Between carrot and stick: Convergence and divergence of United States and South Korean strategies toward North Korea's nuclear program

This dissertation develops a game-theoretic framework that further advances Robert Jervis's two models of international conflict, the deterrence and spiral models. It outlines the conditions under which each of the two dangerous pathways to interstate conflict envisaged in the two models is more likely to occur and examines how the theoretical results of these competing models can explain the convergence and divergence of alliance members' policy choice of hard-line versus soft-line stances toward enemy threats. First, I develop a game-theoretical framework that integrates Jervis's two models into a unified framework. Second, based on the equilibrium outcomes of that game-theoretic framework, I derive implications for the actual policy choices of decision-makers vis-a-vis their adversaries. Next, as an extension of the implications of the proposed theoretical framework, I explain the convergence and divergence of alliance members' strategies in response to threats posed by a common enemy. The proposed theoretical framework and its implications are then applied to the dispute between the U.S.-South Korea alliance and North Korea over North Korea's nuclear program from the early 1990s to the present. The case study chapters examine two convergent phases (1992-1994 and 1998-2000) and one divergent phase (1994-1997), assessing the extent to which the conditions associated with the deterrence failure and spiraling outcomes contributed to the two allies' choices of hard-line and soft-line policies toward North Korea over its nuclear program. The case study chapters show that the convergence and divergence of U.S. and South Korean policies toward North Korea reflect the three major parameters of the theoretical framework: in particular, the two countries' perceptions of North Korea's type and its demands, the costs of concessions, and the expected costs of military conflict. In the concluding chapter, I discuss the implication of these findings for a second divergent phase (2001-present).