Explaining US Foreign Policy Toward Iraq and North Korea

다음과 같다. 첫째, 대량살상무기 개발 능력에 있어서 북한은 이라크를 크게 앞지르고 있었다.둘째, 부시 행정부는 북한의 대량살상무기 문제를 해결함에 있어서 외교적 노력의 중요성을강조하면서도 문제해결을 위한 이렇다 할 노력을 기울이지 않았고, 이라크에 대해서는 성급하게 전쟁이라는 정책수단을 선택하였다. 기존의 현실주의 해석은 이러한 질문에 어떠한 답을 제시하고 있을까?

In order to cope with the threats of WMDs in Iraq the Bush administration resorted to war, whereas it virtually ruled out military options to resolve North Korean nuclear issues. This paper investigates the motivations behind the divergent foreign policy choices of the Bush administration toward two similar rogue states, namely Iraq and North Korea. In doing so, it attempts to evaluate properness of existing realist interpretations of US foreign policy differences toward Iraq and North Korea. That the US rushed to war against Iraq while procrastinating on North Korean nuclear issues presents something of a puzzle to conventional wisdom of realist IR theories which postulates that great powers closely observe changes in relative capabilities in the international system and respond accordingly. Realist explanations factoring in “deterrent capabilities” of North Korea’s military power and “threat perception” similarly leaves some of the important issues unaddressed. One of the major arguments of this paper is that the policy difference of the US toward two countries could be explained to a substantial extent through theoretical lens of “offensive realism.” This paper also concludes that a more complete account of different policy choices of the US should be embedded in the context of discussing the grand foreign policy strategy of the Bush administration to create and sustain Pax Americana – the unipolar American hegemonic system. In the big picture of its grand strategy to pursue American hegemony, Iraq and North Korea appeared to have different strategic implications to the Bush administration, thereby calling for different foreign policy approaches to two similar “rogue” states.