In 2003, when the Six-Party Talks (SPT) embarked as a diplomatic process, aiming at denuclearizing North Korea, they were hailed as unprecedented multilateral security architecture and brought high hopes for a peaceful regime in Northeast Asia (Horowitz and Ye 2006; Perry and Schoff 2004). Unfortunately, since North Koreaâs abrupt withdrawal from the talks in April 2009, the SPT have been at an impasse over the past few years, which has cast doubts about the feasibility of the multilateral approach and raised suspicions over the revival of the SPT. The decade-long process of the negotiations shows that, though most of the six-party participants are trying to balance regional security and stability, the challenge to convince all parties of the compatibility of differing goals and to encourage political consensus on the nuclear issue has never been easy to overcome. Due to their lack of solid coalition, the Six-Party Talks are often either undermined as a rigid and static process or presumed to be too sporadic and erratic (Bajoria and Xu 2013; Hayes et al. 2005; Reiss 2008).
However, considerable resistance to collective solutions should not be misunderstood as immobility or inertia of state activities or interactions among the involved parties regarding the issue. Hagström and Söderberg (2006: 409) assert that âIt is an epistemological question as to whether the current situation (of the Six-Party Talks) will continue to be portrayed in terms of a âstalemateâ as long as constructive US leadership is not forthcoming, namely, overlooking other potentially significant initiatives.â They problematize the predominant approach of foreign policy-related research that distinctively takes the United Statesâ angle. Hagström and Söderberg assert that the binary focus on US-DPRK relations usually results in discounting the roles played by other relevant states, when those actors provide important context or become significant objects of the analysis. An argument that any pattern or regularity of state foreign policy behavior cannot be found from the SPT process is also far from true. Shin and Koo (2008) assert that the SPT are expected to offer ârich ground for examining the links between interest, identity and foreign policyâ as a forum âwhere bilateral, trilateral, and multilateral issues have been inextricably linked in the resolution of the North Korean nuclear problem.â
In addition, despite the complexity of six-party coordination and the suspension of the talks themselves in 2009, the SPT has been the primary forum for negotiation between North Korea and the other countries with the most direct stakes in peace and stability on the Korean peninsula. What is more, the SPT have built up some level of momentum, not only in getting beyond political sensitivities but in substantive negotiating progress, such as a North Korean declaration and the dismantlement of the Yongbyon reactor (Martin 2009: 9), which gives considerable reason to support the SPT. To make the prospects of the talks more feasible and probable, it is believed to be vital to find out the real issues in the series of events by reviewing the past process of the SPT in terms of dynamic activities of the principal states in a comprehensive manner.
I started this book with an intellectual passion for grasping the essence of those dynamic interplays among the principal states of the SPT which have usually been overshadowed because of the lack of formal negotiation outcomes. Myriads of questions indeed have been and can be raised about the SPT process. What are Chinaâs likely motives for brokering the talks? Was there any change in Chinaâs perception of North Korean issues involved? Does the United States have a genuine intention to move toward the normalization of political and economic relations with Pyongyang? How do US perceptions toward North Korea affect their foreign policy decision-making? How should we understand Japanâs unilateral attempts to normalize the relationship with North Korea immediately after Pyongyangâs nuclear test? Has the trilateral security cooperation between the United States, Japan, and South Korea been transformed due to the SPT? Is Moscow truly âacting in a team spirit fashionâ as Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov argues (Toloraya 2008: 57)? Will North Korea fully disarm of its own volition if a non-aggression security pledge is assured from Washington?
Numerous scholars and practitioners have tried to answer those questions by unpacking essential elements within the SPT from various perspectives. Most studies regarding the SPT process, as they see a regional institution initiated for a new security and economic order and stumbling toward stalemate, are keen on the survival or demise of the multilateral security framework (Rozman 2011; Bahng 2011; Kim 2011: 7; Martin 2009; Ceuster and Melissen 2008; Van Ness 2008; Wu 2007; Evans 2007; Hughes 2006: 134â52). Studies usually provide reasons why the SPT could or should be a region-wide multilateral security mechanism or why the talks need significant organizational changes to be a more robust institution to resolve the North Korean nuclear issues. They emphasize why the member states behaved or did not behave in a certain way within the six-party framework rather than how they worked in and around the Korean nuclear dilemma.
