stable democracy in Iraq, because “democracies don’t go to war with each other.” Likewise, President Barack Obama argues that “we benefit from the expansion of democracy” because democracies are “nations with which we share our deepest values” (Washington Post, March 2, 2008).

One of the core elements of the democratic peace theory is that negotiations made with democracies are “durable” because of their institutional arrangements. A contract with a democracy, especially when ratified by the legislature or supported by public opinion, acquires “law-like” qualities that become difficult to change in a short period of time. Compared with “fickle” dictators (e.g., Hitler’s surprise abrogation of the Nazi-Soviet Pact), democracies are less likely to engage in sudden changes of policies. As a result, democracies are more “consistent”—thus more “reliable”—partners.

From this point of view, however, the North Korean nuclear crisis presents an interesting puzzle. For the past seventeen years, the United States has been inconsistent in its policy regarding the North Korean nuclear crisis. While the Clinton administration was willing to “buy out” the North Korean nuclear program through the 1994 Agreed Framework, the George W. Bush administration reversed Clinton’s policies and refused even to negotiate with the “axis of evil.” During the administration’s later years, however, it reversed its own policy, reviving an “updated” version of the 1994 agreement. Moreover, such “democratic inconsistency” is not an isolated incident. South Korea—another democracy—has engaged in similar policy zigzagging during the same period. By analyzing these “zigzag” moments, this paper questions one of the core arguments of democratic peace theory: the consistency of democracies. Instead, it analyzes the North Korean nuclear crisis from the viewpoint of democratic inconsistency.

It is not argued here that the United States has been more responsible for the collapse of the 1994 Agreed Framework than has North Korea. The ongoing North Korean nuclear crisis can be persuasively analyzed from the viewpoint of “dictatorial inconsistency” as well. Instead, the goal of this article is to theorize about the phenomenon of “democratic inconsistency” in order to understand when and why a democracy becomes inconsistent in its foreign policy, and then to apply our findings to the North Korean case so that we can better understand the ongoing crisis.

I. Why Democracies Can be Inconsistent

The idea of “democratic peace”—that is, that there is a strong tendency among democracies not to fight among themselves—has evolved with significant theoretical revisions over the years. The democratic peace theory has been strongly supported (Dixon, 1994; Doyle, 1983; Lake, 1992; Lipson, 2003; Maoz and Russett, 1993; Morgan and Campbell, 1991; Morgan and Schwebach, 1992; Owen, 1994; Russett, 1993; Schweller, 1992; Snyder, 1991; Weart, 1998) and hotly disputed at the same time in academia (Bremer, 1992; Chan, 1984; Farber and Gowa, 1997; Garnham, 1986; Gates et al., 1996; Layne, 1994; Maoz and Abdolali, 1989; Rasler and Thompson, 2005; Rosato, 2003; Small and Singer, 1976; Spiro, 1994; Thompson, 1996; Ward et al., 2007; Weede, 1984).

One of the interesting arguments of “democratic peace” is the idea that a democracy is more consistent in its foreign policies because of its institutional arrangements. According to Charles Lipson, for instance, democracies can guarantee “long-term commitments” in their foreign policies because “their constitutions are designed to make some policies very difficult to reverse.” A contract with a democracy, especially when ratified by Congress or supported by strong public opinion, acquires “law-like” qualities that become difficult to change. Unlike authoritarian systems, democracies are less likely to engage in sudden changes of policies. As a result, democracies are more “consistent”—thus more “reliable”—partners (Lipson, 2003: 6-15).

The often-cited example to support such an argument is the surprise abrogation by Hitler of the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact. In 1939, Hitler shocked the world by making a deal with Stalin to avoid a dual-front war. With the pact, Hitler could focus on Western Europe. When his western project was finished, Hitler then turned to the east, launching Operation Barbarossa. As a result, the Nazi-Soviet Pact was merely “an updated version of Germany’s Schlieffen Plan” (Lipson, 2003: 97). In this way, Stalin was caught off guard when Nazi soldiers began to march toward Moscow. Ronald Suny comments that Stalin was so shocked that he looked like a living corpse for a few days (Suny, 1998: 310).

But although the Nazi-Soviet Pact is often used to illustrate the “fickle” nature of dictatorships, there was nothing fickle about it. Hitler began planning for the invasion even before the ink on the pact was dry (Weinberg, 1994: 179-90). As a result, there was no sudden change of heart on Hitler’s part. Rather, Hitler was skilled at hiding his real thoughts and at misrepresenting his genuine preferences. What Hitler’s famous betrayal illustrates is the importance of unknown intention, not his alleged fickleness. When a country makes a contract with another country, it cannot divine the intention of its partner “with 100 percent certainty” (Mearsheimer, 2001: 31). Realism has long emphasized the importance of unknown intention in international politics. Robert Jervis argues, for instance, that countries cannot be sure of others’ intentions because “minds can be changed, new leaders can come to power, [and] new opportunities and dangers can arise” (Jervis, 1978: 168). It is these three factors, or types, of unknown intention—change of mind, new leaders, and new circumstances—that constitute the sources of inconsistency in foreign policy...(Continued)

Acknowledgement

This article is supported by a generous grant from the East Asia Institute. My deepest gratitude goes to Young-Sun Ha, Byung-Kook Kim, Sook-Jong Lee, and Chaesung Chun for their thoughtful comments and suggestions.