International Relations Theory and the Second Korean War

Abstract

Ever since the first Korean war in 1950, scholars and policymakers have been predicting a second one, started by an invasion from the North. Whether seen as arising from preventive, preemptive, desperation, or simple aggressive motivations, the predominant perspective in the west sees North Korea as likely to instigate conflict. Yet for fifty years North Korea has not come close to starting a war. Why were so many scholars so consistently wrong about North Korea's intentions? Social scientists can learn as much from events that did not happen as from those that did. The case of North Korea provides a window with which to examine these theories of conflict initiation, and reveals how the assumptions underlying these theories can become mis‐specified. Either scholars misunderstood the initial conditions, or they misunderstood the theory, and I show that scholars have made mistakes in both areas. Social science moves forward from clear statement of a theory, its causal logic, and its predictions. However, just as important is the rigorous assessment of a theory, especially if the predictions fail to materialize. North Korea never had the material capabilities to be a serious contender to the U.S.–ROK alliance, and it quickly fell further behind. The real question has not been whether North Korea would preempt as South Korea caught up, but instead why North Korea might fight as it fell further and further behind. The explanation for a half‐century of stability and peace on the Korean peninsula is actually quite simple: deterrence works.

Mediation and Peacekeeping in a Random Walk Model of Civil and Interstate War

“…Powerful nations such as the United States, with an interest in maintaining the peace between two warring sides, place troops on the ground to artificially create a natural boundary. United States troops on the ground in the Sinai and between North and South Korea change the transition probabilities for the two sides if they were to contemplate re‐igniting the war between them (Cha and Kang 2003; Kang 2003). Australian troops in East Timor play a similar role (Chalk 2001).…”

The Perpetuated Hostility in the Inter-Korean Rivalry: A Theory of Multilevel Veto Players and the Persistence of South-North Korean Rivalry, 1954-2007

“…It also has been argued that the North Korean leaders' extremely belligerent attitude, which originates from their obsession with regime survival, has led to the consolidation of the rivalry between the two Koreas (Cha 2012;Khil and Kim 2006). Scholars working in the realist tradition stress that the security dilemma between North Korea and South Korea (or the US) has led to the North's hawkish foreign policy, which in turn results in the South's realpolitik response, leading to the persistence of the militarized competition between the two Koreas (Kang 2003;Kim 2011). According to Harrison (1997), the great power patrons like the US, China, and Russia (previously as the Soviet Union) also are often considered as contributing to the persistence of the inter-Korean rivalry (IKR).…”

Simplicity and Spook: Terrorism and the Dynamics of Threat Exaggeration

“…Thus, despite considerable evidence to the contrary (see Sigal, 1998; Harrison, 2002; Kang, 2003; also Fallows 1994/95), the United States has consistently viewed North Korea as a continuing threat even though its neighbors, especially South Korea, do not. Having worked themselves up to a lather during the 1990s, the Americans and the British even went to war against Saddam Hussein's pathetic regime in Iraq in 2003 because, unlike all of Iraq's neighbors except Israel, their leaders imagined a “grave and gathering” threat to lurk there.…”