For over forty years, the Korean Peninsula has been trapped in a dangerous cycle of provocation, The Council on Foreign Relations notes:
A Sharper Choice on North Korea: Engaging China for a Stable Northeast Asia, the report of a CFR-sponsored Independent Task Force, offers guidance to U.S. leaders in the face of the uniquely challenging threat posed by North Korea. The Task Force finds that current trends will progressively threaten the United States and its allies, and proposes new ideas to expand regional dialogue, restructure negotiations, protect the human rights of North Korea’s citizens, strictly enforce new sanctions authority, and deter and defend against a regime that seems determined to aggress in new and dangerous ways…..
In its assessment of the status of the North Korean regime, the Task Force finds that North Korean leader Kim Jong-un has ruthlessly consolidated power and there is low probability of regime collapse in the near future. Over time, however, North Korean citizens’ increasing access to information from the outside world, as well as growing internal markets, could form the basis for a gradual transformation of the totalitarian system.
