Korean Lesson Number One for Joe Biden: ‘Maximum Pressure’ Is Over
U.S. policymakers should abandon any illusion that they can coerce Pyongyang into denuclearization, let alone democratization, as some human-rights activists hope.
North Korea is the problem that every president wants to but cannot ignore. If the Biden administration hopes to avoid big problems in confronting North Korea later during its term, then it better address the North soon. If not, then the president risks finding Burma and Russia to be minor problems compared to the DPRK.
Doug Bandow is a senior fellow at the Cato Institute. A former special assistant to President Ronald Reagan, he is author of Tripwire: Korea and U.S. Foreign Policy in a Changed World and co-author of The Korean Conundrum: America’s Troubled Relations with North and South Korea.
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