Normalization by Other Means

Normalization by
Other Means

Christopher Lawrence

Technological Infrastructure and Political
Commitment in the North Korean
Nuclear Crisis

“No package of in-
centives in the past quarter century has worked, and there is no reason to think
that new diplomatic efforts could induce them, where so many have others
failed.”1 This passage sums up the conventional wisdom about North Korea’s
nuclear weapons program: for twenty-ªve years, the United States has tried to
coerce or bribe the North Korean regime into abandoning its quest for nuclear
weapons, yet the regime’s determination has not wavered. A principal episode
in that history was the 1994 Agreed Framework (AF),2 a diplomatic arrange-
ment that staved off U.S. military action against the North’s nuclear program
but ultimately failed to prevent the regime from building the bomb. Im
years since its collapse in 2002, analysts in the United States have often dis-
missed the AF as a policy of appeasement that was bound to fail, and this ver-
dict has shaped later U.S. nonproliferation strategy toward both North Korea
und Iran. Although many scholars point to the accord as a case study to vali-
date their theories of nuclear proliferation,3 few have analyzed it in a rigorous
way to challenge or conªrm the conventional narrative. This article examines
the negotiation and partial implementation of the AF and suggests that there
is still much to be learned from that experience.

The AF is commonly interpreted as a U.S. offer of “carrots” in exchange
for North Korea’s denuclearization.4 Central to this arrangement was a reac-

Christopher Lawrence is Assistant Professor of Science, Technology and International Affairs in the
Edmund A. Walsh School of Foreign Service at Georgetown University.

The author wishes to thank Shelly Asiala, Matthew Bunn, Lynn Eden, Thomas Fingar, Gabrielle
Hecht, Siegfried Hecker, Sheila Jasanoff, Martin Malin, Scott Sagan, and Anna Weichselbraun. In-
terview subjects donated their time and valuable accounts, for which he is grateful. Workshop au-
diences gave crucial feedback and are too numerous to list. Anonymous reviewers helped
improve the manuscript. Additional data and case studies are available in the online appendix at
doi.org/10.7910/DVN/CLAOI5.

1. Remarks of Michael Auslin, “Stanford Experts Examine Options for U.S. in Dealing with North
Korea,” Stanford News, September 22, 2017, https://fsi.stanford.edu/news/stanford-experts-
examine-options-us-dealing-north-korea.
2. Agreed Framework (AF-1994) von 21 Oktober, 1994 between the United States of America and the Demo-
cratic People’s Republic of Korea, Information Circulars 457 (INFCIRC/457), International Atomic
Energy Agency (IAEA), November 2, 1994, https://media.nti.org/pdfs/aptagframe.pdf.
3. Sehen, Zum Beispiel, Etel Solingen, Nuclear Logics: Contrasting Paths in East Asia and the Middle East
(Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 2007), S. 118–140.
4. Zum Beispiel, Curtis Martin describes the AF as reºecting a shift from a greater proportion of
sticks to carrots. Martin, “Lessons of the Agreed Framework for Using Engagement as a Nonpro-

International Security, Bd. 45, NEIN. 1 (Sommer 2020), S. 9–50, https://doi.org/10.1162/isec_a_00385
© 2020 by the President and Fellows of Harvard College and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

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International Security 45:1 10

tor trade, whereby the regime agreed to dismantle its plutonium reactors
and a U.S.-led consortium would build civilian light water reactors (LWRs)
in North Korea to help resolve its ongoing energy shortage. The accord froze
North Korea’s plutonium capability, the story goes, and may have delayed its
nuclear pursuits. But U.S. intelligence later discovered that the North was pur-
suing an alternate route to the bomb: a clandestine uranium enrichment pro-
Gramm. Standard accounts then diverge into two opposing camps. The ªrst
argues that the secret enrichment program proved that the regime was simply
buying time and planned to cheat all along.5 The second, more dovish camp,
argues that although the North did in fact cheat, the United States also cheated
by not delivering its carrots in a timely manner.6 Neither account explains why
the AF called for LWRs to replace North Korea’s plutonium reactors, when fos-
sil fuel power plants (FFPPs) would have been a much better solution to its en-
ergy challenges.

The above narratives of failed engagement are born of a popular conceptual
framework that I call the “inducement paradigm of carrots and sticks.”7 This is
a vision of American diplomacy with North Korea that sees all U.S. Politik
options as arrayed along a one-dimensional axis. At one end are more U.S.
sanctions and North Korean isolation; these are the “sticks” that the United
States could use to coerce the regime into giving up its nuclear weapons. Bei
the other end are energy assistance, food aid, and security assurances—
rewards designed to bribe North Korea into nuclear abstinence. Analysts often
debate the appropriate “balance of carrots and sticks,”8 and how to maxi-
mize their effectiveness.9 But there is little consideration of the technical and
political realities entailed in implementing those inducements or of what phys-
ical consequence may unfold on the ground in East Asia. If one does look back
at the technical aspects of the AF, and how LWR construction was to be situ-

liferation Tool,” Nonproliferation Review, Bd. 6, NEIN. 4 (Fallen 1999), P. 1, doi.org/10.1080/10736709908
436777.
5. Sehen, Zum Beispiel, Jonathan D. Pollack, No Exit: Nord Korea, Atomwaffen, and International
Sicherheit (New York: Routledge, 2011).
6. Sehen, Zum Beispiel, David C. Kang, “Response: Why Are We Afraid of Engagement?” in Kang
and Victor D. Cha, Nuclear North Korea: A Debate on Engagement Strategies (New York: Columbia
Universitätsverlag, 2003), S. 101–127.
7. The inducement paradigm of nonproliferation diplomacy is most explicitly outlined in Etel
Solingen, Hrsg., Sanctions, Statecraft, and Nuclear Proliferation (Cambridge: Cambridge University
Drücken Sie, 2012).
8. Sehen, Zum Beispiel, Cha and Kang, Nuclear North Korea; and quotation from Paul Carrol, “Time to
Break the North Korean Cycle,” https://ploughshares.org/issues-analysis/article/time-break-
north-korean-cycle.
9. See for example, Peter Harrell and Juan Zarate, “How to Successfully Sanction North Korea: A
Long-Term Strategy for Washington and Its Allies,” Foreign Affairs, Januar 30, 2018, https://www
.foreignaffairs.com/articles/north-korea/2018-01-30/how-successfully-sanction-north-korea.

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Normalization by Other Means 11

ated within a diplomatic process, a different picture emerges. Rather than a
package of carrots to bribe the North, the LWR project looks more like an at-
tempt to build the physical embodiment of a normalized political relationship
between the United States and a denuclearized North Korea. If this was the
true shared intention behind the AF—to “hardwire us all in” and lay down a
physical path toward denuclearization and normalization—then the determi-
nants of diplomatic success and failure may have been very different from
what the common inducement narrative would suggest.10

This article presents an alternative interpretation of the AF, which I call
the “techno-diplomacy” model.11 My argument contains three parts. Erste, ICH
identify a commitment problem at the heart of the North Korean nuclear crisis
that made denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula unattainable either
through written agreements or through positive and negative inducements.12
Zweite, I argue that the reactor trade offered a way to circumvent this struc-
tural barrier to reconciliation, not by rewarding North Korea for nuclear roll-
back, but by leveraging the LWR fuel cycle’s potential to physically alter the
North’s political relationships with the outside world. Dritte, I suggest that this
techno-diplomatic form of nonproliferation engagement succeeded at both
physically rolling back North Korea’s nuclear weapons capabilities and inºu-
encing its long-term nuclear decisionmaking, but that it was compromised at
key historical moments when domestic audiences in the United States re-
framed diplomacy in terms of carrots and sticks. By misinterpreting the costly
signals of techno-diplomacy as rewards for North Korea, the one-dimensional
inducement framing of nonproliferation engagement made the ªnancial basis
of the U.S. commitment to reconciliation politically untenable, and helped sow
the seeds for the AF’s ultimate demise.

To develop these arguments, I begin with a theoretical discussion that draws
from the scholarships of rationalist security studies and constructivist science
and technology studies to help conceptualize the role of LWRs in U.S.–North

10. In diesem Artikel, “normalization” refers to a wholesale change in relations between the United
States and North Korea that would include a peace treaty, normal diplomatic relations, an end to
economic sanctions, and revised role for U.S. troops on the peninsula. Ample evidence suggests
Das, in the late 1980s, normalization became a top priority for the Kim regime. See Leon V. Sigal,
Disarming Strangers: Nuclear Diplomacy with North Korea (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University
Drücken Sie, 1998), S. 131–167; and Don Oberdorfer and Robert Carlin, The Two Koreas: Ein zeitgenössischer
Geschichte (New York: Basic Books, 2014). For additional sources, see online appendix A1.b. Ambas-
sador Robert Gallucci, head of the U.S. delegation to North Korea, used the phrase “hardwire us
all in” in a phone interview on January 19, 2018.
11. My term “techno-diplomacy” is adapted from Gabrielle Hecht’s “technopolitics,” which high-
lights the mutual shaping of technology and politics. See Hecht, The Radiance of France: Nuklear
Power and National Identity after World War II (Cambridge, Masse.: MIT Press, 1998).
12. James D. Fearon, “Rationalist Explanations for War,” International Organization, Bd. 49, NEIN. 3
(Sommer 1995), S. 379–414, doi.org/10.1017/S0020818300033324.

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International Security 45:1 12

Korean engagement during the 1990s. I then combine the methods of diplo-
matic history and open-source technical analysis to retell the story of the AF.13
I illustrate how the LWR project offered diplomats an opportunity to incorpo-
rate North Korea into an international network of technical collaboration,
shared vested interests, and mutual vulnerabilities that is unique to the LWR
fuel cycle,14 and how it may have obviated the North’s perceived need to build
nuclear weapons. The negotiating history and content of the AF suggest that
actors on all sides of the nuclear crisis recognized and pursued that opportu-
nity. Following this, I summarize oral accounts of U.S. ofªcials who partici-
pated in those negotiations,15 as well as ofªcial statements of the North Korean
regime, showing that those accounts are more consistent with the techno-
diplomatic history outlined here than with the common interpretation of the
AF. I then compare the two interpretations side-by-side as competing para-
digms of diplomacy, indicating several points where they are incommensura-
ble, rather than in mere disagreement.16 I show that prominent aspects of the

13. Primary data on the AF include declassiªed documents from The United States and the
Two Koreas, Teil I, 1969–2000, National Security Archive [NSA], George Washington University,
https://proquest.libguides.com/dnsa/2koreas1 (hereafter NAS-US2K-I); The United States and the
Two Koreas, Part II, 1969–2010, NSA, George Washington University, https://proquest.libguides
.com/dnsa/2koreasII,
(hereafter NAS-US2K-II); and semi-structured interviews. Secondary
sources include Joel Wit, Daniel Poneman, and Robert Gallucci, Going Critical: The First North Ko-
rean Nuclear Crisis (Washington, D.C.: Brookings Institution Press, 2004); Sigal, Disarming Strangers;
Oberdorfer and Carlin, Two Koreas; Robert Carlin, Joel Wit, and Charles Kartman, A History
of KEDO: 1994–2006 (Stanford, Calif.: Center for International Security and Cooperation
[CISAC], Universität in Stanford, 2012), https://cisac.fsi.stanford.edu/publications/a_history_of
_kedo_19942006; and Robert Carlin and John W. Lewis, Negotiating with North Korea: 1992–
2007 (Stanford, Calif.: CISAC, 2008), https://cisac.fsi.stanford.edu/publications/negotiating_with
_north_korea_19922007. For more empirical notes, see online appendix A. On open-source techni-
cal analysis of nuclear energy, see “Global Future of Nuclear Energy,„Dädalus, Bd. 138, NEIN. 4,
(Fallen 2009), https://www.amacad.org/daedalus/global-nuclear-future-vol-1. AF implementation
data are from annual reports of the Korean Peninsula Energy Development Organization (KEDO),
1995–2005. Data on North Korea’s nuclear program reported in Siegfried S. Hecker et al., “North
Korean Nuclear Facilities after the Agreed Framework” (Stanford, Calif.: CISAC, 2016), https://
fsi.stanford.edu/publication/north-korean-nuclear-facilities-after-agreed-framework; and Sieg-
fried S. Hecker, Chaim Braun, and Christopher Lawrence, “North Korea’s Stockpiles of Fissile Ma-
terial,” Korea Observer, Bd. 47, NEIN. 4 (Winter 2016), S. 721–749, http://www.iks.or.kr/rankup
_module/rankup_board/attach/vol47no4/14833231665766.pdf. Developments at Yongbyon 1996–
1998 from “Spent Fuel Team Reports” and “Daily Faxes” (N (cid:2) 195), NAS-US2K-II.
14. World Nuclear Association, “The Nuclear Fuel Cycle” (London: World Nuclear Association,
Marsch 2017), http://www.world-nuclear.org/information-library/nuclear-fuel-cycle/introduction/
nuclear-fuel-cycle-overview.aspx.
15. The author received verbal and written consent from each of the interviewees cited to use their
real names and to quote from their interviews. Institutional Review Board approval was not
sought for this research project.
16. For “incommensurable paradigms,” see Thomas S. Kuhn, The Structure of Scientiªc Revolutions
(Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1962). For incommensurable political frames, see Donald A.
Schon and Martin Rein, Frame Reºection: Toward the Resolution of Intractable Policy Controversies
(New York: Basic Books, 1994).

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Normalization by Other Means 13

AF and of North Korea’s nuclear behavior are difªcult to understand under
the carrot-and-stick paradigm—leading to convoluted or anti-scientiªc theo-
ries about the regime’s political motives—but that they can seem natural and
even expected under a techno-diplomatic understanding. I thus hope to leave
the reader with little recourse but to abandon the inducement paradigm of
nuclear crisis diplomacy.

The penultimate section moves beyond the AF to describe how this techno-
diplomatic lens can help illuminate other nuclear proliferation crises. By out-
lining examples from throughout the histories of U.S. engagement with North
Korea and Iran, I illustrate how political actors have sought to leverage techno-
logical infrastructures to resolve the commitment problems they faced, Und
how the common inducement paradigm fails to capture this recurrent under-
lying dynamic. I conclude by laying out some of the implications of this analy-
sis for future nonproliferation policy.

