This chapter analyzes the history of preventive attacks against nuclear programs. It identifies when nuclear latency invites military conflict. It includes four detailed case studies: US-considered use of military force against Iran, the North Korea Nuclear Crisis, Israel’s preventive strike against Syria, and the US-considered use of force against Syria.

De-Stalinization in the Soviet Union deepened the crisis within the international Communist movement. The exposure of Stalin's crimes led to widespread disillusionment in Communist parties in the West, while the Soviet intervention in Hungary in 1956 highlighted the moral bankruptcy of the Communist project. This chapter offers a broad overview of this difficult year, discussing why Khrushchev refrained from invading Poland and why he ordered the invasion of Hungary. It also provides new details on the joint Sino-Soviet effort to pressure North Korea's Kim Il Sung to ease brutal repressions. Lastly, the chapter argues that Mao Zedong's efforts to define Stalin's legacy contributed to his emergence as the self-proclaimed strategist for the socialist camp, bolstering China's influence.

When compared to previous administrations, did South Korean public opinion of the US change during the Donald Trump presidency? During an unusual and sometimes tumultuous four years, President Trump questioned the value of America’s alliance system, specifically the South Korea–US alliance, and agitated against the liberal international order and democratic rule itself. However, Trump also pursued summit diplomacy with North Korean leader Kim Jong-un, enabling South Korean President Moon Jae-in’s pro-engagement policy with Pyongyang. It stands to reason that South Koreans took notice, but what did they think of these significant and sometimes contradictory moves? Using a longitudinal dataset constructed with data from the Pew Research Center Global Attitudes Surveys, this chapter assesses South Koreans’ opinions toward the United States and President Donald Trump within the context of the last two decades. Specific focus is given to changes in opinion during the Trump administration and attitudes toward Trump-specific policies, especially his North Korea policy. This analysis finds that South Koreans’ views of the US, which remained positive and significantly higher than those of most other regional actors, were held separate from views of Donald Trump, which were negative but not consistently so and especially not for some groups (such as conservatives).

This chapter offers a brief overview of US relations with the Korean Peninsula from the late nineteenth century through the Trump administration to provide a historical framework for understanding the chapters that follow. While laying out this framework, this chapter also advances the argument that the policies of the Trump administration toward the Korean Peninsula were not the dramatic breaks with the past the administration often claimed they were. President Trump was hardly the first American president to be skeptical of the US alliance with the ROK and attempt to change it – though the bluntness with which he did this was unprecedented. While Trump’s three meetings with Kim Jong-un could rightly be called historic in a narrow sense, there is ample evidence they were just the latest installment of what some scholars refer to as “entrepreneurial diplomacy” with the DPRK. In the broader historical context of US relations with the Korean Peninsula, President Trump’s policies toward the ROK and the DPRK appear more as variations on a theme than dramatic breaks with the past.

This chapter examines major events in US–China–North Korea triangular relations before and during the Trump years and considers Trump’s legacy and the outlook for the Biden administration. It concludes that the US under Trump failed to decouple US–China relations from US–North Korea relations in its policymaking and considers US–China relations on its own terms.

The International Criminal Court (ICC) seeks to end impunity for the world’s worst crimes to contribute to their prevention. But what is its impact to date? This book takes an in-depth look at four countries under scrutiny of the ICC: Afghanistan, Colombia, Libya, and Uganda. It puts forward an analytical framework to assess the impact of the ICC on four levels: on domestic legal systems (systemic effect); on peace negotiations and agreements (transformative effect); on victims (reparative effect); and on the perceptions of affected populations (demonstration effect). It concludes that the ICC is having a normative impact on domestic legal systems and peace agreements, but it has brought little reparative justice for victims, and it does not necessarily correspond with how affected populations view justice priorities. The book concludes that justice for the world’s worst crimes has no “universal formula” that can easily be captured in the law of the ICC.

This chapter examines the US approach to North Korean human rights issues since the 1980s and argues that while the situation was afforded greater rhetorical attention during the Trump administration, his approach did not in fact substantively differ from that of previous presidents. In his North Korea policy, Trump sought the headlines and did what he could to appear to be shaking things up. In practice, however, not much changed. He was subject to the same concerns and values and external forces as his predecessors. As a result, US policy toward North Korean human rights continued to follow a familiar pattern: Human rights issues are raised only when relations between the US and DPRK deteriorate.

The International Criminal Court (ICC) seeks to end impunity for the world’s worst crimes to contribute to their prevention. But what is its impact to date? This book takes an in-depth look at four countries under scrutiny of the ICC: Afghanistan, Colombia, Libya, and Uganda. It puts forward an analytical framework to assess the impact of the ICC on four levels: on domestic legal systems (systemic effect); on peace negotiations and agreements (transformative effect); on victims (reparative effect); and on the perceptions of affected populations (demonstration effect). It concludes that the ICC is having a normative impact on domestic legal systems and peace agreements, but it has brought little reparative justice for victims, and it does not necessarily correspond with how affected populations view justice priorities. The book concludes that justice for the world’s worst crimes has no “universal formula” that can easily be captured in the law of the ICC.

