The Disappointments of Disengagement: Assessing Obama’s North Korea Policy

As a presidential candidate, Barack Obama boldly promised to enhance US engagement with North Korea (Democratic People’s Republic of Korea; DPRK). But in his first term as president, his administration was determined to significantly lower the foreign policy priority of North Korea and carried out a policy of concerted disengagement, an approach the administration called “strategic patience.” The strategy of disengagement showed disappointing results by late 2010, and so the United States made a begrudging, tactical adjustment by starting tentative bilateral talks with the DPRK. When the preliminary result of those talks—the “Leap Day Deal”—fell apart in 2012 over the satellite launch controversy, the wrong lesson was learned: that neither sanctions nor engagement works with Pyongyang. The real lesson of Obama’s North Korea policy is the failure of disengagement.