Going Critical; The First North Korean Nuclear Crisis

xviii, [2], 474, [2] pages. DJ has slight wear and soiling. Minor edge soiling. Illustrations. Chronology. Notes. Index. In Going Critical, three former U.S. officials who played key roles in the nuclear crisis trace the intense efforts that led North Korea to freeze-and pledge ultimately to dismantle-its dangerous plutonium production program under international inspection. Drawing on international government documents, memoranda, cables, and notes, the authors chronicle the complex web of diplomacy-from Seoul, Tokyo, and Beijing to Geneva, Moscow, and Vienna and back again-that led to the negotiation of the 1994 Agreed Framework intended to resolve this nuclear standoff. They explore the challenge of weaving together the military, economic, and diplomatic instruments employed to persuade North Korea to accept significant constraints on its nuclear activities, while deterring rather than provoking a violent North Korean response. Some ten years after these intense negotiations, the Agreed Framework lies abandoned. The story of the 1994 confrontation provides important lessons for the United States as it grapples once again with a nuclear crisis on a peninsula that half a century ago claimed more than 50,000 American lives and today bristles with arms along the De-Militarized Zone separating the two Koreas. Joel S. Wit is concurrently a Senior Fellow at the US-Korea Institute at SAIS and a Senior Research Fellow at Columbia University Weatherhead Institute for East Asian Studies.He has served as Senior Advisor to Ambassador Robert L. Galluci from 1993-1995, where he developed strategies to help resolve the crisis over North Korea's weapons program, and as Coordinator for the US-North Korea Agreed Framework from 1995-1999, where he was the official in charge of implementation. He was also a key participant in the establishment of the Korean Peninsular Energy Development Organization (KEDO).Prior to his efforts on the Agreed Framework, Wit was assigned to the State Department's Office of Strategic Nuclear Policy, where he was responsible for U.S. policy on a range of issues related to nuclear arms control and weapons proliferation. In that capacity from 1988 to 1992, Wit helped negotiate strategic arms control agreements with the former Soviet Union and participated in the Nunn-Lugar program to dismantle its nuclear weapons.In addition, he has published numerous articles on Northeast Asian security issues. He has also written numerous articles on North Korea and nonproliferation and is the coauthor of the book Going Critical: The First North Korean Nuclear Crisis (Brookings Institution Press, 2004).Daniel Bruce Poneman (born March 12, 1956) is an American politician who was the United States Deputy Secretary of Energy from 2009 to 2014 and is currently a Distinguished Fellow at the Paulson Institute at the University of Chicago. Poneman was briefly Acting Secretary of Energy in 2013 following the resignation of Steven Chu until Ernest Moniz was confirmed and sworn in. Daniel B. Poneman was nominated by President Barack Obama to be United States Deputy Secretary of Energy on April 20, 2009, and was confirmed by the United States Senate on May 18, 2009. He also served as Chief Operating Officer of the Department of Energy. Poneman served as Acting Secretary of Energy following the resignation of Secretary Chu on April 22, 2013 until his successor, Ernest Moniz was confirmed by the Senate and was sworn in on May 21, 2013. Poneman was a principal of The Scowcroft Group, a consulting firm in Washington, D.C., in the eight years prior to his appointment to the United States Department of Energy. Before his consulting role, Poneman was also a partner in the law firm of Hogan & Hartson. Between 1993 and 1996, Poneman served as Special Assistant to the President and Senior Director for Nonproliferation and Export Controls at the National Security Council. He joined the NSC staff in 1990 as the Director of Defense Policy and Arms Control.…