Fallout: The Inside Story of America's Failure to Disarm North Korea

About the Book

A behind-the-scenes look into why U.S. efforts to contain North Korea's nuclear capabilities have not worked

For almost four decades, the United States has tried to stop North Korea's attempts to build nuclear weapons and the missiles to deliver them. Joel S. Wit, a former State Department official, takes readers to the front lines of nuclear negotiations and to fierce policy debates and secret diplomatic gambits, recounting how perilously close the United States and North Korea have come, on various occasions, to nuclear confrontation. Based on more than three hundred interviews with officials in Washington, Beijing, and Seoul, as well as with the author's contacts in Pyongyang, this book chronicles how six American presidents have approached the problem of North Korea.

Wit points to Barack Obama and Donald Trump as the two presidents most responsible for the failure to halt North Korea's march to build a nuclear arsenal, since it was under their successive tenures that Pyongyang acquired the ability to threaten every city in North America. Wit also offers an unparalleled portrait of Kim Jong Un that refutes his caricature as impulsive and illogical. Like his father and his grandfather, Kim is a ruthless despot but also a canny and informed negotiator determined to secure his dictatorship's future by exploring diplomacy or, failing that, by building a nuclear arsenal.

About the Author :
Joel S. Wit is a distinguished fellow in Asian Security Studies at the Henry L. Stimson Center and a former US State Department official. He is the coauthor of Going Critical: The First North Korean Nuclear Crisis. He lives in Washington, DC.

Review :
“[A] deeply-researched account of America’s approach to North Korea since the 1990s, drawing on insider interviews and email exchanges alongside published sources of all kinds.”—Christopher Harding, Telegraph

“Wit has written a gripping book on a difficult subject. . . . His anecdotes and sketches of the players on both sides bring the book to life.”—Stephen Mercado, NK News

“Astute. . . . Fast-paced and eye-opening.”—Kirkus Reviews

“The book should be essential reading for anyone in Washington hoping to rein in North Korea’s rapidly expanding nuclear arsenal.”—Joe Cirincione, Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists

“An essential read for anyone trying to comprehend how the US arrived at a dead end in North Korea policy. . . . Wit’s narrative is ultimately a tragic story of missed opportunities to improve relations and slow, stop, maybe reverse the nuclear threat.”—Global Asia

“A remarkable history of US nuclear diplomacy with North Korea [which] reveals many details of engagement and disengagement by the Obama, Trump, and Biden Administrations.”—Science & Global Security

“An extraordinarily well-written and insightful history of U.S.–North Korean relations over the last thirty-five years—with all the messy, fascinating bureaucratic politics from which policy emerged. Wit offers sound advice and fair warning for future diplomacy.”—Robert Gallucci, Georgetown University

“Thoroughly researched and admirably readable, Fallout is the best book ever written on U.S. nuclear diplomacy with North Korea.”—Leon V. Sigal, author of Disarming Strangers: Nuclear Diplomacy with North Korea

“An action-packed insider’s look at the course of recent U.S. interactions with North Korea, from ‘fire and fury’ to ‘beautiful love letters’; a must read for those interested in U.S. foreign policy and Korea.”—Susan Thornton, former Acting Assistant Secretary of State

“Wit, a former U.S. State Department official, recounts almost four decades of U.S. efforts to halt Pyongyang’s work on nuclear weapons and on ballistic missiles as their delivery vehicles. In essence, Fallout is a comprehensive and authoritative history of North Korean nuclearization and Kim Jong Un’s growing potential to exploit his country’s formidable nuclear capacity. At this precarious moment of increasing global anarchy, Wit’s meticulously well-documented book offers readers a refined starting point for military thinkers to identify and rank-order America’s residual strategic options vis-a-vis North Korea. In this connection, as Joel Wit clarifies, Donald J. Trump’s named posture of belligerent nationalism—“America First”—will make meaningful diplomatic progress with Kim Jong Un continuously unlikely.”—Louis René Beres, Emeritus Professor, Purdue University