A strategy without a strategy: Where is Seoul’s North Korea policy heading?

In the study of military and national security strategy, retired Col. Arthur Lykke from the U.S. Army War College established a widely taught framework decades ago: strategy is the balance of ends, ways and means. Ends are our objectives. Ways are our courses of action to reach them. Means are the resources and instruments we deploy. When aligned, strategy is coherent, but when the ends outpace available means or ways are pursued without a clear objective, the result is incoherence. Applying this framework to South Korea’s North Korea policy reveals a set of gaps that deserve closer examination. Seoul’s primary end in recent decades has been North Korea’s denuclearization: the complete, verifiable, irreversible dismantlement of Pyongyang’s nuclear program. It remains the stated goal of successive administrations in Seoul and has historically been reaffirmed in joint statements with Washington. Yet a candid assessment of the available ways and means reveals a widening gap between the declared objective and the instruments at hand. The first way has been diplomacy. Negotiation re

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