Civilian Nuclear Power as a Physical Commitment

The role of LWRs in the Agreed Framework is incomprehensible under the
carrot-and-stick interpretation of nonproliferation diplomacy. If the spirit of
the AF was simply to reward North Korea with energy-generation technology
and political normalization for ending its nuclear weapons program, then one
would expect the regime to have wanted to obtain those carrots as quickly as
möglich, with minimal strings attached. One would also expect U.S. negotia-
tors to have preferred whichever technology could deliver the energy with the
lowest ªnancial and political cost. Both sides were well aware that FFPPs
would more readily ªt those criteria than LWRs—they would be quicker and
cheaper to build and easier to integrate into North Korea’s energy grid17—yet
the two delegations converged on LWRs during the early months of negoti-
ations. The North Korean regime made LWRs one of its top demands,18 sogar
though it knew that it would be unable to fuel or operate those reactors with-
out continual assistance from the West.19 On the U.S. Seite, there is little evi-

17. Peter Hayes, “Should the United States Supply Light Water Reactors to Pyongyang?” paper to
the symposium “United States and North Korea: What Next?” Carnegie Endowment for Interna-
tional Peace, Washington, D.C., November 16, 1993 (Berkeley, Calif.: Nautilus Institute, 1993),
https://nautilus.org/napsnet/napsnet-special-reports/should-the-united-states-supply-light-water-
reactors-to-pyongyang/.
18. LWRs were a top demand throughout North Korea’s engagement with the United States from
Juli 1993 through the six-party talks. See online appendices A1.b and A5.b.
19. State Department analysts observed debates between regime “conservatives” warning of the
technical dependence that LWRs would entail and “realists” seeking an opening with the West
who promoted LWR import. See U.S. Außenministerium, Bureau of Intelligence and Research
[INR], “The Secretary’s Morning Intelligence Summary (DVRK: Redeªning Self-reliance),„Juli 17,

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International Security 45:1 14

dence of any serious attempt to persuade the North Koreans to settle for FFPPs
before the AF was signed,20 despite the signiªcant technical challenges that
LWRs would entail. The apparent embrace of LWRs as the centerpiece of en-
gagement has bafºed observers of both North Korea’s nuclear behavior and
UNS. nonproliferation policy, and it quickly became a main target for domes-
tic U.S. critics of the AF.21

So why did U.S. and North Korean negotiators choose LWRs to replace the
North’s plutonium-production complex? Why not build FFPPs instead and
move more quickly toward denuclearization and political normalization? A
key to answering these questions is to examine the structural context in which
political choices were taken and to consider the physical implications of those
choices for the political future of Korea. I thus refer to the “structure” of the
North Korean nuclear crisis as an important resource for interpreting the ob-
served choices of actors embedded in that structure,22 what alternatives may
have been possible, and how the choices made would inºuence the structural
context of later negotiations.23 Moreover, I suggest that key historical actors on
both sides of the crisis came to recognize the structural barriers that stood in
the way of resolving it, and that they sought to incrementally adjust the struc-
ture of North Korea’s international relationships in hopes to overcome those
barriers. As one principal U.S. architect of the AF put it, in order to reach a po-
litical arrangement consistent with a denuclearized Korean Peninsula, ne-
gotiators would need to “bend the arc of reality.”24 Physical traces of their

1993, NSA-US2K-II, http://search.proquest.com.ezp-prod1.hul.harvard.edu/docview/
1679130204?accountid(cid:2)11311; discussed in Wit, Poneman, and Gallucci, Going Critical, S. 75–76.
20. Documents from NAS-US2K-I and NAS-US2K-II from June 1993–October 1994 (N (cid:2) 178) con-
tain no indication of negotiation over the choice of LWRs over FFPPs. A brief attempt to persuade
the North Koreans to consider nonnuclear options in August 1994 is reported in Wit, Poneman,
and Gallucci, Going Critical, P. 273. The strategy memo for that round of negotiations, Jedoch,
contains no mention of FFPPs (“conventional energy assistance” refers to heavy fuel oil). UNS. Von-
Abteilung des Staates, “Strategy for Round Three,” August 1994, NAS-US2K-I, http://search.proquest
.com.ezp-prod1.hul.harvard.edu/docview/1679080925?accountid(cid:2)11311.
21. Sehen, Zum Beispiel, remarks by Gary Milhollin, “Joint U.S.–North Korea ‘Agreed Framework’ on
Nuclear Issues” hearing before the Senate Committee on Energy and Natural Resources,
104th Cong., 1st sess., Januar 19, 1995, P. 48, https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id(cid:2)pst.000024
361231&view(cid:2)1hoch&seq(cid:2)1.
22. Geopolitical “structure” has been a mainstay in international theory since Kenneth N. Waltz,
Theory of International Politics (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1979). This study adopts a “structura-
tionist” approach as outlined by Alexander E. Wendt, “The Agent-Structure Problem in Inter-
national Relations Theory,” International Organization, Bd. 41, NEIN. 3 (Sommer 1987), S. 335–370,
https://www.jstor/org/stable/2706749; and Anthony Giddens, Central Problems in Social Theory:
Action, Structure, and Contradiction in Social Analysis (Berkeley: University of California Press,
1979).
23. This is the essence of a “structurationist” account of political change. See Wendt, “The Agent-
Structure Problem.”
24. Author conversation with former Chief of Northeast Asia Division, UNS. Außenministerium,
Robert Carlin, Marsch 13, 2019, Washington, D.C.

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Normalization by Other Means 15

attempt—the desiccated skeletons of half-built reactors on the ground in North
Korea—attest that they may have begun to succeed.

commitment problems, costly signaling, and the arrow of time

The Korean nuclear crisis was not driven by disagreements over the appropri-
ate carrots to exchange in a bargain—these were articulated early in the crisis.
The speciªcs of North Korea’s denuclearization were spelled out in diplomatic
statements as early as 1992,25 und wir. negotiators had been signaling that im-
plementation of those terms would initiate steps toward diplomatic normal-
ization since the waning years of the George H.W. Bush administration.26
Eher, it was the credibility of that envisioned political solution that proved
difªcult to establish, and those credibility challenges tended to manifest along
the dimension of time.27

The challenges can be understood if one considers the entrenched structure
of geopolitical relations on the Korean Peninsula at the end of the Cold War,
and the plausible paths through which that structure appeared likely to
ändern. The United States and North Korea had been in a technical state of
war for more than three decades, involving extensive troop buildups along the
demilitarized zone and Trading with the Enemy Act sanctions on North Korea.
If the regime in North Korea wanted to alter that relationship, as it claimed it
did, this would involve both physical changes on the ground and long-term
commitments by the United States to maintain those changes in the future. Bei
die selbe Zeit, North Korea’s plutonium-production capability was the pri-
mary impetus behind U.S. engagement and, somit, constituted the regime’s

25. North Korea and South Korea agreed not to produce nuclear weapons, enrich uranium, or re-
process plutonium. See Joint Declaration on Denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula on January
20, 1992, Inventory of International Nonproliferation Organizations and Regimes, Center for Non-
proliferation Studies (Washington, D.C.: Nukleare Bedrohungsinitiative, 2011), https://media.nti.org/
documents/korea_denuclearization.pdf.
26. Sehen, Zum Beispiel, UNS. Außenministerium, Bureau of East Asian and Paciªc Affairs [EAP],
Ofªce of Korean Affairs, “Talking Points (U.S.–North Korea Relations),” 1992, NAS-US2K-II,
points 1 Und 2.5, http://search.proquest.com.ezp-prod1.hul.harvard.edu/docview/1679131420
?accountid(cid:2)11311; UNS. Außenministerium, EAP Ofªce of Korean Affairs, “Meet with North Ko-
reans,” January 30, 1992, NAS-US2K-II, bullet 2, http://search.proquest.com.ezp-prod1.hul.har-
vard.edu/docview/1679131469?accountid(cid:2)11311; and United States Department of Defense
Assistant Secretary for International Security Affairs, “Contact with Ambassador Ho Jong, DVRK
Deputy at the U.N., 22 Juni 1992 (Includes Talking Points),” June 23, 1992, NAS-US2K-II, http://
search.proquest.com.ezp-prod1.hul.harvard.edu/docview/1679143315?accountid(cid:2)11311. For em-
pirics and analysis of U.S. intent toward North Korea, see online appendix A1.a.
27. It is commonly believed that impasses over the future presence of U.S. troops and IAEA spe-
cial inspections prevented progress in negotiations. Problematic North Korean positions were of-
ten dropped, Jedoch, when the United States made other concessions, suggesting that the North
Korean delegation had misrepresented its bottom line as a negotiating tactic. For North Korean ac-
quiescence to an indeªnite U.S. troop presence, see Sigal, Disarming Strangers, P. 36. On the safe-
guards issue, see Wit, Poneman, and Gallucci, Going Critical, P. 72.

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International Security 45:1 16

sole bargaining chip. daher, if North Korea were to irreversibly give up
that capability in exchange for written commitments by the United States to
sustain a normalized relationship in the future, the regime could not expect the
UNS. government to follow through on those commitments once it had given
up its only source of bargaining leverage.

Rational-actor theorists refer to this type of dilemma as a “commitment
problem.” In the words of James Fearon, a commitment problem is a “situation
in which a mutually preferable bargain is unattainable because one or
more sides would later have an incentive to renege on the terms.”28 Notice
that the crux of Fearon’s dilemma is manifest in the dimension of time: it is not
the present incentive structure, but its foreseeable change in the future, Das
precludes a bargain.29 Bargaining about future engagements is further compli-
cated when actors cannot credibly observe or communicate long-term inten-
tions and when each suspects the other of misrepresenting those intentions.30
Consideration of these time dimensions of credibility have ªgured promi-
nently in the concerns of U.S. and North Korean decisionmakers throughout
the nuclear crisis, and both sides have attempted to leverage time-irreversible
physical processes to manage those challenges.31

The concept of “costly signaling,” which also comes from the rational-actor
Literatur, highlights the role of irreversible processes in interstate communica-
tion.32 As states attempt to communicate and ascertain the prospects of future
engagements, the amount of reliable information contained in their signals or
observed behaviors is related to the irreversible costs incurred by the state and
to the distribution of those costs over time. Fearon parses out this cost-time
landscape by distinguishing between a “sunk cost,” which is incurred in the
physical act of making a commitment, and a “tied-hands” signal, welche
reaches into the future to irreversibly adjust a foreseen incentive structure in
favor of a commitment’s durability.33

28. Fearon, “Rationalist Explanations,”S. 401–409.
29. Robert Powell identiªes changing incentive structures over time as a deªning feature of the
commitment problem. See Powell, “War as a Commitment Problem,” International Organization,
Bd. 60, NEIN. 1 (Winter 2006), S. 169–203, https://www.jstor.org/stable/3877871.
30. Fearon, “Rationalist Explanations,”S. 390–401.
31. A time-irreversible physical process is simply one that cannot be reversed or undone without
the cost of additional energy and resources. For a classic general-audience illustration of time-irre-
versible processes and the “arrow of time,” see Arthur S. Eddington, The Nature of the Physical
Welt (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1958), S. 68–86. See also Richard Feynman, “En-
tropy (Teil 01),” Richard Feynman’s Lecture: Entropy, YouTube video, 21:31, EduQuarks, Juli 11,
2018, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v(cid:2)ROrovyJXSnM.
32. James D. Fearon, “Signaling Foreign Policy Interests: Tying Hands versus Sinking Costs,” Jour-
nal of Conºict Resolution, Bd. 41, NEIN. 1 (Februar 1997), S. 68–90, doi.org/10.1177%2F0 022002797
041001004.
33. Fearon, “Signaling Foreign Policy Interests.”

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Normalization by Other Means 17

These considerations of structure and temporality illustrate why the North
Korean nuclear crisis could not be resolved by a simple exchange of carrots.
Even if U.S. and North Korean decisionmakers could have earnestly articu-
lated a mutually acceptable political future at the outset—comprising a denuc-
learized Korean Peninsula and normalized relations—they lacked both a
credible path toward achieving it and reason to believe it could hold together
once realized. Simple assurances or scraps of paper would not have resolved
dieses Problem, nor would transient inducements with negligible cost to the giv-
ing party. Stattdessen, what was needed was a solid framework for costly signals
distributed across time, one that could provide a regular stream of credible
information between both sides and incrementally adjust future incentive
structures toward ones more compatible with future cooperation.34

do light water reactors have politics?

Oft, “what appear to be nothing more than useful instruments are, from an-
other point of view, enduring frameworks for social and political action.”35
The insight that different technological artifacts entail different modes of social
interaction, and hence can function as “politics by other means” is found-
ational in science and technology studies. Bruno Latour and others even argue
that the (Re)structuring of social relations is one of the more consequential
roles that technology can play in human affairs.36 Social and political engage-
gen, by themselves, are often ºeeting and unstable. They require constant
regeneration through face-to-face interaction and costless written word. Com-
paratively, tools are brute and obdurate. Their use can exact costs and rewards
on disparate actors who are separated in space and time. And if an alluring
tool draws its user into particular roles or relationships with other users or
Lieferanten, then propagation and regular use of that tool can act to spread and
solidify those relationships across social and geopolitical space.

Few technologies are more political than those associated with nuclear en-
ergy. Insbesondere, the once-through LWR fuel cycle is widely recognized as
one of the “most globalized technologies in existence,”37 because it inevitably

34. For the role of stable communication in forging cooperation, see Robert O. Keohane, After He-
gemony: Cooperation and Discord in the World Political Economy (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University
Drücken Sie, 1984).
35. Langdon Winner, The Whale and the Reactor (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1986), P. X;
see also ibid., S. 19–39.
36. Bruno Latour, Reassembling the Social: An Introduction to Actor-Network-Theory (Oxford: Oxford
Universitätsverlag, 2005), S. 64–70; and Winner, The Whale and the Reactor, S. 19–39.
37. The term “once-through” refers to reactor fuel cycles in which fuel is used only once, Dann
stored as spent fuel indeªnitely without reprocessing. Richard K. Lester and Robert Rosner, “The
Growth of Nuclear Power: Drivers and Constraints,„Dädalus, Bd. 138, NEIN. 4 (Fallen 2009), S. 19–
30, at pp. 20–21, https://www.jstor.org/stable/40543998.

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International Security 45:1 18

draws reactor-operating countries into the international networks of technical
collaboration needed to operate large, modern power reactors. Given the high
up-front capital costs and technological inertia associated with LWRs, the po-
litical relationships that attend these forms of technical collaboration tend to be
less fungible and mutable over time than those associated with other forms of
energy generation. And while these networks cannot be abstracted from the
political choices of human actors, they acquire much of their shape and dura-
bility from the physical nature of the strong nuclear force, and the grotesque
concentrations of energy and human agency it allows us to condense into
small pieces of matter.

With this mixture of physical and social insight, it is possible to think about
LWR technology not just as a set of tools that can energize an economy to pac-
ify a suspect proliferator, but as a sophisticated network of signal paths
and mutual leverage that can allow political actors to communicate and ob-
serve nuclear intentions, arrange future incentive structures, and thereby con-
verge into more enduring modes of collective action as they sustain and
operate the fuel cycle.38 I argue that the LWR fuel cycle has indeed been de-
ployed as a form of techno-diplomacy in this way, and that to understand its
relevance in a given political context, one must consider its distinctive techni-
cal attributes.

