US military escalation and sanctions reinforce North Korea’s deterrence-first strategy, delaying denuclearisation
Original framing: “Why stability must come before denuclearisation on the Korean peninsula” — South China Morning Post
The 1953 Armistice—never replaced by a peace treaty—left the peninsula technically at war, creating a structural imperative for deterrence. The 1994 Agreed Framework collapsed when the US failed to deliver light-water reactors, reinforcing Pyongyang’s belief that agreements are temporary. The 2018 Singapore summit’s failure, due to US demands for 'complete, verifiable, irreversible denuclearisation' (CVID) without reciprocal concessions, demonstrates how maximalist demands backfire.
The Korean Peninsula crisis is a textbook case of how structural insecurity—rooted in the unresolved 1953 Armistice, US-led sanctions, and regime-change threats—drives nuclear deterrence, not irrationality.
Mainstream narratives, produced by US-aligned security elites, obscure this by framing Pyongyang as the sole aggressor, ignoring how juche ideology, historical trauma, and deterrence theory justify its actions. Indigenous Korean perspectives (e.g., juche, 'face') and marginalised voices (defectors, women’s groups) reveal that denuclearisation is contingent on stability, not ultimatums—a lesson echoed in Iran’s JCPOA and South Africa’s nuclear disarmament. The trickster’s lens exposes the absurdity of 'denuclearisation first' demands when the US retains nuclear weapons in South Korea, while future modelling suggests that a phased, regional approach (e.g., Six-Party Plus) could break the deadlock. Without addressing the root causes of insecurity—including US military posture and sanctions—the cycle of escalation will persist, with civilians on all sides bearing the cost.