Disarming Strangers: Nuclear Diplomacy with North Korea

(Paperback)

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In June 1994, the USA went to the brink of war with North Korea. With economic sanctions impending, President Clinton approved the dispatch of substantial reinforcements to Korea and plans were made for attacking the North's nuclear weapons complex. The turning point came in an extraordinary private diplomatic initiative by former President Carter and others to reverse the dangerous American course and open the way to a diplomatic settlement of the nuclear crisis. Few Americans know the full details or realize the devastating impact such an event could have had on the US's post-Cold War foreign policy. This book offers an inside look at how the crisis originated, escalated and was diffused. It begins by exploring a web of intelligence failures by the US and intransigence within South Korea and the International Atomic Energy Agency, paying particular attention throughout to an American mindset that prefers coercion to co-operation in dealing with aggressive nations. Drawing upon in-depth interviews with policy-makers from the countries involved, the author discloses the details of the buildup to confrontation, American refusal to engage in diplomatic give-and-take, the Carter mission and the diplomatic deal of October 1994.

Reviews

Winner of the 1998 Book of Distinction on the Practice of Diplomacy, The American Academy of Diplomacy "Sigal makes it disturbingly clear how close the world came to war in Korea in 1994. The product of hundreds of interviews, Disarming Strangers is also the most rigorously detailed account of U.S. policy towards North Korea yet published, and it will remain so for many years... An important and superbly researched book."--Michael J. Mazarr, Survival "This is a thought-provoking and disturbing book on American and North Korean diplomatic relations. Disarming Strangers is also an extremely well-researched study."--Bill Drucker, Korean Quarterly

Author Bio

Leon V. Sigal is a consultant at the Social Science Research Council in New York and Adjunct Professor in the School of International and Public Affairs, Columbia University. A former member of The New York Times editorial board, he is also the author of Fighting to a Finish: The Politics of War Termination in the United States and Japan, 1945.