ªnancial time-structure. Initial reactor construction accounts for around
70 percent of the cost of nuclear energy,39 and economies-of-scale factors fa-
vor large reactors. Once constructed, a reactor might provide return on the
builder’s investment for over half a century, but that relies on extremely low
operating costs, which in turn require sound operation and cheap fuel supply.
Somit, actors who design, ªnance, and construct reactors will have massive
sunk costs, and their hands will be tied by having a stake in efªcient reactor
Betrieb, safety, and maintenance for decades to come.

fuel-supply requirements. LWRs need enriched uranium for fuel. Eco-
nomically viable enrichment on an industrial scale has required decades of ac-
cumulated research on the part of countless actors, and this capability is
concentrated within a small number of states, most of them working in consor-

38. Political scientists often look to international institutions for the mechanisms of communica-
tion needed to facilitate cooperation, as in Keohane, After Hegemony. My concept of techno-
diplomacy simply suggests that international technological infrastructures, such as the nuclear
fuel cycle, can also play this role. This insight highlights the costs and path dependencies of physi-
cal systems as important factors in shaping international relations.
39. For nuclear economics, see Harold A. Feiveson, “A Skeptic’s View of Nuclear Energy,”
Daedalus, Bd. 138, NEIN. 4 (Fallen 2009), S. 60–70, www.jstor.org/stable/40544001; Lester and Rosner,
“Growth of Nuclear Power”; and William E. Mooz, Cost Analysis of Light Water Reactor Plants
(Santa Monica, Calif.: RAND Corporation, 1978).

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Normalization by Other Means 19

tia. Fueling requirements can therefore exert a tying-hands effect on LWR re-
cipients and exporters who share a stake in continued reactor operation.

in-core fuel management. LWRs run on high-burnup refueling schedules
that reduce fuel costs, waste-storage requirements, and losses associated with
a reactor’s shutdown.40 The complex evolution of materials in high-radiation
environments over long periods introduces difªcult technical challenges, Wie-
immer. Solutions to those challenges draw from vast stores of intellectual capital
accumulated from operating hours at LWRs around the world. Reactor-core
management is thus a complex international achievement and represents a
shared vested interest among collaborating states.

danger of radiological accident. Reactors pose an international safety
risk.41 A leading contributor to reactor safety is the knowledge derived from
LWR operating experience accumulated worldwide, an international asset to
which an independent national reactor program would not have full access.
Because the consequences of an accident are too great for market-based insur-
ance to cover, adequate liability requires inclusion in global reactor insurance
pools. The resulting tying-hands effects can work to bind exporter and recipi-
ent into a mutual interest in reactor safety and liability.

proliferation resistant, but not proliferation proof. The cladding of
LWR fuel allows for time-indeªnite storage of spent fuel in countable unit as-
semblies that are easily safeguarded. Weiter, an LWR must be shut down to
unload its fuel, making refueling schedules visible from satellite imagery.42
Daher, extracting plutonium from LWR spent fuel to produce a bomb would be
immediately visible to the international community, which could then with-
hold fuel from the reactor. LWR-export recipients therefore acquire a modest
form of nuclear latency,43 but with a visible and costly technical line between
latency and active proliferation.

Taking the above technical attributes into account can illuminate the role
LWRs played in negotiators’ efforts to overcome the commitment problem that
deªned the North Korean nuclear crisis. But interpreting those efforts requires
one further level of nuance: in addition to analyzing how the physical tasks of

40. “Burnup” refers to the amount of energy extracted from fuel during in-core residence. Sehen
Technical and Economic Limits on Fuel Burnup Extension, IAEA technical documentation (TECDOC)
1299, Vienna, 2002.
41. See Lester and Rosner, “Growth of Nuclear Power”; Richard A. Meserve, “The Global Nuclear
Safety Regime,„Dädalus, Bd. 138, NEIN. 4 (Fallen 2009), S. 100–111, https://www.jstor.org/stable/
40544005; and Feiveson, “A Skeptic’s View," P. 60.
42. Hui Zhang and Frank N. von Hippel, “Using Commercial Imaging Satellites to Detect the Op-
eration of Plutonium-Production Reactors and Gaseous-Diffusion Plants,” Science and Global Secu-
rity, Bd. 8, NEIN. 3 (Fallen 2000), S. 261–313, doi.org/10.1080/08929880008426479.
43. On nuclear latency, see Tristan A. Volpe, “Atomic Leverage: Compellence with Nuclear La-
tency,” Security Studies, Bd. 26, NEIN. 3 (2017), S. 517–544, doi.org/10.1080/09636412.2017 .1306398.

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International Security 45:1 20

LWR construction could re-distribute political leverage and engagement pat-
Seeschwalben, I must monitor how diplomats intuitively perceived those physical con-
sequences as they engaged in negotiations about the technology. Insbesondere,
when my analysis suggests that negotiators leveraged irreversible physical pro-
cesses associated with various technical endeavors as costly signals of long-term
national intent, the reader may worry that I give too much credit to their physi-
cal intuitions. Um sicher zu sein, nowhere in the diplomatic lexicon does one ªnd any
reference to entropy or the second law of thermodynamics.44 Yet while the lan-
guage of diplomats differs from that of the physical scientist, it is often replete
with vivid descriptions of how carefully negotiated technical steps or artifacts
may “lock us in,”45 “let the genie out of the bottle,”46 or “degenerate to heaps of
scrap metal.”47 And although political actors frequently disagree over which
steps are “essentially irreversible,”48 there are many physical processes whose
irreversibilities are so obvious—the breaking of eggs, shufºing of cards, Und
burning of combustible fuels are the common pedagogical examples—that even
adversarial states can recognize and agree on them. As I show below, these are
precisely the types of “corresponding measures” that ªnd their way into the
“frameworks” and “action plans” of techno-diplomacy.

Der 1994 Agreed Framework—Crisis Diplomacy by Other Means

The Cold War’s end marked profound shifts in North Korea’s strategic and
economic environment. Gone were the alternating patronages of China
and the Soviet Union, and the North’s economy was in steep decline.
Many Korea observers believe that these geopolitical changes prompted North
Korean leader Kim Il-sung to make normalization with the United States a top
foreign policy objective.49 An improved relationship with the United States,

44. For entropy and the second law of thermodynamics, see Eddington, Nature of the Physical
Welt, S. 68–86.
45. Generally, UNS. negotiators interviewed by the author suggested that their North Korean coun-
terparts sought U.S. concessions, and that the physical implementation of these concessions would
“lock” or “hardwire” the United States into continued benign engagement with North Korea.
46. This wording is commonly used among nuclear practitioners to describe the revelation of sen-
sitive nuclear data or designs.
47. Remarks of North Korean Safeguards Chief Ri Yong-ho to former Los Alamos Director
Siegfried S. Hecker during Stanford Track II Delegation visit to Yongbyon in 2010, describing the
fate of North Korea’s 50MWe and 200MWe GCRs at Yongbyon and Taechon. Reported by Hecker
to author, 2015.
48. In all nonproliferation engagement episodes examined here, negotiators deliberated over the
(ir)reversibility of implementation steps. The wording “essentially irreversible” comes from re-
marks of North Korean Ambassador Kang Sok-ju, to Siegfried S. Hecker, reported by Hecker to
author, 2015.
49. See Sigal, Disarming Strangers, S. 131–167. For further empirics, see online appendix A1.b.

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Normalization by Other Means 21

the regime may have hoped, could help make way for a limited economic
opening and balance against a rising China.50 Regime ofªcials communicated
this objective in track II settings as early as 1990,51 and it has been a top North
Korean demand throughout subsequent engagements with the United States.

North Korea’s nuclear program also came to fruition around this time, Und
with it a capability to produce weapons-grade plutonium. Its ªrst gas-cooled
reactor (GCR)—the 5MWe pilot reactor at the Yongbyon nuclear complex—
began operation in 1986, und wir. satellites observed it running intermittently
thereafter.52 Construction was also under way on the larger 50MWe and
200MWe reactors. Alongside this, North Korea mastered all aspects of the GCR
fuel cycle. So by the end of the 1980s, North Korea was producing a small
amount of plutonium at the 5MWe reactor—up to one bomb’s worth per
year—and was on the cusp of producing around thirty bombs’ worth of mate-
rial annually, pending completion of its two larger GCRs.53

These developments prompted a national security review of U.S. policy to-
ward North Korea in 1991.54 Despite broad resistance to any engagement with
North Korea from across the U.S. political spectrum,55 the review recom-
mended diplomacy as the best way to stop the regime from building nuclear
weapons. Declassiªed internal documents indicate a mixed sentiment toward
engagement within the George H.W. Bush and Bill Clinton administrations,
but a consensus emerged on two key issues: the impetus and goal of diplo-
macy with North Korea was to stop its nuclear program, and diplomatic
normalization would be acceptable after denuclearization.56

Here are the makings of a commitment problem: both sides claimed to pre-
fer denuclearization and normalization to their present realities of latent pro-
liferation and armistice.57 Denuclearization, Jedoch, would also amount to a

50. See Robert Carlin, “What North Korea Really Wants,” PFO 07-009 (Berkeley, Calif.: Nautilus
2007), https://nautilus.org/napsnet/napsnet-policy-forum/what-north-korea-really-
Institut,
wants/?view(cid:2)pdf.
51. See Sigal, Disarming Strangers, S. 78–79. Also indicated by John Lewis, who had extensive
track II engagements with North Korea. Author interview with Lewis.
52. Central Intelligence Agency Directorate of Intelligence, “North Korea’s Nuclear Efforts (Ex-
cised) (Includes Map),” April 28, 1987, NSA-US2K-II, http://search.proquest.com.ezp-prod1.hul
.harvard.edu/docview/1679097102?accountid(cid:2)11311.
53. Hecker, Braun, and Lawrence, “North Korea’s Stockpiles.”
54. Conclusions of National Security Review 28 are described by Wit, Poneman, and Gallucci,
Going Critical, P. 7.
55. See Sigal, Disarming Strangers, S. 1–14.
56. See “U.S.-ROK Basic Positions, ca. August/September 1991, Secret (two versions: a and b),”
September 1991, doc. 03A, brieªng book 610, NSA, https://nsarchive2.gwu.edu//dc.html?doc(cid:2)417
6668-Document-03a-Paper-US-ROK-Basic-Positions-ca; and “Brieªng Book, Deputies Committee
Meeting,” December 1991, doc. 7, brieªng book 610, NSA. For more empirics, see online appendix
A1.a.
57. Positions of both sides are reºected in the opening statements of bilateral talks in June 1993.

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International Security 45:1 22

power shift that may have been incompatible with a stable normalized rela-
tionship in the future, because there might be nothing to further incentivize
the United States to maintain that relationship. For engagement to meaning-
fully ensue, the North’s disarming steps would need to be reciprocated by sim-
ilarly irreversible physical steps by the United States that would alter its own
incentive structure in favor of continued engagement.58 This is what the reac-
tor trade of the AF was all about.

the art of physical commitment

The North Korean regime ªrst proposed to trade its GCRs for Western LWRs
during a high-level meeting with the United States in June 1993.59 Norden
Korean Ambassador Kang Sok-ju indicated that the idea had Kim Il-sung’s
backing and was designed to “open up North Korea.”60 A more formal pro-
posal followed in July of that year, when the North Korean delegation offered
to dismantle the country’s entire GCR fuel-cycle complex, in a phased process,
in exchange for Western LWRs and normalization with the United States.61 The
UNS. delegation quickly seized on the offer, describing it as “exactly the right
direction for the political and economic future of Korea.”62 The main selling
points from a U.S. perspective were the prospects of eliminating North Korea’s
plutonium capability and encouraging economic reform. Declassiªed docu-
ments from subsequent months indicate, Jedoch, that U.S. ofªcials also ana-
lyzed the proposal from North Korea’s perspective and came to understand
the “central importance that the regime placed on the provision of LWRs as an
indication of US good faith.”63

Opening up the technical attributes of LWRs and placing them into the
strategic context of the crisis reveals that their importance was more than sym-
bolic. Throughout the crisis, each side sought to front-load the other’s con-

UNS. Außenministerium, "UNS. Opening Statement [First U.S.-North Korea Meeting about North
Korean Nuclear Program],” June 2, 1993, NAS-US2K-I, http://search.proquest.com.ezp-prod1.hul
.harvard.edu/docview/1679096971?accountid(cid:2)11311. For more on the U.S. and North Korean po-
Standorte, see online appendix A1.
58. North Korean insistence on “action for action” is noted in State Department Intelligence re-
Häfen. Sehen, Zum Beispiel, UNS. Außenministerium, INR, “The Secretary’s Morning Intelligence
Summary [DVRK: A Few Loose Threads],” February 22, 1994, NAS-US2K-II, http://suchen
.proquest.com.ezp-prod1.hul.harvard.edu/docview/1679142611?accountid(cid:2)11311.
59. Wit, Poneman, and Gallucci, Going Critical, S. 54. Earlier proposal in low-level meetings re-
ported in Sigal, Disarming Strangers, P. 39.
60. Sigal, Disarming Strangers, P. 68.
61. Wit, Poneman, and Gallucci, Going Critical, S. 71–72.
62. Ebenda., P. 72.
63. UNS. Außenministerium, “Status Report: Korea, August 5, 1994,” NAS-US2K-I, P. 3, http://
search.proquest.com.ezp-prod1.hul.harvard.edu/docview/1679097311?accountid(cid:2)11311. Reiter-
ated by Ambassador Hubbard in author interview with Hubbard, Marsch 1, 2018.

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Normalization by Other Means 23

cessions so as to manage credibility problems.64 This common bargaining
imperative is mirrored in the ªnancial time structure of LWRs, which is more
front-loaded than that of FFPPs and represents a more profound shared invest-
ment in North Korea’s energy future.65 Additionally, the international endeav-
ors of reactor fueling, Betrieb, and safety could incorporate North Korea
into the web of techno-political relationships that make reactors function and
manage their international risks.66 Because the reactors would then be running
a substantial fraction of North Korea’s industrial economy, they would give
the international community strong leverage over the regime’s subsequent nu-
clear choices. Insgesamt, Western LWRs on the ground in North Korea would
have constituted a profound shift in shared vested interests, mutual vulnera-
Fähigkeiten, and risks among nations in East Asia.

Building FFPPs in North Korea would have represented a much more lim-
ited commitment on the part of the international community, and for precisely
the same reasons that they would have been a more convenient carrot than
LWRs. The upfront cost and construction time would have been much smaller;
the fuel supply would have been expensive and more anonymized by market
economics; and the operational and safety requirements would have been
much more straightforward. While U.S. ofªcials acknowledged that “nuclear
reactors are not the sort of things a country gives to an enemy,”67 FFPPs in
North Korea would have been more consistent with its continued isolation.

The reactor trade quickly became the focus of engagement between the
United States and North Korea, but negotiations then bogged down over two
seemingly peripheral issues: the sequencing of concessions, and the national
source and identity of the LWRs. These disputes seriously jeopardized the
prospect of a deal, and they too are mysterious under the inducement para-
digm: if the LWRs were simply a carrot, then it is hard to imagine why the re-
gime would jeopardize the prospect of receiving them, or risk stepping to the
brink of war, over disagreements that seem so petty. A closer look at these skir-
mishes, Jedoch, reveals a high-stakes struggle over techno-political futures
on the Korean Peninsula.