South Korea is facing a tectonic change of international environment. The original advanced countries are undergoing a stagnation never seen after 1945, while the growth of China and other developing countries is offsetting it globally. South Korea benefited much from the rise of the Chinese economy, the most remarkable benefit being the trade surplus; however, it is disappearing with China’s catch-up in technological capability. The rise of China poses a challenge to the US hegemony, undermining the rule-based order and making East Asia the arena of a hegemony contest, which is most threatening to countries like South Korea. The country needs the ability to manage relationships with the great powers to cope with it, but whether it has the ability is unclear. Compared with the nineteenth century, when Korea failed to adapt to a tectonic change, the overall ability has improved remarkably, but the ability to form domestic cohesion remains the least improved.

This chapter details the basic structure of sanctions and export control regimes, and describes the sanctions programs that were in place or developed within the last ten years. It briefly discusses the most comprehensive sanctions regimes, including those imposed by the U.S. against Iran, Cuba, Syria, and North Korea. This section focuses in particular on the structure of sanctions regulations before 2022 applicable to Russia. These sanctions were more limited in nature, but were enacted with increasing frequency and scope in the immediate years before the invasion, responding to a growing list of threats from within Russia related to cyber attacks, interference in the 2016 U.S. presidential election, and the Russian invasion and annexation of Crimea.

UN Charter Art. 2:4 aims to protect states from forcible encroachments by other states, but it does not stand in the way of the Security Council taking or authorizing states to take enforcement actions under Art. 42 and did so in the case of Korea 1950 and Iraq in 1991.It may take or authorize enforcement actions – even inside states – under Art.2:7 and 42. It may also under Art. 53 authorize the use of force by regional organizations – and has done so. The Responsibility to Protect (R2P) doctrine envisages the use of force to remedy extreme internal situations, such as genocide or massacres, but only within the rules cited requiring approval by the Security Council. The veto is often criticized as hindering action by the Council. It may, indeed, be excessively used but may sometimes be only a signal from one of the permanent members that it may be ready to use its power to resist an action proposed. Post WWII, force has been used by states – but only rarely – to acquire territory while ignoring the Security Council, notably by North Korea in 1950, Iraq against Iran in 1980 and against Kuwait in 1990, Russia against Ukraine in 2014 and 2022.

This chapter outlines the degree of change and continuity that the Obama administration brought to foreign policy and compares it to the Trump administration and its America First foreign policy.

This chapter opens with some basic description of and historical background on nuclear weapons. It then develops the basics of nuclear deterrence theory, working through concepts such as mutual assured destruction, first strike capability, second strike capability, first strike instability, the stability–instability paradox, and the nuclear triad. It then works through the causes of nuclear proliferation – the spread of nuclear weapons to new countries – including the logistical details of starting a nuclear weapons program. Relatedly, it examines the tools the international community possesses to slow the spread of nuclear weapons, including the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, extended deterrence, and economic sanctions, before working through both sides of the debate on whether the spread of nuclear weapons is stabilizing or dangerous. It then asks if nuclear weapons are useful tools of interstate coercion, before examining the conceptual foundations and history of nuclear arms control. The chapter applies many of its concepts to a quantitative study of whether extended deterrence makes allies more likely to start wars, and a case study of North Korea’s nuclear weapons program.

In the search for a Cuban road to socialism, those advocating a gradualist and pragmatic approach clashed with Che Guevara and his supporters, who called for a radical and voluntarist development strategy. While criticized by Cuba’s Soviet and Eastern Bloc allies, Che’s radical economic ideas, which dominated Cuban policy by 1968, were shaped by North Korea’s example as well as its material support. North Korea appeared to show a tested path through which a small country emerging from colonialism and underdevelopment could transform rapidly into a modern, industrialized, socialist republic. The Cuban–North Korean ideological encounter reflected a broader discourse taking place within the international Left at the time reflecting disillusionment with the Soviet Union and the appeal of alternative models of socialism from the global South. As an ideological consensus between Cuba and North Korea solidified in the 1960s, the two governments became principal defenders of voluntarist economics within the socialist world, in resistance to the dominant trend towards “market socialism.” This partnership was given its most vibrant expression in the 1970 sugar harvest, Cuba’s pivotal experiment in voluntarist economics, in which North Korea participated directly.

By early 1965, new dynamics were taking shape within the international communist movement. Cuba and North Korea were at the forefront of this challenge. Relations between the two countries date back to the Korean War, when many Cubans, like young people across Latin America, mobilized to prevent their countries from joining the US-led war effort. When the Cuban Revolution of 1959 brought the island into the socialist camp, a bond began to grow between the Cuban and North Korean leaderships reflective of their shared history of anti-colonial struggle, and their common interests as small countries within a community of socialist states dominated by the Soviet Union and China. Political, cultural, and economic cooperation between Havana and Pyongyang grew steadily, including Che’s historic visit to North Korea in December 1960. By 1965, a nascent Third Worldist tendency affirming its independence from the two major socialist powers was coalescing around North Korea, Cuba, and North Vietnam. At its core was the conviction that it was those on the frontlines of the anti-imperialist struggle which most clearly recognized the true historic task at hand: the defeat of US imperialism.