Although the Constitution authorizes the president and the executive branch to lead foreign affairs, it also vests the legislative branch with responsibilities that impact the conduct of diplomacy and statecraft. These include the ability to “declare war,” “raise and support armies,” “regulate commerce with foreign nations” and approve treaties and diplomat appointments, as well as general oversight functions and power to appropriate money from the Treasury.

Type: Analysis

Global Policy;  Peace Processes

In recent years, North Korea has become more repressive, more impoverished and more allergic to the outside world. Already turning inward after the failure of diplomatic efforts in 2019, the North Korean government isolated itself further amid the global COVID-19 pandemic. North Korea has learned to operate, and Kim Jong Un has learned to rule, with greater levels of self-isolation than aggressive international sanctions regimes could ever hope to impose. Given North Korea’s current mode of rejecting even humanitarian assistance and its recent turn toward Russia, the chances for diplomatic breakthroughs with Pyongyang look like a wishful long-term hope at best.

Type: Analysis

Global Policy

The greatest challenge to peaceful coexistence between North Korea and the United States is the technical state of war between the two countries. The United States and the Soviet Union may have been at ideological loggerheads, used proxies in regional conflicts and come close to direct superpower blows — but they were not in a state of war. Resolution of the Korean War should be set as a stated U.S. policy objective. This is a necessary Step Zero on the road to peaceful coexistence with North Korea today and could reduce the risk of deliberate or accidental conflict, nuclear or otherwise.

Type: Analysis

Global Policy

The September 13, 2023, meeting between Vladimir Putin and Kim Jong Un in Russia’s Amur Oblast marked a significant crippling of the decades-long U.S. pressure-based approach toward North Korea. The strategy of isolating and pressuring North Korea through United Nations Security Council resolutions to compel its nuclear disarmament in exchange for providing normalized relations, economic aid and sanctions relief may or may not ever have been a winning strategy, but now is no longer viable. The strategy required cooperation among the United States, South Korea, China and Russia, but this now seems a distant prospect.

Type: Analysis

Global Policy