64. This was a persistent theme of the negotiations. See Wit, Poneman, and Gallucci, Going Critical,
S. 72–74; and Sigal, Disarming Strangers. In internal deliberations of the George H.W. Bush ad-
ministration, ofªcials also obsessed over how “forward leaning” U.S. diplomacy should be. Sehen
“Brieªng Book, Deputies Committee Meeting,” December 1991. For more empirics, see online ap-
pendix A1.a
65. Reºected in KEDO Supply Agreement (KEDO-SA), articles II-III and annex 3–4, http://www
.kedo.org/pdfs/SupplyAgreement.pdf.
66. On fueling, see KEDO-SA, article VIII.1; on operation, see KEDO-SA, articles VII–IX; und weiter
safety, see KEDO-SA, articles X–XI.
67. Hubbard interview, Marsch 1, 2018.

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International Security 45:1 24

The sequencing issue illuminates how the path dependencies of LWR con-
struction might facilitate political changes that had previously seemed impos-
sible, but only if steps were ordered in a way that both sides would perceive
as “locking the other side into” those changes. At the outset of the crisis, Die
International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) had requested special inspections
at two sites to resolve questions about North Korea’s nuclear past, and this
had become a key U.S. demand. North Korean negotiators, Jedoch, were re-
luctant to forfeit the bargaining leverage associated with those questions,68
and demanded substantial progress on construction of the LWRs before any
special inspections could take place. In der Zwischenzeit, UNS. nonproliferation law
prohibited the delivery of the “nuclear components” of a reactor to countries
not in good standing with the IAEA.69 This impasse forced the U.S. delegation
to consult experts in Washington to determine what “percent” of the LWRs
could be constructed prior to delivery of nuclear components. Under an in-
ducement structure, this elaborate detour would be unnecessary—if only the
carrot of energy generation was at stake, then the dilemma could have easily
been avoided by choosing FFPPs instead. But as a techno-diplomatic struggle
to shift political realities, it makes more sense. Sinking substantial Western in-
vestment into the nonnuclear foundation of a LWR could then incentivize two
key political changes that had previously been major sticking points: Norden
Korean acceptance of IAEA demands and a U.S. nuclear supply agreement
mit Nordkorea. The ªrst would align North Korea with international
norms, and the second would amount to a profound U.S. endorsement of the
North Korean regime. Later dubbed the “percent solution,” this strategy was
written into the AF and follow-on LWR supply agreement.70

The second diplomatic roadblock—the national source and identity of the
LWRs—presents yet another anomaly when LWRs are interpreted as a carrot.
At multiple points, North Korea sought to ensure that LWR provision and
ªnancing would come directly from the United States.71 Yet, the Clinton

68. See Wit, Poneman, and Gallucci, Going Critical. North Korean negotiators would frequently
suggest that U.S. demands would leave their country “naked” (P. 272). Zusätzlich, they ex-
pressed the need to keep “leverage until the bitter end” (P. 253), and aimed to delay special inspec-
tions until “mutual trust” was built via LWR construction (S. 275–276, 298–299).
69. “Nuclear components” deªned in Communication Received from Certain Member States Regarding
Guidelines for the Export of Nuclear Material, Equipment or Technology, INFCIRC/254, IAEA, Vienna,
1978.
70. The “percent solution” recounted in Gallucci interview, Januar 1, 2018; and author interview
with Gary Samore, director of nonproliferation, National Security Council, Februar 29, 2016. Sehen
also Wit, Poneman, and Gallucci, Going Critical, S. 307–310; and KEDO-SA, annex 4.
71. Indicated in interviews with Gallucci, Januar 19, 2018; Robert Carlin, Palo Alto, Kalifornien,
April 11, 2016; and Hubbard, Marsch 1, 2018. For an outline of U.S.–North Korea negotiations over
the reactor identity, the North Korean regime’s demands for U.S. reactors, the regime’s desire for
UNS. ªnancing, and its reluctance to accept South Korean reactors, see Wit, Poneman, and Gallucci,
Going Critical, P. 286. For State Department analysis of “leadership sensitivities” over the reactor

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Normalization by Other Means 25

administration knew that it would be impossible to persuade Congress to
fund the entire LWR project. The U.S. delegation therefore proposed an inter-
national consortium with regional U.S. allies to build the LWRs and persuaded
South Korea and Japan to volunteer large sums of money to pay for the proj-
ect. These were dangerous prospects for North Korea, Jedoch: if the United
States transferred too much of the sunk costs of the reactor project to its allies,
it might lose interest in the relationship after North Korea disarmed. In partic-
ular, if the responsibility were shifted to South Korea—if the reactors became
identiªed as South Korean reactors—then they might start to look like an in-
vestment in reuniªcation under the South Korean government, which was the
North Korean regime’s worst fear.72 Nevertheless, the consortium became a
hardened feature of U.S. demands. From there, North Korea fought to maxi-
mize U.S. responsibility for the LWR project by ensuring that the consortium
had an “American face,” leading to a prolonged struggle over the identity of
the LWR.73 If the regime just wanted to reap the beneªts of energy generation,
it is hard to imagine why it would risk scuttling the deal simply to determine
who would provide the carrot or what it would be named. But if the struggle is
interpreted as a contest to shape future geopolitical relations by distributing
sunk costs among actors, then the mystery subsides. The North’s ªrst choice
of direct provision of LWRs from the United States reºects its stated desire
for a bilateral relationship made durable by a U.S. stake in North Korea’s
energy future. But as U.S. direct provision proved impossible, the regime in-
sisted on U.S. leadership in the LWR project as a way to preserve U.S. politisch

Identität, see Department of State, INR, “The Secretary’s Morning Intelligence Summary [DVRK:
Selling the Geneva Talks at Home],„Juli 24, 1993, NAS-US2K-II, http://search.proquest.com.ezp-
prod1.hul.harvard.edu/docview/1679117594?accountid(cid:2)1131. Similar perceptions from South
Korean ofªcials are reported in Carlin, Wit, and Kartman, History of KEDO, P. 19. For North Ko-
rean insistence on concluding a commercial contract for the LWR with a U.S. company, see DOS,
“U.S.-DPRK Agreed Framework Implementation Report, November 1944,” November 1994, NAS-
US2K-I, http://search.proquest.com.ezp-prod1.hul.harvard.edu/docview/1679096916?accountid
(cid:2)11311.
72. Many observers interpret the regime’s reluctance to accept South Korean reactors as driven by
national pride. A North Korean foreign ministry statement on March 11, 1995, Jedoch, explicitly
describes the KEDO Charter’s reference to South Korean model reactors as a “declaration that the
UNS. will break the AF.” Other North Korean statements were noted by U.S. State Department ana-
lysts, including a statement that U.S. preference for ROK LWR provisions “raised doubts about
UNS. intentions,” noted by U.S. ofªcials in DOS INR, “The Secretary’s Morning Intelligence Sum-
mary [DVRK: Storm Warning],” February 16, 1995, NAS-US2K-II, http://search.proquest.com.ezp-
prod1.hul.harvard.edu/docview/1679131137?accountid(cid:2)11311. Statement noting that U.S. prefer-
ence for ROK LWR provisions “violates spirit of AF,” by U.S. ofªcials in “The Secretary’s Morning
Intelligence Summary [DVRK: More Warnings on LWR Issue]" Marsch 13, 1995, NAS-US2K-II,
http://search.proquest.com.ezp-prod1.hul.harvard.edu/docview/1679131391?accountid(cid:2)11311.
73. The LWR identity struggle produced many strange artifacts, including a “presidential letter of
assurance” obligating the Clinton administration to use “executive powers” to ensure LWR con-
struction (Agreed Framework, article I.1) and South Korean Standard Reactor design anonymized as
“advanced version of US-origin design” (KEDO-SA, article I.1).

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International Security 45:1 26

responsibility for overall AF implementation. Mit anderen Worten, putting an
“American face” on the LWR project was an attempt to translate the sunk
costs payed by U.S. allies into a political incentive for the United States to keep
its commitments.

Tensions over the sequencing of implementation steps and the LWRs’ iden-
tity prolonged the nuclear crisis by more than a year, bringing the United
States and North Korea to the brink of war. In October 1994, Jedoch, the AF
was ªnally signed. The U.S.-led consortium—the Korean Energy Development
Organization (KEDO)—would build two 1,000 MWe LWRs in exchange for the
freezing and eventual dismantlement of North Korea’s GCR complex. The re-
actors would be of American design and would be built by the United States
and its regional allies in the Kumho area near the North Korean port city of
Sinpo.74 Alongside the LWR project, KEDO would deliver regular shipments
of U.S.-funded heavy fuel oil (HFO) to Sinpo, and this would continuously
signal U.S. commitment to the AF.75 The stated end goal of the accord was a
fundamentally changed relationship between North Korea and the West, cul-
minating in normalization with the United States and denuclearization of the
peninsula76—precisely the incredible political future articulated by both sides
at the outset of the crisis.

arrow-of-time diplomacy

One can now surmise both an initial state and an envisioned end state articu-
lated in the Agreed Framework. In the initial state of affairs, Die Vereinigten Staaten
was engaging with North Korea primarily because the North Koreans could
produce weapons-grade plutonium at Yongbyon. In the envisioned end state,
North Korea would have dismantled this capability, but in its place would
stand two large Western LWRs on North Korean soil, constituting the physical
embodiment of a changed political relationship. But what about the path be-
tween these two realities? How was credibility to be managed along that path?
This was one of the more carefully deliberated issues during negotiations, Und
the outcome was somewhat paradoxical—the AF itself was expressly not a
binding written commitment.77 Rather, it proposed a sequence of irreversible

74. At the time of the AF’s signature, there was a shared “expectation” that the United States
would share the cost of the LWRs with allies. Remarks of Ambassador Hubbard, reported in
Carlin, Wit, and Kartman, History of KEDO, S. 17, 29.
75. HFO deliveries were described as “the most tangible evidence of [U.S.] commitment to uphold
the Agreed Framework” in U.S. Außenministerium, “Update on KEDO and the Agreed Frame-
arbeiten,” February 20, 1997, NAS-US2K-I, http://search.proquest.com.ezp-prod1.hul.harvard.edu/
docview/1679163891?accountid(cid:2)11311.
76. See AF-1994, articles II-III.
77. UNS. Außenministerium, Ofªce of Legislative and Intergovernmental Affairs [OLIA], "Re-
sponse to Dole Letter on the Framework Agreement (Not Being a Treaty) [Includes Attachments],”

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Normalization by Other Means 27

physical processes to build the credibility of a pending political future—
a physical path, mit anderen Worten, toward denuclearization and normalization. Wenn
commitments to that envisioned future were not credible on paper, dann ist die
essential innovation of the AF was to take those commitments out of the juridi-
cal space of written agreements,78 and attempt to express them incrementally
on the ground at Yongbyon and Kumho.

The proposed sequence of physical commitments was more precisely
spelled out in Annex 3 of the KEDO LWR supply agreement (see ªgure 1).79
North Korea’s most irreversible steps toward denuclearization were to be
spread out across time and synchronized with the costliest and most irrevers-
ible steps in the LWR construction process. While the carrots associated with
many of these interlocking steps would be reversible—at any point during the
Verfahren, KEDO could simply halt construction and the North could restart
the 5MWe reactor—the costs entailed in each step would be irreversible with-
out additional costs associated with backtracking. Dollars invested in LWR
construction could not be recovered if the LWRs were never operated, Und
each dismantlement step or freeze-year of the North’s GCR complex would
push it closer toward an unsalvageable physical state. With this careful combi-
nation of irreversible costs and reversible pending beneªts, each pair of syn-
chronized steps could function as an exchange of costly signals, indicating
both sides’ willingness to continue down the path and incrementally shifting
the incentive structure in favor of taking the next step. By the time the LWRs
would be operational, UNS. allies would have invested upward of $5 Milliarde (1994 dollars) in North Korea’s energy future, and the physical destruction of North Korea’s GCR complex would be complete. Had they been fully constructed, Jedoch, the KEDO LWRs alone would not have been enough to ensure expanded relations between North Korea and the outside world. Eher, they were described as a possible “lynch pin” to set the stage for further techno-diplomatic engagements.80 Toward this end, physical changes on the ground were intended to precede and hopefully cata- April 5, 1995, NAS-US2K-I, http://search.proquest.com.ezp-prod1.hul.harvard.edu/docview/167 9080809?accountid(cid:2)11311. 78. The legal counsel to the U.S. delegation insisted that the AF was “not an agreement, but a framework for action. We do stuff, they do stuff. The stuff we do depends on what they do, but at present [time of AF signature] there is no ‘agreement.’” Passage recounted in Gallucci phone inter- view, Januar 19, 2018; and Carlin interview, April 2016. 79. KEDO-SA, annex 3. 80. Joel Wit, senior adviser to the U.S. delegation during the AF negotiations, outlined extraneous effects of the KEDO project envisioned by Department of State ofªcials. See Wit, “The Korean Pen- insula Energy Development Organization: Achievements and Challenges,” Nonproliferation Review, Bd. 6, NEIN. 2 (1999), S. 59–69, 62–63, https://doi.org/10.1080/10736709908436750. Reiterated in Carlin interview, April 11, 2016. The term “lynch pin” was used by Thomas Fingar in interview with author, Palo Alto, Kalifornien, April 1, 2016. l D o w n o a d e d von h t t p : / / Direkte . m i t . e du / i s e c / Kunst – p d l f / / / / 4 5 1 9 1 8 6 0 4 8 2 / i s e c _ a _ 0 0 3 8 5 p d . f by gu e s t o n 0 8 S e p e m b e r 2 0 2 3 International Security 45:1 28 Figur 1. Timeline of Synchronized Irreversible Implementation Steps Outlined in Annex 3 of the Korean Energy Development Organization (KEDO) Light Water Reactor (LWR) Supply Agreement North Korean Denuclearization Steps KEDO Implementation Steps Freeze gas-cooled reactor operation and construction; freeze reprocessing; place spent-fuel rods under IAEA surveillance Presidential letter of assurance guarantees North Korea; heavy fuel oil shipments begin LWR provision to Permit ad hoc and routine inspections under Comprehensive Safeguards Agreement (CSA) by IAEA Creation of KEDO, signature of LWR supply agreement by KEDO member states Full compliance with IAEA CSA, including inspection of suspected reprocessing waste site building 500 Signiﬁcant portion of ﬁrst LWR completed in North Korea, excluding delivery of key nuclear components Begin transfer of 8,000 spent fuel rods from Yongbyon for ultimate disposition outside North Korea Begin delivery of key nuclear components for the ﬁrst LWR to North Korea Complete transfer of 8,000 spent fuel rods from Yongbyon for ultimate disposition outside North Korea Complete delivery of key nuclear components for the first LWR Begin dismantlement of gas-cooled reactors, and reprocessing facility Complete construction of the ﬁrst LWR; begin construction of the second LWR Complete dismantlement of gas-cooled reactors; reprocessing facility Complete construction of the second LWR; delivery of initial LWR fuel core NOTE: This figure was created by the author. time l D o w n o a d e d f r o m h t t p : / / Direkte . m i t . e du / i s e c / Kunst – p d l f / / / / 4 5 1 9 1 8 6 0 4 8 2 / i s e c _ a _ 0 0 3 8 5 p d . f by gu e s t o n 0 8 S e p e m b e r 2 0 2 3 Normalization by Other Means 29 lyze important political changes within KEDO member states. Bilateral nuclear cooperation agreements, labor protections, and lifts on communication and travel bans were previously unthinkable in respective capitals. But with the ªrst large-scale, Western-style construction project in North Korea hanging in the balance, they might suddenly become imperative for both sides. Con- necting the LWRs to North Korea’s energy grid would be another avenue for precipitated cooperation. The needed grid upgrades would require North Korea to obtain ªnancing from international institutions, which would in turn require changes in U.S. laws that opposed international loans to North Korea. They would also entail further exposure of the regime to international ªnance norms and Western civil-engineering practices.81 Because the fate of KEDO’s own loans would be tied to extracting electricity from the LWRs, KEDO mem- bers would face new incentive to facilitate these changes.82 Again, FFPPs sized to ªt the existing grid did not offer the prospect of catalyzing any of these fur- ther investments or political evolutions. a new reality, but no guaranteed outcome If the Agreed Framework articulates a physical path between two dispa- rate political realities—a path otherwise blocked by structural barriers to commitment—then signiªcant, actualized progress along that path is evident in the partially constructed nuclear reactors at Yongbyon and Kumho. The North Korean regime is said to have “taken a bet on the AF, and essentially shut the lights out at Yongbyon.”83 Many of the steps outlined in the KEDO supply agreement were never carried out, Jedoch. Construction steps and HFO delivery were both chronically delayed (because of a lack of U.S. fund- ing), leading North Korea to protest that the United States was not committed to the process. And shortly after entering ofªce in 2002, the George W. Bush administration re-evaluated the available intelligence on North Korea’s pro- curement activities and accused North Korea of “cheating” on the AF by pur- suing a clandestine uranium enrichment program.84 The United States then ordered KEDO to halt HFO shipments and LWR construction, and North Korea responded by restarting the 5MWe reactor and reprocessing the spent fuel from its initial core. These events constituted the political collapse of the 81. Ebenda. 82. Ebenda. 83. Common wording of anonymous KEDO and U.S.-DOE ofªcials, some of whom were present at Yongbyon during implementation of the AF, in conversation with the author throughout 2017– 18. 84. See Mike Chinoy, Meltdown: The Inside Story of the North Korean Nuclear Crisis (New York: St. Martin’s Grifªn, 2008), S. 81–102. l D o w n o a d e d von h t t p : / / Direkte . m i t . e du / i s e c / Kunst – p d l f / / / / 4 5 1 9 1 8 6 0 4 8 2 / i s e c _ a _ 0 0 3 8 5 p d . f by gu e s t o n 0 8 S e p e m b e r 2 0 2 3 International Security 45:1 30 AF. All told, UNS. allies had invested nearly $2 billion in the ªrst LWR, Und
North Korea had essentially gutted its GCR complex, leaving its 50MWe
and 200MWe reactors in ruins and only a meager plutonium-production capa-
bility intact.

