Description
The promotion of peace between the two Koreas has tended to focus on state-to-state engagement in order to structure the decision-making of the "other". This has involved tactics and policies related to defense, deterrence, and engagement/appeasement. Unfortunately, all such endeavors have failed, and perhaps are doomed to fail in the future. One of the major reasons for these failures is lack of recognition of the role played by the interaction between national governments and their constituencies. This internal game has a significant bearing on the external game played by governments in Seoul and Pyongyang. Only by unpacking the "black box of decision” and considering the internal pressures and challenges key decision-makers face can we understand how international insecurity is generated, and also produce a new set of policy prescriptions for actors and commentators. The failure to consider potential impact of social forces and the processes of socialization comprise a second set of shortcomings to traditional attempts to construct of peace on the Korean Peninsula. This paper proposes also, therefore, to examine the agent within its social context, as this gives meaning to the agent’s goal-seeking. The analytical framework will reflect the social constructivist paradigm. Some varieties of both realism and liberalism also adopt structural or regime components – whether the anarchic operating environment, international organizations, or the global economy – and examine the impact these structural constraints have upon rational decision makers. But for the social constructivist, the whole is greater than the sum of the parts, and the impact of the structure cannot necessarily be measured in positivististic ways.
