Studies in Asian Security. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2017. xiii, 321 pp. (Tables, figures.) US$50.00, cloth. ISBN 978-1-5036-0036-2.
In their latest book, Hard Target: Sanctions, Inducements, and the Case of North Korea, authors Stephan Haggard and Marcus Noland team up again to produce an ambitious study of North Korea’s political economy and the efficacy, or more accurately, limitations, of sanctions and engagement when directed against a “hard target.” The book’s title derives from the authors’ premise about particular types of states, generally authoritarian and autarkic in nature, which remain impervious to sanctions and economic inducements. More specifically, the authors demonstrate how the domestic political economic conditions of the targeted state significantly influence, especially in the case of North Korea, the ability of outside actors to bring about desired change. As a “repressive one-party familial regime based on an inward-oriented political coalition,” North Korea remains the quintessential hard target (228).
Hard Target is an academic book in the most complimentary sense of the term. Analysis on how to best address North Korea’s ongoing nuclear crisis has proliferated in recent years. Much of this discussion rests on opinion, faulty assumptions, or the absence of data when advocating pressure or engagement tactics. In contrast, Haggard and Noland’s work relies extensively on empirical data, including case study examples and an original survey of Chinese and South Korean firms. More importantly, the authors closely relate their data and findings to existing theories drawn from the literature in political science, economics, and North Korean studies. Needless to say, the publication of Hard Target is timely. Although the book’s coverage ends with the Obama administration in 2016, the message of Hard Target is actually more relevant under the current Trump administration’s policy of “maximum pressure and engagement.”
Hard Target is not light reading. This is partly related to the authors’ multi-faceted approach to North Korea. Rather than separate the economic, security, humanitarian, and foreign policy dimensions of the North Korean dilemma in different chapters, the authors instead blend all four issues in most if not all of the chapters (even in chapter 4, titled “Humanitarian Dilemmas”). The authors are keen to demonstrate how the combination of internal economic and political constraints weaken the effects of diplomacy and economic statecraft directed towards North Korea. Social scientists looking for analytical rigour, or readers craving a deep dive into North Korea will welcome the approach of Haggard (a political scientist) and Noland (an economist) to the problem. At the same time, the authors write clearly and provide sufficient background and historical context to the North Korean dilemma, making it accessible to a more general, but informed audience. However, those expecting a quick read may find the detail and data a little overwhelming. Such readers may find the early chapters useful and jump to the two case study chapters (chapters 6 and 7) towards the latter half of the book. These chapters reveal the limits of sanctions and inducements on nuclear negotiations and highlight the clear coordination problems and bargaining failures which operated throughout the Six Party Talks, and into the era of “strategic patience.”
Hard Target is certainly a must read for scholars and practitioners who claim some stake in the North Korea debate. Readers will appreciate Haggard and Noland’s honest, but sobering assessment of the North Korean crisis and the results of sanctions and inducements. The authors are equal opportunity criticizers when it comes to revealing weaknesses and inconsistencies in both tools of statecraft when aimed at hard targets. Despite recognition of growing economic markets in North Korea, readers are reminded that the promised transformative effects of engagement and positive inducements are still largely unproven. The host of constraints associated with North Korea’s political-economic structures, which further incentivize the ruling elites to maintain the status quo, curb the appeal of wider economic, much less political, reforms.
As noted earlier, the authors rely on both case study narratives and firm-level surveys conducted in China and South Korea, respectively, to examine whether cross-border exchanges have promoted further market reforms and economic change. One issue with the survey findings, collected in 2007 and 2009, is that the data approximates economic trends from a decade earlier. The authors are upfront about this and add that their “sceptical conclusions are subject to revision as marketization has continued apace” (140). But questions (at least to this reader) still linger as to whether data from the pre-Kim Jong Un era present a reliable indicator of state capture/control of foreign economic transactions and market activity today.
There has been some debate among North Korean watchers regarding the extent of political and economic change taking place inside North Korea. Haggard and Noland weigh in on the prospects of this change in their concluding chapter, and their prognosis only perpetuates further scepticism about sanctions and inducements. As the authors state, regime transition from above is “highly unlikely” and the repressive nature of the state makes the “likelihood of collective action from below limited” (234). The authors provide a little more optimism on the possibility of changes in the regime via economic reform rather than a change of regime (emphasis authors, 234). Yet on the whole, the authors remain cautious in suggesting any transformative change in the near future.
Andrew I. Yeo
The Catholic University of America, Washington, DC, USA