Two important observations can be made about the partial success and ulti-
mate collapse of the AF. Erste, the techno-diplomacy of the KEDO process
achieved two goals central to U.S. nonproliferation diplomacy: inºuencing the
regime’s long-term nuclear decisionmaking, and physically rolling back its nu-
clear weapons capability. Throughout the eight years that the AF was in force,
the most salient aspects of North Korea’s nuclear behavior correlated in time
with the political and ªnancial status of the KEDO project.85 These facts
strongly suggest that the regime was modulating its nuclear activities in re-
sponse to signals of a U.S. commitment, or lack thereof, to eventual normaliza-
tion, and that those signals were embodied in KEDO’s activities. By the time
the AF collapsed, North Korea had effectively divested more than 98 Prozent
of its emerging plutonium-production complex.86 No other U.S. strategy has
been so successful at altering the physical capabilities or political choices be-
hind North Korea’s nuclear program.

The second observation is that the AF was set on a path toward collapse
when the Clinton administration, unable to establish a substantive ªnancial
and political U.S. stake in its implementation, was forced to displace most of
the costs of diplomacy to its allies. This limited ªnancial stake attenuated the
signal of U.S. commitment from the perspectives of both North Korea and U.S.
allies,87 leading the regime to harbor skepticism about the AF and hedge
against its collapse. It also opened the way for the Bush administration to
abandon the AF with little political cost to itself. (I later trace KEDO’s ªnancial
problems to the dominance of inducement tropes in U.S. domestic political de-
liberation about nonproliferation diplomacy.)

Subjective Accounts of Techno-diplomacy

My account of the Agreed Framework has thus far relied on structural descrip-
tions of the North Korean nuclear crisis and how LWRs were situated within a
diplomatic process. In diesem Abschnitt, I argue that the accounts of actors who ne-

85. The correlations are illustrated in online appendix A2, which combines archival evidence, oral
accounts, and open-source data to illuminate the timing of key events and the regime’s ªxation on
KEDO’s progress and sustainability.
86. See Hecker et al., “North Korean Nuclear Facilities.”
87. UNS. documents note Japanese and South Korean concerns over a lack of U.S. ªnancial support
for KEDO. Sehen, Zum Beispiel, DOS, “Background Paper: Korean Peninsula," Marsch 1996, NAS-
US2K-I, http://search.proquest.com.ezp-prod1.hul.harvard.edu/docview/1679080701?accountid
(cid:2)11311.

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Normalization by Other Means 31

gotiated and implemented the AF are broadly consistent with my interpreta-
tion. For the U.S. Seite, I conducted a series of semi-structured interviews with
UNS. ofªcials who participated in the negotiation or implementation of the AF.
For the North Korean side, I describe other empirical sources that shed light on
the regime’s intent.

Three points of clariªcation are needed to carefully interpret the accounts of
UNS. ofªcials. Erste, my interview subjects gave varying appraisals for the AF
collapse, some of which differ from mine. Zweite, UNS. ofªcials made clear
that they did not pursue normalization with North Korea as an end in itself.
Eher, they saw it as a crucial part of any realistic path to a nuclear-free
Korean Peninsula. Endlich, no single account describes all elements of the
techno-diplomatic nonproliferation strategy that I have described; there was
no mastermind behind the AF. Stattdessen, I consider how each actor was situated
within a structural context that deªned their possibilities for political action,
and how the actions taken could in turn inºuence the structural context for fu-
ture decisionmaking. Sociologist Anthony Giddens highlighted this “recursive
relationship between structure and agency” in his “theory of structuration,”88
which has since become a mainstay of constructivist international relations.89
Following his analytical program, I pay particular attention to how negotiators
imagined that their concerted actions could incrementally shift their structural
environment to create political opportunities that had not previously existed.
Their frequent musings about how the KEDO LWR project could create “a new
reality” on the Korean Peninsula suggest a vivid awareness of the structural
barriers that they faced, and how those geopolitical structures may have been
mutable over time.

u.s. accounts of the reactor trade

“We didn’t think of the KEDO LWRs as a carrot, but as an instrument to man-
age the relationship,” observed Thomas Fingar.90 With this remark, Fingar cap-
tures the overall theme that U.S. ofªcials presented when I interviewed them.
Interview subjects variously described the KEDO LWR project as a “vehicle for
engagement,”91 a “platform for sustained contacts,”92 and a “means for each
side to judge the others’ intentions.”93 Many explicitly indicated that the LWR
project was an attempt to change North Korea’s political relationships with the

88. On “structuration,” see Giddens, Central Problems.
89. Wendt, “The Agent-Structure Problem.”
90. Fingar interview, April 1, 2016.
91. Carlin interview, April 11, 2016.
92. Author interview with Charles Kartman, director of Korean affairs, UNS. Außenministerium,
1992–96, Marsch 9, 2017.
93. Author interview with Joel Wit, senior adviser to U.S. delegation, Februar 10, 2017.

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International Security 45:1 32

outside world.94 Meanwhile, inducement metaphors such as “carrots,” “brib-
ery,” and “cheating” were largely absent.

Ambassador Robert Gallucci, head of the U.S. delegation that negotiated the
AF, illuminated the substantive distinction between inducement and techno-
diplomacy when we discussed how the national identity of the LWRs became
such a challenge for negotiators: “The LWR project was a manifestation of a
changing relationship, because it would take quite a long time to build, Und
substantial ªnancial investment. The North Koreans wanted the United States
to be the ones who were on the hook. That was what the LWR project was a
manifestation of. It wasn’t just that they’d get 2,000 MW of electricity, but that
the LWR project would have meant the United States was hardwired in. And
we would have gone further if there were a way for us to ªnance it, aber dort
wasn’t.”95 This passage explicitly foregrounds the ªnancial time structure and
irreversibility of the LWR project, while relegating its intrinsic utility to North
Korea—2,000 MWe of energy generation—to the periphery. His focus is pre-
cisely the opposite of that of an inducement account, which would instead
point to the “carrot’s” intrinsic value to the regime and treat the cost and dura-
tion of its delivery as a regrettable trade-off.96

Two interview subjects presented an interesting exception to the above sum-
mary. Mitchell Reiss and Gary Samore interpreted the choice of LWRs over
FFPPs as simply an idiosyncratic North Korean demand. Zusätzlich, Sie
pointed to North Korean “cheating” as the sole cause of the AF’s collapse
(other interview subjects avoided the “cheating” metaphor and gave a more
mixed appraisal). At ªrst glance, these dismissals appear to conºict with my
account of the AF. But on closer examination, they articulate the techno-
diplomatic prospects of LWR export with high ªdelity, but from the point of
view of U.S. ofªcials entering a negotiating environment already dominated
by the prospect of LWR exports to North Korea.

Reiss began his account by sidelining the LWR choice and black-boxing
North Korea’s motives behind its demand: “The North Koreans wanted LWRs,
they didn’t want anything else. So the technology itself wasn’t an option for
us. It was the shiny new toy [for the regime].” These are the beginnings of an
inducement account. But when later distinguishing between LWRs and FFPPs
from a U.S. strategic perspective, Reiss described how the technical challenges
of bringing LWRs online could be a mechanism for transparency and U.S. In-
ºuence in North Korea: “The LWRs would require much more extensive train-
ing [of North Korean operators]; they’d be harder for them to manage; they’d

94. Zum Beispiel, Hubbard interview, Marsch 1, 2018.
95. Gallucci interview, Januar 19, 2018.
96. For similar accounts, see online appendix A3.

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Normalization by Other Means 33

take longer to bring online. LWRs are much harder than FFPPs to operate and
repair. And then there are the safety and liability issues that require long-term
interaction. I wouldn’t call it a Trojan horse because it was their [the regime’s]
idea, but we were gonna be in there for a really long time.” Reiss then high-
lighted how the process of upgrading the grid (to bring LWRs online) could
catalyze additional modes of ªnancial and technical collaboration: “We talked
about IMF loans [to ªnance the grid upgrade]. And the Japanese were quietly
talking about tens of billions of dollars of infrastructure. So yeah, we’d be all
over that country [if the LWRs had materialized]. People were thinking that
there was an upside to us being so intimately involved with their fundamental
national decisions.”97

Samore’s account follows a similar trajectory. When asked about the possible
North Korean intent behind the LWR preference, Samore responded, “God
knows [why they insisted on LWRs]. When pressed, their explanation was
something along the lines of ‘Kim Il-sung said so’.” But when discussing
Annex 3 of the LWR supply agreement from a U.S. strategic perspective, Er
recounted the “percent solution,” whereby a maximal nonnuclear investment
was to be made on the ground at Kumho to incentivize North Korea to allow
IAEA special inspections at Yongbyon: “The theory behind the LWR project
[from a U.S. Perspektive] was that it would create an incentive for the North
Koreans to come into compliance with their safeguards agreement, weil das
project would halt if they didn’t. And it was deliberately set up that way.”98
These accounts align with my structurationist analysis of techno-diplomacy.
Both Reiss and Samore led negotiations with North Korea after the choice of
LWRs had already solidiªed. Somit, unlike earlier U.S. delegations, sie waren
not called upon to critically analyze that choice, and it is unsurprising that
they attribute it to North Korean idiosyncrasy. But when situated within a
UNS. strategic perspective at the negotiating table with North Korea, Reiss and
Samore expertly navigate the unique constraints and opportunities within that
strategic setting, which by that time had been shaped by the LWR plan. Das
recursive relationship between structure and agency emerged poignantly in
Reiss’s concluding homage to the achievements of his predecessors: “I used to
say that the AF didn’t guarantee anything. What it did was provide an oppor-
tunity that didn’t previously exist for North Korea and the outside world to
have a fundamentally different relationship. That’s not to minimize what Bob
[Gallucci] did—he created a new reality. But he didn’t guarantee the outcome.
It was up to the [subsequent] players to ªll that role.”99

97. Author phone interview with Mitchell Reiss, Februar 22, 2018.
98. Samore interview, Februar 14, 2018, Cambridge, Massachusetts.
99. Reiss phone interview, Februar 22, 2018.

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International Security 45:1 34

north korean accounts of the reactor trade

When the LWR proposal originally surfaced in 1993, North Korean
Ambassador Kang Sok-ju indicated that it was “designed to open up North
Korea.”100 During more than a decade of subsequent negotiations with the
Vereinigte Staaten, North Korea insisted that LWRs were crucial for resolving
the “nuclear issue.”101 As late as 2005, track II diplomats relayed to Washing-
ton an unequivocal message from Ambassador Kim Gye-guan: “No reactor, NEIN
deal.”102 Despite the lack of direct access to North Korean ofªcial documents
or interview subjects, there is ample information to help interpret why LWRs
may have been so important to the regime.

The accounts of U.S. diplomats provide some of the best insights into the re-
gime’s thinking. Subjects interviewed for this project had either direct negotia-
tions or informal discussions with North Korean ofªcials. All of them report a
North Korean ªxation on the credibility of a path toward normalization and
on the central role of the LWRs in managing that credibility. I also examined
notes and summaries from the Stanford track II delegation’s visits to
Yongbyon and Pyongyang, which contain quotes from North Korean ofªcials.
In these settings, North Korean ofªcials call for a recursive process of “action
for action”—composed of steps that are “essentially irreversible”—that would
be needed for each side to build the credibility of its commitments.103

Declassiªed U.S. documents, which fall into two categories, offer a second
data set. Erste, there are intelligence analyses of the North Korean regime’s
strategy and internal politics. These provide insights into how different fac-
tions within the regime debated engagement with the United States and the
role of LWRs in that process.104 Second are diplomatic cables that report on
what U.S. diplomats were hearing from North Korean negotiators and the
sticking points and breakthroughs that emerged in the negotiations. Diese
sources also show a North Korean ªxation on the credibility of U.S. commit-
ments and on the importance of LWRs as an “indication of U.S. good faith.”105
Endlich, there are ofªcial statements from the North Korean regime. Al-
though often ªlled with vitriolic statements about the “U.S. hostile policy,”
these are regularly interspersed with statements that make North Korean
policy contingent on U.S. actions and credibility. Perhaps the most vivid artic-

100. Sigal, Disarming Strangers, P. 68.
101. Zum Beispiel, in conversation with Hecker during track II meetings, recounted to author in
2015.
102. Recounted in Hecker interview, 2015; and Lewis interview, 2015.
103. Charles Day, “Visiting Korea: Q&A with Siegfried Hecker,” Physics Today, Februar 23, 2011,
https://physicstoday.scitation.org/do/10/1063/PT/.4.032/full/.
104. See online appendix A1.b.
105. See “Status Report: Korea,” NAS-US2K-I.

