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Failed Diplomacy: The Tragic Story of How North Korea Got the Bomb. By Charles L. Pritchard, Washington, D.C.: Brookings Institute Press, 2007. $26.95.
Charles L. Pritchard is blunt in his criticism of the Bush administration's policy toward the DPRK during its first six years in office: Its refusal to negotiate with the DPRK regime failed to halt its nuclear program, and thus has made the United States "less safe because of the nuclear test than it was in 2001" (p. 161). The author's background-he assumed a number of Asian-related policy roles in both the Bill Clinton and the George W. Bush administrations-placed him at the forefront of U.S. policy toward the DPRK over much of this crucial period. His experience is also his handicap, in that his oath of secrecy constricts what he can reveal about this history. Regardless, Failed Diplomacy does offer new and interesting insights into U.S.-DPRK relations during the Bush administration. Pritchard's accounts of his visits to the DPRK as both a public servant and private citizen, and his discussions with the DPRK's United Nations delegation in New York, offer readers a unique window into U.S.-DPRK diplomacy.
Pritchard argues that United States' estrangement policy toward the DPRK is unwise for a number of reasons. First, the policy was developed around the ill-founded belief that the U.S. could exploit the DPRK's ?overriding stake in joining the international community [by forcing it] to alter its behavior without serious direct engagement? (p. 55). To the contrary, this approach has encouraged the regime to step up its nuclear program, as evidenced by its October 2006 nuclear test. DPRK diplomacy is often described as brinkmanship. However, Pritchard concluded from his discussions with Ambassador...