The Case for a New Approach to North Korea

As President Joe Biden takes office, a host of North Korea watchers, analysts, and former diplomats have put forward recommendations for how the new administration should deal with North Korea. Many rightly point out that the conflict in Korea will be among Biden's biggest foreign policy challenges - and that the current circumstances portend significant humanitarian needs and the looming possibility of more military tensions. However, what these discussions leave out reveals a glaring gap between conventional thinking in Washington and the reality of the conflict. They also reveal the gap between domestic and foreign policy conversations in the United States. Closing these gaps are the only way to build lasting peace in Korea. What is often lost in the popular news coverage and analysis on North Korea is that the U.S. has technically been at war with North Korea since 1950, making it by far Washington's longest running war abroad. The fact that the U.S. and North Korea never signed an official peace treaty is the reason why there is still so much conflict and military build-up on the Korean Peninsula today. In other words, the unended war is the cause of the geopolitical tensions we see today. And nuclear weapons are the symptoms of this unended war.