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Normalization by Other Means 35

ulation of the techno-diplomatic role of LWRs came in a statement from North
Korea’s foreign ministry in 2006, shortly after the United States called for the
dissolution of KEDO: “The U.S. should not even dream of the DPRK’s dis-
mantlement of its nuclear deterrent before providing LWRs—a physical guar-
antee of conªdence building. One should wait and see how the United States
will move in actuality at the phase of action-for-action in the future.”106 By
explicitly referring to the LWRs as “a physical guarantee for conªdence
building,” and saying nothing about the energy or prestige that North Korea
might receive from them, this statement unmistakably announces a strategy
of techno-diplomacy.

Two Paradigms of Diplomacy in a Nuclear Proliferation Crisis

This section argues that the inducement and techno-diplomacy paradigms of
nonproliferation engagement are incommensurable in the sense that they can-
not be combined into a coherent understanding of nuclear proliferation crisis.
Tatsächlich, the two framings often suggest precisely the opposite prescriptions for
UNS. Politik. This insight can help illuminate the political developments in the
United States that contributed to the collapse of the Agreed Framework, und es
offers lessons for future nonproliferation strategy. I begin by listing several
points of incommensurability where the two paradigms appear in direct oppo-
sition. I then examine U.S. congressional hearings that took place shortly after
the AF was signed and illustrate how the main features of the AF appeared in-
comprehensible to policymakers ªxated on the inducement tropes of popular
nonproliferation discourse. The resulting cognitive dissonance made it im-
possible to secure substantive U.S. funding for KEDO implementation or to
sustain a coherent policy toward North Korea. Endlich, I outline the popular
historical interpretation of the AF’s collapse that runs counter to my account
and show its reliance on inducement tropes. Several observable facts appear as
anomalies in that interpretation, but ªt parsimoniously into the techno-diplo-
matic interpretation presented in previous sections.

inducement versus techno-diplomacy: points of incommensurability

I have borrowed the terms “paradigm” and “incommensurability” from histo-
rian Thomas Kuhn’s famous theory about the discontinuous evolution of
scientiªc theories. Kuhn sought to describe historical “shifts” between “scien-
tiªc paradigms” and to show how the concepts of a new paradigm are often

106. Statement of North Korean Ministry of Foreign Affairs, September 20, 2006. Cited in Chinoy,
Meltdown, P. 151.

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International Security 45:1 36

inarticulable in the language of an older paradigm. He pointed to the visual
phenomenon of the gestalt switch as an analogy, in which a single visual stim-
ulus can give rise to multiple incommensurable image recognitions. The hall-
mark of these gestalt-switch pictures is that the two competing images cannot
be integrated into a single whole, and the visual apparatus instead ºips errati-
cally back and forth between them. Zum Beispiel, the familiar “duck-and-
rabbit” picture can be seen as either a duck or a rabbit, but it cannot be seen as
both at the same time. Cognitive scientists and moral philosophers have
shown that similar incommensurability can arise in the cognitive realm be-
tween different ways of framing and interpreting the world.107 In the realm of
policymaking, these “frame conºicts” can lead to intractable political contro-
versies and incoherent national policies.108 Below are seven points of incom-
mensurability between the inducement and techno-diplomacy paradigms of
nonproliferation engagement. Each point is described as a “shift” in percep-
tion that occurs abruptly when the mind switches from the former inter-
pretation to the latter.

the primary currency of concessions becomes transformed. Under
inducement, concessions should be designed to offer an intrinsic utility to the
target state in a timely manner to reward good behavior. Umgekehrt, if conces-
sions under techno-diplomacy are designed to bind states into a mutual inter-
est in continued positive engagement (as in a tying-hands costly signal), Dann
they must offer an enduring shared utility that is contingent on that continued
engagement.

appropriate order of coercion and concessions is reversed. Under in-
ducement, carrots should be given only after the denuclearization steps they
are designed to reward have been completed, which in turn should be pre-
ceded only by coercive measures to pressure the target state. Under techno-
diplomacy, the appropriate order is reversed: UNS. concessions serve as costly
signals to establish the credibility of U.S. commitments to normalization, und es
does not become rational for the target state to forfeit leverage through nuclear
rollback steps until it has received those signals. Coercive measures prior
to denuclearization steps can signal and reinforce continued adversarial en-
gagement, and thereby enhance the irrationality of denuclearization steps for
the target state. Gleichzeitig, implementing techno-diplomatic conces-

107. For gestalt shifts in moral reasoning, see Peggy DesAutels, “Gestalt Shifts in Moral Percep-
tion,” in Larry May, Marilyn Friedman, and Andy Clark, Hrsg., Mind and Morals: Essays on Cognitive
Science and Ethics (Cambridge, Masse.: MIT Press, 1996), S. 129–143.
108. Schon and Rein, “Policy Controversies as Frame Conºicts,” Frame Reºection, S. 23–36.

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Normalization by Other Means 37

sions can create new forms of pending coercive leverage, the growing threat
of which can promote future abstinence from nuclear-weapons activities
(wie zum Beispiel, in the LWR case, the power to shut down an economy by withhold-
ing the technical cooperation needed for continued LWR operation).

focus shifts from content to source of concessions. Under the induce-
ment paradigm, the intrinsic value of inducements is central, and their source
and cost are of peripheral importance. Under techno-diplomacy, concessions
ªgure as costly signals, and the bearer of the cost is the actor about whose in-
tention the signal speaks. Zum Beispiel, as shown previously, the source and
identity of the LWRs became a central issue of AF negotiations, und das
2,000 MWe of energy generation became peripheral.

relationship between cost and credibility is inverted. Under induce-
ment, the cost of concessions is relevant primarily to the domestic audiences of
the states that pay for them. Costly concessions are more difªcult to justify to
domestic audiences, so lowering costs adds to the credibility that they will be
gegeben. Under techno-diplomacy, the cost itself is the signal about future intent,
and the credibility of the signal increases monotonically with cost.

time horizons become open-ended. If the content of inducements and
quick cessation of nuclear activities are the primary stakes, then a ªnal res-
olution to “the nuclear problem” is preferable to open-ended solutions that
can be framed as stop-gap measures. But if the future relationship and nu-
clear status are the primary stakes (as in techno-diplomacy), then open-
ended arrangements are crucial because they indicate endurance of political
changes indeªnitely.

locus of commitment moves from juridical to physical space. If the re-
alization of inducements themselves is the primary stake, then legally binding,
written commitments should be sought to enhance the credibility that they
will be realized. But if an envisioned political future is the primary stake (as in
techno-diplomacy), then irreversible physical changes on the ground consti-
tute much more binding commitments than do politically reversible written
Vereinbarungen.

cheating on agreement becomes hedging against collapse. Under in-
ducement, a clandestine, latent nuclear capability is morally incompatible with
concurrent positive inducements and, somit, is considered cheating. Under
nuclear techno-diplomacy, possession of a clandestine, latent nuclear capabil-
ity ªgures as hedging and can contribute to the mutual leverage needed to sta-
bilize continued engagement. All rational actors will hedge against the
possible collapse of a bargain, and these hedges are often needed to make a
bargain possible in the ªrst place.

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International Security 45:1 38

inducement discourse in congress

The signing of the Agreed Framework was followed by a series of U.S. con-
gressional hearings to deliberate how it would be funded and implemented.109
Two important outcomes emerged from these hearings: a mandate that no U.S.
funding could be contributed to the LWR project, and a de facto limit on
UNS. funding for KEDO to $30 million per year. As noted earlier, this short- fall in U.S. funding brought KEDO into deªcit ªnancing, contributed to delays in the LWR project, and chronically damaged the credibility of U.S. commit- ments to the AF in the eyes of virtually all KEDO member states.110 This sec- tion traces those outcomes to an inducement framing of the AF that rendered the agreement’s primary function inarticulable, and left both proponents and critics bafºed by its basic elements. In a Senate hearing on January 19, 1995, Chairman Frank Murkowski de- scribed the AF as a list of “what we get” versus “what they get”—the natural focus of inducement diplomacy.111 He then pointed to the AF’s three major oddities as viewed through an inducement lens: the choice of LWRs rather than FFPPs, the timing of concessions, and the AF’s nonbinding legal status. These anomalies formed the basis of questions from both proponents and crit- ics of the AF; there was little discussion of what the AF’s steps would mean for North Korea’s relationship with the outside world or how those political changes might shift the future incentive structure in favor of nonproliferation. Bewilderment at the choice of LWRs is exempliªed in the testimony of non- proliferation expert Gary Milholin: “Why does North Korea want LWRs? Nobody outside the country seems to know. It is agreed . . . even by the [Clinton] Administration . . . that the United States could provide coal-ªred plants much faster and cheaper.”112 This question underscored a common theme throughout the hearing, leaving AF proponents to concede that FFPPs “would have been better,” but that North Korea simply would not have ac- cepted them. With little discussion of the political interdependencies associ- 109. “Implications of the U.S.–North Korea Nuclear Agreement,” hearing before the Subcommit- tee on East Asian and Paciªc Affairs of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, 103rd Cong., 2nd. sess., Dezember 1, 1994, https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id(cid:2)uc1.31210013757180&view(cid:2)1hoch &seq(cid:2)1; “Joint U.S.–North Korean ‘Agreed Framework” on Nuclear Issues,” hearing before the Senate Committee on Energy and Natural Resources, 104th Cong., 1st sess., Januar 19, 1995, https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id(cid:2)pst.000024361231&view(cid:2)1hoch&seq(cid:2)1; and “North Korea Nuclear Agreement,” hearing before the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations, 104th Cong., 1st January 24–25, 1995, https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id(cid:2)uc1.31210014068405&view sess., (cid:2)1hoch&seq(cid:2)3. 110. For U.S. recognition of Japanese and South Korean concerns, see “Background Paper: Korean Peninsula," Marsch 1996. For North Korean concerns, see online appendices A1.b and A2. 111. “Joint U.S.–North Korean ‘Agreed Framework” on Nuclear Issues” hearing, Januar 19, 1995. 112. Ebenda. l D o w n o a d e d von h t t p : / / Direkte . m i t . e du / i s e c / Kunst – p d l f / / / / 4 5 1 9 1 8 6 0 4 8 2 / i s e c _ a _ 0 0 3 8 5 p d . f by gu e s t o n 0 8 S e p e m b e r 2 0 2 3 Normalization by Other Means 39 ated with the construction and operation of the LWRs or how they might exert leverage over the regime’s future nuclear choices, senators were left to con- clude that the United States had been coerced into funding a bizarre prestige project for North Korea. Senator John McCain voiced similar concerns: “There is nothing in that agreement that forces North Korea to account for [previous] diversion. . . . It places no obligation on North Korea to come into compliance with the Nonproliferation treaty. . . . Dismantlement of the nuclear facilities will not be- gin until [North Korea has] received one fully operational $2 billion LWR . . .
and they do not have to complete dismantlement until the second LWR is com-
pleted.”113 For McCain, the timing of the concessions in the AF was backward,
because North Korea would receive beneªts before correcting past transgres-
sions and thus be rewarded for bad behavior. And without a contractual
agreement for both sides to follow through on their respective inducements,
the AF would be merely a best-effort arrangement that relied on North
Korean trustworthiness.

Proponents of the AF generally responded by highlighting the intrinsic
value to U.S. security of “freezing the program in its tracks” and buying sev-
eral years before North Korea reached a nuclear weapons capability. By focus-
ing on the carrots traded in the bargain, the proponents neglected to point
out the potential shifts in the incentive structure associated with LWR con-
struction steps, as the following exchange between Senator Murkowski and
Gary Samore illustrates:

Senator Murkowski: Why did you negotiate [immediate special inspections]
weg?

Samore: We focused our attention on the biggest immediate problem . . . Die
25 Zu 30 kg [kilograms] of plutonium we know the North Koreans have [aus
the ªrst reactor core] . . . [and on stopping] their ability to complete their larger
reactors. [Those priorities] are addressed in the agreement. The AF calls for
Nord Korea [to allow special inspections] before any nuclear components
arrive. . . . We would not have been able to achieve immediate compliance . . .
as an immediate issue.

Senator Murkowski: Well, immediate or ªve years [implying a stop-gap or
kick-the-can solution].

Samore: What we get in return [freezing the program] . . . is very attractive
to us.114

113. Ebenda.
114. Ebenda.

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International Security 45:1 40

This conversation did not address why IAEA compliance might be more likely
once the foundation of the ªrst LWR was in place in North Korea. And by fo-
cusing on the intrinsic value of the freeze itself, Samore and other AF propo-
nents say little about why North Korea might have been less likely to resume
plutonium production after the LWRs were in place. Under this framing, Die
AF is nothing more than a stop-gap solution.