Studying the interactions between states means that various probable factors or variables influencing decision-making processes and outcomes are to be taken into consideration in an extensive manner. The existing analyses however usually limit the number of agents or simply describe the position of each state concerning a single incident. Some studies reduce the level of analysis , solely focusing on either the decision-makersâ interpretations of foreign policy or the structural elements affecting the decision-making process. As a result, numerous incidents observed by different observers come away with wildly different assessments and assumptions. They to some extent enable us to identify the characteristics of the SPT, but hardly give us a clue about how member states have mutually influenced their foreign policy or about the nexus between the statesâ foreign policy shifts and changes in the social structure of the SPT. In other words, there are few process-oriented studies giving readers a holistic picture of statesâ dynamic interactions during the SPT. Needless to say, investigating the SPT only as a series of policy outcomes can hardly elucidate the complex and dynamic process of the talks interwoven with various determinants in state interactions.
I wrote this book to fill this major lacuna in the existing literature by providing a comprehensive analysis of the SPT process. Closer scrutiny of the Six-Party Talks as a âprocessâ would provide greater analytical purchase, as a single incident never happens independently without being caused or at least constituted by previous interactions, nor ends without generating effects. Locating the SPT process in the broader context of foreign policy changes, I examine when and how the states set out to âshiftâ their foreign policy during the SPT, which potentially reshaped foreign policy behavior of other principal states and affected the rise and fall of the six-party framework. Given the fact that most states have a great tendency to prefer the status quo and to stay the course, since a change in direction in foreign policyâwhether for an authoritarian or democratic regimeâcan be a fundamental challenge (Hermann 2012: 277), it is fair to assume a state does not alter its course unless it is absolutely necessary and it has very compelling reasons to do so. Foreign policy reorientation can thus reflect and imply a great deal about critical changes in variables affecting foreign policy choices. By tracing back when and why the member states do something noticeably different during the SPT process, I expected to generate a more comprehensive analysis of the dynamics of the SPT.
From this book, readers will find: To what extent and how the principal states have influenced each otherâs foreign policies and shaped the negotiation process with their foreign policy actions while interacting within the institutional framework of the Six-Party Talks over the past decade. The key focus/concern of the book is to examine the extent to which the SPT framework and process itself played a substantial role in shaping the ways in which states developed their policies and interacted with each other. More specifically, the book aims to answer:
- (1)What induced the statesâ foreign policy changes?
- (2)When did the states set out to âreorientâ their foreign policy during the SPT process?
- (3)Did a deliberate foreign policy action (role-making) by the state reshape the foreign policy behavior of other member states of the SPT?
- (4)How did the stateâs foreign policy action and reactions by other concerned states affect the overall properties of the SPT process?
- (5)When did the member states successfully create a cooperative atmosphere in the negotiation process?
- (6)What is the nexus between the member states (agents) and the SPT (social structure)?
- (7)How useful is Interactionist Role Theory in understanding the member statesâ foreign policy decisions/actions?
Despite the extensive literature and discussion about the SPT, these questions are rarely asked and even more rarely answered in the context of the process of statesâ foreign policy changes. Within assumed grand strategies of the concerned states,1 substantial foreign policy shifts by the member states of the SPT are observed and investigated. There were numerous movements and fluctuations in the process, but by looking at critical foreign policy shifts occurring due to particular role conflicts, I intended to locate seemingly turbulent and indeterminate trajectories into a space from which we could find new insights about foreign policy changes. While the overall objective of this book is to analyze the dynamic interplay between the agents (principal states of the SPT) and a structural domain (characteristics of the relationship among the key states) over time, the key questions to be answered are âwhyâ the foreign policy shifts occurred as well as âhowâ they interact with other variables. In other words, a theory of change in state behaviors (foreign policy learning), the social structure shaped by statesâ interactions (the process of SPT), and how those two inter-relate each other are the main themes for this book. Looking forward, I find that the process of interactions among all principal states of the SPT and the nexus between agents and the social structure within a certain security mechanism are a promising research area.
Interactionist Role Theory
With the aim of envisaging the complexity of the SPT process, I adopt the advanced concept of âinteractionistâ reading of role theory in an effort to integrate systemic capabilities of institutions with nonmaterial factors such as identity and norms, at both domestic and international levels. The merit of a synthesis between different disciplines lies in the fact that each disciplineâs strength can complement the otherâs weakness. It is of course sometimes desirable and appropriate to separate structural-oriented explanations and agent-oriented ones to respond to different issues in international relations. However, it becomes increasingly beyond the scope of any single discipline to address complicated questions and to gain coherent understanding of complex issues especially like the SPT process where multi-variables are intertwined. This...