Crisis on the Korean Peninsula : How to Deal With a Nuclear North Korea - Hardcover

The first comprehensive blueprint to decisively answer the question "What can be done about North Korea?"

Before George W. Bush proclaimed it a member of the "axis of evil," North Korea had already spent decades at odds with the rest of the world. Crisis on the Korean Peninsula is the first book to take readers inside this nation's previously impenetrable walls while also confronting the question of how to deal with it. Provocative and insightful, it outlines a comprehensive program for defusing today's most perilous nuclear crisis.

Praise for Crisis on the Korean Peninsula:

"This deeply informed and closely argued book could well be part of the solution. . . .Their book is smart, dispassionate and full of new information. . . .The ‘grand diplomatic bargain’ is ambitious and complex, and worth a careful perusal by anyone concerned with the issues. . . . O'Hanlon and Mochizuki provide many reasons to hope that an enlightened American diplomacy might finally resolve this state of perpetual crisis.”
--Washington Post

“Michael O’Hanlon. . . and Mike Mochizuki . . . have put together what they call a ‘grand bargain.’ Proposed in their new book, Crisis on the Korean Peninsula, it is a brilliant scheme for negotiations designed to gain the United States its essential security objectives—virtually everything Washington wants, except regime change.”
--Los Angeles Times

"A comprehensive proposal for addressing one of the most important issues of our day."
--George Mitchell, Former Senate Majority Leader

"In describing their comprehensive proposal for negotiations with North Korea, O'Hanlon and Mochizuki exhibit the strategic creativity and analytical depth badly needed by United States policymakers dealing with this strange--and dangerous--place."
--Ash Carter, Professor, John F. Kennedy School, Harvard University, and Former Assistant Secretary of Defense

"By far the best book yet written on the challenge posed by North Korea's nuclear weapons program, Crisis on the Korean Peninsula lays out a proposal that Kim Jong Il may not be able to refuse and that George Bush may be willing to embrace."
--Stephen J. Solarz, Former Congressman and Chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Subcommittee on East Asia

North Korea is among today's most troubled and troubling nations. This Socialist holdout has used its million-man army, erratic and volatile leadership, and burgeoning nuclear capabilities to disrupt and destabilize world affairs.

Recent political strains between the United States and South Korea over proper North Korea policy have exacerbated the problem. According to U.S. intelligence, North Korea now poses the most serious threat to U.S. regional interests in a generation.

In Crisis on the Korean Peninsula, foreign policy scholars and opinion leaders Michael O'Hanlon and Mike Mochizuki introduce a broad and ambitious program designed to answer once and for allthe stubborn North Korean question. Detailing a "grand bargain" by which the United States and its allies could defuse North Korea's military threat and welcome the nation back into the world community without resorting to Iraq-style war, this probing and timely examination outlines a step-by-step process that would:

• Address the nuclear weapons issue that so clouds North Korea's present and future global status and northeast Asia's security
• Reduce conventional military forces, begin to rebuild the nation's shattered economy, and solve its ongoing humanitarian crisis
• Provide face-saving and nerve-calming security assurances to North Korea's embattled leaders, who show signs they might welcome such pledges

North Korea has been a smoldering volcano for far too long. Crisis on the Korean Peninsula provides a convincing, authoritative program for extinguishing that volcano, not only by solving the current and acute nuclear crisis but also by helping North Korea to become a peaceful and constructive member of the world community.

Michael O'Hanlon, Ph.D., is a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution in Washington, D.C. and teaches at Princeton and Columbia universities. Dr. O'Hanlon's work has been published in the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, Foreign Affairs, and other influential publications, and he has appeared on networks from ABC and NBC to CNN, MSNBC, Fox, A&E, and others.

Mike M. Mochizuki, Ph.D. holds the Elliot's School's endowed chair in Japan-U.S. Relations at George Washington University, and is one of the nation's top authorities on northeast Asia. Dr. Mochizuki was formerly a senior fellow at Brookings as well as codirector of the Center for Asia Policy at Rand.