The general theme of the hearings—that the KEDO project amounts to nu-
clear bribery—made support for AF implementation politically awkward for
Democrats and political suicide for Republicans. Devoting U.S. tax dollars to
“rewarding North Korea” became particularly offensive, even when compared
to the much higher cost of alternative policies.115 Secretary of State Warren
Christopher (an AF proponent) attempted to correct this perceived ºaw by
guaranteeing to Congress that the U.S. ªnancial contribution to KEDO would
not exceed $30 million per year.116 The danger that limiting U.S. funding might damage the credibility of the AF was undetectable through an inducement lens—if KEDO’s activities were simply a package of carrots, then offsetting their cost would not interfere with their function as such. But if KEDO’s activ- ities were a sequence of signals bearing information about U.S. commitment, then diminishing their cost cut to the heart of the AF by attenuating the signal. anomalies under the common interpretation of the nuclear crisis Many Western analysts interpret North Korea’s clandestine uranium enrich- ment program as proof that the regime had always planned to cheat on the Agreed Framework. This appraisal suggests that North Korea prioritized nu- clear weapons above other goals, and that it used engagement to extract the carrot of energy technology from the West. Although it is impossible to rule out any interpretation of regime intent, several anomalies arise under this common narrative, making it a needlessly convoluted theory of North Ko- rean strategy. These anomalies become clear if one considers the hypothetical perspective of a North Korean regime that was allegedly determined to build nuclear weapons. In the early 1990s, the emerging GCR complex offered North Korea its surest and quickest route to massive stockpiles of bomb fuel. When the re- gime proposed to dismantle that plutonium complex in exchange for LWRs from the West, it knew that the United States would gain control over North Korea’s ability to operate the LWRs and run its industrial economy.117 Also, Die 115. Sigal compares costs of the KEDO LWR project and cooperative threat reduction to those of U.S.-Korean troop exercises in Korea in Disarming Strangers, P. 9. 116. “North Korea Nuclear Agreement” hearing, Januar 24, 1995. 117. Regime discourse on LWRs and technical dependence noted in “The Secretary’s Morning In- telligence Summary: DVRK: Redeªning Self-reliance,„Juli 17, 1993. l D o w n o a d e d von h t t p : / / Direkte . m i t . e du / i s e c / Kunst – p d l f / / / / 4 5 1 9 1 8 6 0 4 8 2 / i s e c _ a _ 0 0 3 8 5 p d . f by gu e s t o n 0 8 S e p e m b e r 2 0 2 3 Normalization by Other Means 41 UNS. delegation had made clear that “no sitting president would ever accept nuclear weapons in North Korea.”118 Meanwhile, the regime had abandoned its enrichment program after having completed only modest centrifuge stud- ies. The uranium route to the bomb was thus a distant and unsure prospect, and developing any conªdence in it would require extensive research and de- velopment. Noch, available intelligence suggests that the program remained dor- mant until 1997, a full four years after the reactor trade proposal was made.119 With the incorporation of the above observations, the commonly held theory of North Korean proliferation strategy can be restated as follows: the re- gime apparently chose to forfeit a well-developed plutonium program to buy time for a then-nonexistent uranium bomb program, and to obtain LWRs that would be impossible for North Korea to operate if it ever succeeded in becom- ing a nuclear weapons state. These pieces simply do not ªt into a coherent the- ory of regime strategy; yet, this is what one is left with if one thinks in terms of carrots, sticks, and cheating. But if North Korea’s centrifuge procurement in 1997 is instead interpreted as a hedge to preserve nuclear leverage while the nominally preferred path toward normalization was coming into question, then it ªts parsimoniously into a techno-diplomatic strategy.120 This is pre- cisely how the enrichment program was later deployed by North Korean negotiators as the AF fell apart.121 Beyond the Agreed Framework: Understanding Proliferation Crises Two recurrent proliferation crises—one in North Korea and the other in Iran— have many important similarities. Both involve politically isolated states in asymmetric standoffs with the United States; both feature nuclear technologies as prime bargaining chips; and both threaten to change the power dynamics in important geopolitical regions. Weiter, many area specialists point to promi- nent reformist factions within both countries that seek reconciliation with the West; these experts argue that engaging those factions may be the key to roll- ing back their nuclear programs.122 This section moves beyond the Agreed Framework to examine the strategic dynamics common to these proliferation 118. Wit, Poneman, and Gallucci, Going Critical, S. 51–77. 119. See Hecker, Braun, and Lawrence, “North Korea’s Stockpiles”; and online appendix A2. 120. For another articulation of the “hedging” argument, see Siegfried S. Hecker, “Lessons Learned from the North Korean Nuclear Crises,„Dädalus, Bd. 139, NEIN. 1 (Winter 2010), https:// www.amacad.org/publication/lessons-learned-north-korean-nuclear-crises. 121. The North Korean regime repeatedly sought to use HEU as bargaining leverage to draw the George W. Bush administration into negotiations after the collapse of the AF. See Chinoy, Meltdown. 122. For the North Korea case, see Sigal, Disarming Strangers. For the Iran case, see Trita Parsi, Losing an Enemy: Obama, Iran, and the Triumph of Diplomacy (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 2017). l D o w n o a d e d von h t t p : / / Direkte . m i t . e du / i s e c / Kunst – p d l f / / / / 4 5 1 9 1 8 6 0 4 8 2 / i s e c _ a _ 0 0 3 8 5 p d . f by gu e s t o n 0 8 S e p e m b e r 2 0 2 3 International Security 45:1 42 crises, to characterize the structural barriers that obstruct their resolution, and to identify factors that may have helped circumvent those barriers when prog- ress has been made. One of the hallmarks of these crises is that bargaining usually hinges not on the stated end goal of negotiations, which is often agreed early in the process, but on the sequencing of irreversible steps to reach that end goal and how to manage credibility along the way. These ªxations on sequencing and irrevers- ibility can be traced to the time structure of the commitment problem that ani- mates most proliferation crises.123 Because those commitment problems result from the compact physical dimensions of the nuclear bargaining chips,124 workable resolutions typically require shifting the focus of engagement to some alternative physical medium that allows the redistribution of political leverage among actors and across time. The reactor trade of the AF was an example of one of these techno-diplomatic circumventions of the commit- ment problem. The remainder of this section examines recent episodes of U.S. nonprolifera- tion engagement with North Korea and Iran.125 In each case, bargaining began when both sides identiªed a mutually acceptable political future, but intu- itively recognized the challenge of credibly committing to that envisioned po- litical arrangement. From there, sequencing issues emerged, as both sides guarded against unreciprocated forfeitures of leverage that could have al- lowed the other to abandon continued engagement. A diplomatic break- through was achieved when both sides identiªed some form of technological infrastructure whose reconªguration could have changed the structure of the engagement and offset the forfeiture of leverage that denuclearization would entail. Progress halted when one or both of the negotiating teams reverted to inducement thinking and recast diplomacy in terms of carrots and sticks. 2019 hanoi summit: “gate of denuclearization” or “virtuous circle” The 2018 Singapore Joint Statement between the United States and North Korea called for the denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula and the normal- ization of relations between the two countries.126 In subsequent months, Die 123. For the time-structure of the commitment problem, see Powell, “War as a Commitment Problem.” 124. Rational-actor models indicate that large, foreseeable shifts in power, such as those tied to discrete bargaining chips, can lead to commitment problems. See James D. Fearon, “Bargaining over Objects That Inºuence Future Bargaining Power,” paper presented at the annual meeting of American Political Science Association, Washington, D.C., August 28–31, 1997, https:// web.stanford.edu/group/fearon-research/cgi-bin/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2013/10/ Bargining-Over-Objects-That-Inºuence-Future-Bargaining-Power.pdf. 125. Additional cases are discussed in online appendix A5. 126. “Joint Statement of President Donald J. Trump of the United States of America and Chair- man Kim Jong Un of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea at the Singapore Summit,” l D o w n o a d e d f r o m h t t p : / / Direkte . m i t . e du / i s e c / Kunst – p d l f / / / / 4 5 1 9 1 8 6 0 4 8 2 / i s e c _ a _ 0 0 3 8 5 p d . f by gu e s t o n 0 8 S e p e m b e r 2 0 2 3 Normalization by Other Means 43 United States proposed infrastructure investment in North Korea as an “addi- tional pillar of the Singapore Statement.”127 These initial overtures mirror those that took place at the outset of the ªrst nuclear crisis. In parallel, ofªcials from North Korea and South Korea met in a series of historic summits during which Chairman Kim Jong-un committed to full denuclearization and South Korean President Moon Jae-in proposed a series of infrastructure development projects in North Korea that, if completed, would link the two Koreas and in- corporate the North into a “New Economic Map” (NEM) in East Asia.128 As in the ªrst nuclear crisis, Jedoch, lofty visions of future reconciliation were complicated by a crucial division over the path to that future. Ofªcial statements from the U.S. Department of State speciªed that the “path to a se- cure and prosperous future for North Korea runs through the gate of denucle- arization.”129 Until the regime chose to walk through that gate, North Korea would face maximum pressure. Favoring this inducement timeline, hart- liners in the Donald Trump administration insisted that no sanctions relief could be negotiated until denuclearization had been fully veriªed. President Trump’s diplomacy with Chairman Kim, Jedoch, faced the same commit- ment problem that had deªned the nuclear crisis for the past twenty-ªve years. Western analysts highlighted this dilemma by asking, “Could any [writ- zehn] security guarantees ever be sufªciently credible to convince Kim to give up nuclear weapons?”130 Meanwhile, other states with a geopolitical stake on the peninsula envi- sioned a phased process, reciprocated with corresponding measures, as the only imaginable path toward denuclearization. Moon’s administration, zum Beispiel, suggested establishing a “virtuous circle” between infrastructure de- velopment and denuclearization in North Korea.131 A close look at the infra- structure investments proposed in President Moon’s NEM reveals all the makings of a techno-diplomatic approach. Like the KEDO LWR of the AF, Juni 12, 2018 (Washington, D.C.: White House, 2018), https://www.whitehouse.gov/brieªngs- statements/joint-statement-president-donald-j-trump-united-states-america-chairman-kim-jong- un-democratic-peoples-republic-korea-singapore-summit/. 127. Remarks of anonymous U.S. State Department ofªcials, 2019. 128. Seong Yeon-cheol and Jung In-hwan, “President Moon Offers Methodology for the Denuclearize North Korea,” Hankyoreh, Februar 28, 2018, http://english.hani.co.kr/arti/english _edition/e_northkorea/834098.html. 129. Zum Beispiel, remarks of Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for Japan and Korea Marc Knapper, Wilson Center Korea Global Forum, November 15, 2018, event attended by author. 130. Ankit Panda and Vipin Narang, “The Trump-Kim Summit and North Korean Denucleari- zation: The Good, The Bad, and the Ugly,” War on the Rocks blog, Marsch 14, 2018, https:// warontherocks.com/2018/03/the-trump-kim-summit-and-north-korean-denuclearization-the- good-the-bad-and-the-ugly/. 131. “Creating a Virtuous Circle with North Korea,” Christian Science Monitor, Juli 17, 2018, https:/ /www.csmonitor.com/Commentary/the-monitors-view/2017/0717/Creating-a-virtuous-circle- with-North-Korea. l D o w n o a d e d von h t t p : / / Direkte . m i t . e du / i s e c / Kunst – p d l f / / / / 4 5 1 9 1 8 6 0 4 8 2 / i s e c _ a _ 0 0 3 8 5 p d . f by gu e s t o n 0 8 S e p e m b e r 2 0 2 3 International Security 45:1 44 the construction projects are designed not to simply “reward” North Korea, but to integrate it into inert technological infrastructures that subtend na- tional borders.132 The techno-diplomacy of the NEM is most visible in its proposed invest- ments in rail-transit infrastructure. Rather than just modernize North Korea’s aging rail lines, the NEM proposes to connect South Korea to the Eurasian mainland through North Korea.133 This could potentially turn North Korea into an obligatory passage point for the international trade that would be routed along those lines. It would also require considerably more investment, because North Korea’s existing infrastructure would need to be harmonized with the rail lines that span the continent. Physical differences in rail gauge, weight limits, turn radii, and platform heights would all need to be recon- ciled,134 at an estimated cost of $35 billion.135 In early 2018, North Korea sig-
naled its interest in these physical integrations by supporting South Korea’s
membership in the Organization for Cooperation between Railways, the inter-
national consortium that coordinates these speciªcations for Eurasian interna-
tional rail networks.136 It then expressed willingness to veriªably dismantle its
Yongbyon nuclear complex in exchange for “corresponding measures” to fos-
ter economic development.137 Other projects proposed in the NEM, einschließlich
a regional electrical supergrid and shared pipeline for liquid natural gas, war
similarly designed to integrate North Korea with neighboring states through
costly shared infrastructure.

Construction steps for any of these projects are forbidden by international
law so long as North Korea remains under the current sanctions regime. Aber

132. See Christopher Lawrence, “A Theory of Engagement with North Korea,” Discussion Paper
2019-02 (Cambridge, Masse.: Project on Managing the Atom, Belfer Center for Science and Interna-
tional Affairs, Harvard Kennedy School, Februar 2019), https://www.belfercenter.org/sites/
default/ªles/ªles/publication/
A%20Theory%20of%20Engagement%20with%20North%20Korea.pdf.
133. The Presidential Committee on Northern Economic Cooperation, “Future Plan: New Eco-
nomic Map for the Korean Peninsula” (Seoul: Presidential Committee on Northern Economic Co-
Betrieb, 2017), http://bukbang.go.kr/bukbang_en/vision_policy/plan/.
134. Victor Cha, Joseph Bermudez, and Marie DuMond, “Making Solid Tracks: North and South
Korean Railway Cooperation,” Beyond Parallel (Washington, D.C.: Center for Strategic and Interna-
tional Studies, Dezember 10, 2018), https://beyondparallel.csis.org/making-solid-tracks-north-
and-south-korean-railway-cooperation/.
135. S. Nathan Park, “An Ingenius Plan to Modernize North Korea’s Trains,” CityLab, Mai 4, 2018,
https://www.citylab.com/transportation/2018/05/inter-korean-summit-rail-project/559652/.
136. Kim Tae Won and Yoon Sojung, “Seoul Joins International Railway Cooperation Body Thanks
to Pyeongyang’s Support,” Korea.net, Juni 8, 2018 (Sejon, Südkorea: Korean Culture and Infor-
mation Service, 2018), http://www.korea.net/NewsFocus/policies/view?articleId(cid:2)159972.
137. Christopher Lawrence, “A Window into Kim’s Nuclear Intentions? A Closer Look at North
Korea’s Yongbyon Offer,” War on the Rocks blog, Januar 15, 2019, https://warontherocks.com/
2019/01/a-window-into-kims-nuclear-intentions-a-closer-look-at-north-koreas-yongbyon-offer/.

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Normalization by Other Means 45

shortly before the second Trump-Kim summit was scheduled to be held in
Hanoi in 2019, Special Envoy to North Korea Stephen Biegun suggested that
his team was considering a “phased approach” similar to that promoted by the
Moon administration.138 Anonymous reports indicate that sanctions waivers
for North-South construction projects were on the table in exchange for
Yongbyon dismantlement as part of an interim deal to make way for more am-
bitious negotiations. But when the dramatic summit came to a close, the deal
was left unsigned. Although accounts differ on the details of the diplomatic
collapse, nearly all suggest that the Trump administration had reverted to its
preferred inducement sequencing of denuclearization up front and “rewards”
for North Korea after.139

the iran nuclear negotiations in miniature—a nuclear fuel swap

Reformist political factions in Iran have sporadically sought political and eco-
nomic reconciliation with the West since the mid-1990s,140 and the United
States has often rebuffed their overtures. But in 2002, Israeli intelligence leaks
indicated that Iran had quietly developed the capability to enrich uranium.141
As subsequent IAEA inspections revealed the extent of Iran’s nuclear capabili-
Krawatten, the government of Mohammad Khatami sought to “turn threats into op-
portunities” and to use those capabilities as a medium for engaging the
West.142 The rudiments of an envisioned political future of reconciliation can
be detected in various Iranian proposals as early as 2003,143 and are spelled out

138. UNS. Special Representative to North Korea Stephen Biegun, “Remarks on the DPRK,” speech
at Stanford University, Stanford, Kalifornien, Januar 31, 2019, https://fsi-live.s3.us-west-
1.amazonaws.com/s3fs-public/transcript_stephen_bieugn_discussion_on_the_dprk_20190131
.pdf.
139. See Chad O’Carroll and Chloe Joo, “North Korea in March 2019: A Month in Review and
What’s Ahead,” NK Pro, April 3, 2019, https://www.nknews.org/pro/north-korea-a-month-in-
review-and-whats-ahead-4/; and Lesley Wroughton and David Brunnstrom, “Exclusive: Mit
a Piece of Paper, Trump Called on Kim to Hand Over Nuclear Weapons,” Reuters, Marsch 29,
2019, https://www.reuters.com/article/us-northkorea-usa-document-exclusive/exclusive-with-a-
piece-of-paper-trump-called-on-kim-to-hand-over-nuclear-weapons-idUSKCN1RA2NR.
140. Iran’s economic isolation from the West became written into U.S. law in 1996, when Congress
signed the Iran-Libya Sanctions Act to bar U.S. companies from investing in Iran’s energy sector
and sanctioned international companies engaging therein. Examples of Iranian overtures are out-
lined in Jay Solomon, The Iran Wars: Spy Games, Bank Battles, and the Secret Deals that Reshaped the
Naher Osten (New York: Random House, 2016), S. 29–53; and Parsi, Losing an Enemy, S. 37–53.
141. Christopher Lawrence, “Heralds of Global Transparency: Remote Sensing, Nuclear Fuel-
Cycle Facilities, and the Modularity of Imagination,” Social Studies of Science, online ªrst, Octo-
ber 11, 2019, doi.org/10.1177%2F0306312719879769.
142. See Seyed Hossein Mousavian, The Iranian Nuclear Crisis: A Memoir (Washington, D.C.: Carne-
gie Endowment for International Peace, 2012), P. 99.
143. Sehen, Zum Beispiel, memorandum of Iranian proposal relayed by Swiss Ambassador Tim
Guldiman to Washington, D.C., Mai 2003, http://www.nytimes.com/packages/pdf/opinion/
20070429_iran-memo-expurgated.pdf.

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International Security 45:1 46

in einem 2005 ofªcial letter from Iran to the IAEA.144 The letter outlined how recon-
ciliation could be embodied in a normalized civilian nuclear program, inkl-
ing a legitimized enrichment capacity limited to meet the “contingency fuel
requirements of Iran’s power reactors,” “immediate conversion of all enriched
uranium to (oxide) fuel rods,” and “continuous on-site presence of IAEA in-
spectors” at all bulk-handling,145 nuclear fuel-cycle facilities.146 These are
the stated end goals that would later become enshrined in the 2015 Joint
Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPoA), also known as the Iran deal.

Iranian and U.S. geopolitical visions may have started to converge in 2009,
when the incoming Barack Obama administration turned U.S. policy toward
reconciliation with Iran and planned to accept limited uranium enrichment
on Iranian soil.147 Unprecedented verbal and written overtures were ex-
changed,148 but the preceding decades of political animosity had congealed
into physical infrastructures that would require more than mere words to dis-
mantle. Steps by either side to roll those infrastructures back could be down-
right dangerous if they were not reciprocated by the other. On the U.S. Seite,
the multilateral sanctions coalition had taken years to construct. If sanctions
they could not necessarily be
were relaxed in a negotiated settlement,
“snapped back” if Iran reneged on the deal, especially if international eco-
nomic actors laid down physical roots on the ground in Iran through direct
foreign investment. For Iran’s part, its scientiªc elite had invested years into
its centrifuge capability and growing stockpile of low-enriched uranium
(LEU). These bargaining chips could not simply be “cast to the wind” without
assurances that the other side would remain invested in continued engage-
ment.149 Both sides recognized that some sort of reciprocal conªdence-building
measure would be needed to “break the ice” and make way for more endur-
ing engagement.150

144. “Communication dated 8/1/2005 received from the Permanent Mission of the Islamic Re-
public of Iran to the Agency,” INFCIRC/648, IAEA, 2005, https://www.iaea.org/sites/default/
ªles/publications/documents/infcircs/2005/infcirc648.pdf.
145. “Bulk-handling” refers to facilities that handle nuclear fuel not contained in countable fuel
rods or assemblies. Bulk-handling facilities require a more continuous presence to safeguard
against diversion than do “item-handling” facilities. See V. Schuricht and J. Larrimore, “Safe-
guarding Nuclear Fuel-cycle Facilities,” IAEA Bulletin 1/1988, IAEA, 1988, https://www.iaea.org/
sites/default/ªles/publications/magazines/bulletin/bull30-1/30103450812.pdf. Continuous, An-
the-ground presence at bulk-handling facilities surpasses the requirements stipulated in a stan-
dard Comprehensive Safeguards Agreement and is colloquially known as the “Japan Standard.”
146. See INFCIRC/648, P. 4.
147. The Obama policy review is outlined in Parsi, Single Roll of the Dice, S. 134–168; UNS. plan to
accept enrichment in Parsi, Losing and Enemy, S. 174–196.
148. Trita Parsi, A Single Roll of the Dice: Obama’s Diplomacy with Iran (New Haven, Conn.: Yale Uni-
versity Press, 2013), S. 62–65.
149. Common Iranian description of wasted bargaining leverage. Sehen, Zum Beispiel, Hossein
Moussavi, statement, Oktober 30, 2009, quoted in Parsi, Losing and Enemy, P. 97.
150. Wording of U.S. Department of State ofªcials, reported in Parsi, Single Roll of the Dice, P. 115.

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Normalization by Other Means 47

An opportunity for a techno-diplomatic breakthrough presented itself in the
summer of 2009. Iran had requested IAEA assistance in purchasing fuel pads
for its Tehran Research Reactor (TRR). When Director General of the IAEA
Mohammad ElBaradei relayed the request to U.S. ofªcials, they worked to-
gether to construct a “fuel swap” proposal.151 Under the plan, the United
States would ship 1,200 kilograms of LEU out of Iran and use it to fabricate the
fuel pads, which would then be sent to Iran to refuel the TRR. ElBaradei pre-
sented the proposal to the head of Iran’s Atomic Energy Organization, Ali
Akbar Salehi, who immediately recognized it as a “very smart proposal.” Both
agreed that the fuel swap simultaneously embodied a “technical proposal”
and a “political gesture” that might open the door to further engagement with
the West.152

As with the LWRs of the AF, understanding the techno-diplomatic sig-
niªcance of the fuel swap proposal requires opening up its technical attributes
and relating them to the political visions articulated in previous written state-
gen. Although Iran’s nuclear scientists were capable of producing the fuel
pads for the TRR, such action would be problematic for two reasons. Erste, Es
would require enriching uranium up to 19.75 Prozent,153 which would in turn
exacerbate international pressure, because doing so would bring it much
closer to the enrichment level needed for nuclear weapons. Zweite, Iran
would need to ultimately burn a substantial portion of its LEU stockpile in a
civilian reactor, and thereby lose its most signiªcant bargaining chip without
achieving any progress in engaging the West. Alternativ, the fuel swap
would keep enrichment within the low levels associated with Iran’s civilian
power reactor at Bushehr. In der Zwischenzeit, roughly a bomb’s worth of uranium en-
riched on Iranian soil would be circulated through the civilian nuclear infra-
structures of multiple IAEA member states, and ultimately transform from
weapons-usable fuel into reactor fuel pads to meet a demonstrable, “contin-
gent” civilian need in Iran’s TRR. Darüber hinaus, UNS. ªnancial and political sup-
port for the process would amount to de facto legitimization of limited Iranian
enrichment, as the cross-national nuclear collaboration entailed in the transfor-
mation would be barred under international law so long as Iran’s enrichment
program was deemed a threat by the West.154 If Iran’s 2005 letter to the IAEA

151. For descriptions, see Parsi, Single Roll of the Dice, S. 114–150; Parsi, Losing an Enemy, S. 88–
115; and Mohamed ElBaradei, The Age of Deception: Nuclear Diplomacy in Treacherous Times (Neu
York: Metropolitan, 2011), S. 286–313.
152. Exchange reported in ElBaradei, Age of Deception, S. 295–296.
153. Ahmad Lashkari et al., “Neutronic Analysis for Tehran Research Reactor Mixed-Core,” Prog-
ress in Nuclear Energy, Bd. 60 (September 2012), S. 31–37, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.pnucene
.2012.04.006.
154. United Nations Security Council Resolution 1696 (2006) declares Iran’s enrichment program
a threat to international peace and security. “Security Council Demands Iran Suspend Uranium

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International Security 45:1 48

had articulated a political future of peaceful nuclear normalization for Iran,
then the proposed fuel swap could etch the essential features of that politics, In
miniature but with high ªdelity, into the physical substrate of nuclear fuel.

The fuel swap was a microcosm of the more sweeping political changes ar-
ticulated in Iranian and U.S. overtures,155 and so came up against its own min-
iature commitment-problem time structure. Although the U.S. and Iranian
delegations were able to agree on the physical end state of the swap during a
short round of negotiations in early October 2009, dispute quickly arose over
the sequencing. The United States wanted the LEU transported in a single
shipment, whereas Iranian negotiators explained that if all 1,200 kilograms of
LEU were shipped from Iranian soil at once, Iran could not trust the United
States to follow through on the deal or continue engaging with it. To retain bar-
gaining leverage to incentivize continued implementation, Iran demanded
that the transfer be divided into three sequential shipments with simultaneous
delivery of completed fuel pads. But from the standpoint of the United States,
if the swap was to be spread out over time while Iran’s enrichment program
Fortsetzung, Iran’s LEU stockpile would not dip substantially below a bomb’s
worth of fuel. A phased shipment would thus attenuate the costly signal from
Iran that would be carried as the fuel left its territory, and that signal was
needed to build credibility for the next phase of negotiations. The proposal
broke down over this sequencing impasse.

Months later, Iran agreed to a modiªed swap proposal that incorporated
Brazil and Turkey, whereby Iran’s LEU would be stored in escrow on Turkish
soil under IAEA surveillance to retain mutual leverage as the swap was imple-
erwähnt. This agreement, Jedoch, followed several months of paralysis in
Tehran resulting from domestic-political struggles;156 in the interim, Irans
nuclear scientists began enriching uranium to 19.75 percent and expanded its
3.5 percent LEU stockpile such that Iran would retain nearly a bomb’s worth
even after the shipment. Somit, the techno-diplomatic relevance of the swap
had diminished. In der Zwischenzeit, the United States had reverted to its inducement
Politik, und wir. ofªcials saw the modiªed swap proposal as a distraction from
the coalition building required to effectively sanction Iran. The Obama admin-
istration rejected the new proposal, and Iran went on to produce the TRR fuel
indigenously. The collapse of the fuel swap led to another three years of esca-

Enrichment by 31 August, or Face Possible Economic, Diplomatic Sanctions,” 5500th meeting
(Bin), Juli 31, 2006, United Nations press release, https://www.un.org/press/en/2006/sc8792.doc
.htm.
155. This was described as the “essence” of the fuel swap. See Parsi, Single Roll of the Dice, S. 117–
119; and ElBaradei, Age of Deception, P. 294.
156. See Parsi, Losing an Enemy, S. 96–98; and ElBaradei, Age of Deception, S. 309–313.

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Normalization by Other Means 49

lating sanctions and enrichment before negotiations would resume and ulti-
mately culminate in the JCPoA.

Abschluss

Nonproliferation discourse in the United States deªnes “engagement” as
simply the “willingness to consider positive inducements” to bribe states into
dismantling their nuclear capabilities.157 Under this deªnition, the United
States explored the full space of engagement policies when it signed the 1994
Agreed Framework with North Korea. At high cost to its allies and steep moral
hazard to the global nonproliferation order, the United States offered North
Korea an extravagant package of carrots in the form of energy infrastructure
and the promise of political normalization, yet these were insufªcient to out-
weigh the regime’s determination to build nuclear weapons. The prevailing
conclusion among nonproliferation analysts is that engagement with North
Korea has been futile. Noch, an analysis of the technical challenges of LWR con-
struction and operation reveals the difªculty of trying to explain why the re-
gime would offer to trade its plutonium reactors for LWRs if its primary goal
was nuclear weapons. And if the regime wanted to extract the carrot of energy
generation and then renege on the AF, it is incomprehensible why it would in-
sist on LWRs over FFPPs when it knew it could not operate them without con-
tinued technical assistance from the West. These anomalies strongly suggest
that the popular inducement understanding of the AF should be revised.

I have attempted to provide a new model of engagement to explain the
North Korean nuclear crisis. I began by acknowledging the commitment prob-
lem that arose between North Korea and the United States at the end of the
Cold War and the reciprocal credibility challenges that stood in the way of de-
nuclearization and political normalization. I then examined nuclear technol-
ogy to outline the role that LWR export played in charting a resolution to those
credibility dilemmas. After decades of hostility and isolation between the two
Länder, denuclearization and normalization were not credibly expressible in
the usual languages of diplomacy and international law. Stattdessen, UNS. Und
North Korean negotiators sought to express those commitments in an alternate
Mittel, by building the physical embodiment of normalization in the form of
a shared technological infrastructure that was understood to be proliferation
resistant, technologically inert, and deeply international. The AF and associ-
ated KEDO project were an attempt at diplomacy by other means—diplomacy

157. Stephan Haggard and Marcus Noland, “Engaging North Korea: The Efªcacy of Sanctions
and Inducements,” in Solingen, Sanctions, Statecraft, and Nuclear Proliferation.

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International Security 45:1 50

by more credible and durable means. And if in the end that endeavor had a fa-
tal shortcoming, it was that the United States managed to offset the physical
cost of diplomacy to its allies, leaving a U.S. stake in normalization that was
constituted more on paper than in steel or concrete. By progressively diminish-
ing its costs, the United States consistently signaled its noncommitment to the
normalization path, which the North Korean regime insisted was the central
purpose of the AF.

The history of the AF and other proliferation crises offers a straightforward
lesson for future U.S. nonproliferation diplomacy: isolated latent proliferators
have been most responsive to U.S. moves that spoke credibly about their place
in a political future; they have been relatively immune to sanctions and tran-
sient rewards. This history suggests that nonproliferation diplomacy is not re-
ally about inducement at all, but about building credible commitments to the
political reconciliation that is needed to make denuclearization a rational path.
Instead of attempting to coerce or bribe target states into veriªably ending all
weapons-relevant nuclear activity, a techno-diplomatic approach to nuclear
nonproliferation would seek to build robust techno-political realities that
render nuclear weapons less relevant altogether.

The conceptual shift from inducement to techno-diplomacy has several im-
plications for future nonproliferation policy. If the primary stake in a prolifera-
tion crisis is a political future, then the most likely path to denuclearization is
not coercion or bribery, but a phased sequence of synchronous concessions
that constitute mutual commitments to political change. The primary currency
of these concessions will not be the intrinsic utility to the target state (as in in-
ducement), but the sunk costs to the conceding state and the pending costs and
utilities that are contingent upon continued future engagement. Self-imposed
costs and incentive-structure adjustments are the modes through which politi-
cal commitment is earnestly expressed, and often these are more credible
when embodied in irreversible physical processes—such as shared infra-
structure investments and physical deconstruction of previous nuclear
investments—than when codiªed in written commitments and bound to polit-
ically malleable juridical norms. And ªnally, any agreeable path to resolving
proliferation crises will, in accordance with the basic time structures of techno-
logical inertia and rational-actor bargaining, always leave a hedge for the
weaker, but nuclear-capable state.

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