International Relations and Diplomacy (ISSN2328-2134) Volume 6, Number 12,2018

International Relations
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Volume 6, Number 12, December 2018 (Serial Number 63)
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International Relations
and Diplomacy
Volume 6, Number 12, December 2018 (Serial Number 63)
Contents
Apartheid
From Nationalist Rebellion to Pan-African Liberation: A Theory of the Apartheid

Endgame in South Africa 627
Noel Twagiramungu
Social Policy
Visualizing Need: Using Data Visualization as a Decision Support Tool in the

Formulation of Social Policy 641
Randy Basham
Korean Peninsula
The New Situation on the Korean Peninsula and China’s Diplomatic Policy 652
YUAN Xuezhe
What Comes First, Denuclearization or Peace? Using Willy Brandt’s Ostpolitik as
a Case for an Integrative Engagement Approach on the Korean Peninsula 659
Andrew S. Millard
International Relations and Diplomacy, December 2018, Vol. 6, No. 12, 627-640
doi: 10.17265/2328-2134/2018.12.001
D
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From Nationalist Rebellion to Pan-African Liberation: A Theory

of the Apartheid Endgame in South Africa
Noel Twagiramungu
Boston University, Massachusetts, USA
Why did the apartheid’s endgame favor the African National Congress (ANC) over other contenders? This article
advances a path dependence argument, hypothesizing Mandela’s 1962 trip across Africa as a “critical juncture”
whose arc of counter-intuitive developments narrowed the ruling National Party’s bargaining options down to its
worst enemy—Mandela’s ANC.
Keywords: African National Congress (ANC), apartheid, Dar-es-Salaam, liberation, Mandela, Umkhonto we Sizwe
(MK), National Party (NP), Nyerere, Pan-African
Introduction
In politics, no matter how much one plans, circumstances often dictate events. (Mandela, 2013, p. 197)
Fortis fortuna adiuvat [Fortune favors the brave]. (Latin dictum)
Context
Modern South Africa is a byproduct of the double sin of white domination and black segregation dating
back to the Dutch settlement in the Cape of Good Hope in 1652 followed by several waves of other European
settlers, notably German and French. While these settlers fought the British colonial administration in the late
1800s, the outcomes of these intra-whites wars made the situation of the black populations even worse by
paving the way for the formation of the Union of South Africa in 1910 as an all-white state. This development
culminated in the birth of the apartheid regime in 1948, which dominated the political, cultural, and economic
life of the country for the next six decades. This despicable regime eventually bowed to internal and external
pressures in the late 1980s and initiated a negotiated settlement that resulted in the 1994 multiracial elections
from which the African National Congress (ANC) emerged as the leading force, presiding over a multi-racial
democratic government.
The Puzzle
Like any hard-won victory, the happy-ending struggle against the apartheid regime and the resulting
triumph of Mandela-led ANC has many fathers. Yet, judging from dominant accounts, the pride of place that
goes to Mandela seems counter-intuitive. To be sure, Mandela played a pivotal role in militarizing the
anti-apartheid struggle and popularizing his brand of hardball bargaining during his trials in the courtroom. Yet,

Acknowledgement: This article is the first of a series of publications based on my research on the role of Dar-es-Salaam in the
Pan-African Liberation Wars for which I have received financial and technical support from World Peace Foundation at Tufts
University, the University of Massachusetts Lowell, and the Association for the Study of the Middle East and Africa.
Noel Twagiramungu, Ph.D., Visiting Scholar, African Studies Center, Boston University, Massachusetts, USA.
628 FROM NATIONALIST REBELLION TO PAN-AFRICAN LIBERATION
claims abound that Mandela’s militarist approach “may have harmed the [whole anti-apartheid] movement,
weakening the nonviolent campaigns (successfully linked to the nonviolent movement) and justifying the
repression of all resistance efforts” (Kurtz, 2010, p. 1). In this regard, conventional wisdom wants us to believe
that the lion’s share of the anti-apartheid triumph goes to the South African non-violence movement
emphatically theorized by American theologian Walter Wink as “probably the largest grassroots eruption of
diverse nonviolent strategies in a single struggle in human history” (Kurtz, 2010, p. 2). “In the end”, Kurtz
(2010) concluded, “a concerted grassroots nonviolent civil resistance movement in coalition with international
support and sanctions forced the white government to negotiate” (p. 1). It thus comes as no surprise that many
expected the apartheid endgame to materialize into Smuts and Westcott (1980)’s prediction that “The Purple
Shall Govern”—the purple referring to the multi-faceted non-violent movement incarnated by people like
Desmond Tutu (1994). This begs the puzzle: How and why, in its search for a negotiated exit, the apartheid
regime resolved to favor Mandela’s ANC over other contenders? To address this puzzle, the author contends
that one has to dig deep into what makes the ANC unique among other South African freedom fighters.
Argument
In light of the research findings, the author argues that the triumph of Mandela-led ANC within the
anti-apartheid’s endgame can be theorized as the legacy of Mandela’s 1962 trip across Africa and the resulting
Pan-Africanization of the anti-apartheid struggle. The relation between the two historical moments (1962 trip
and 1990s triumph) is neither linear nor obvious, however. In fact, findings show that not only the trip seldom
happened according to initial plans, it also yielded meager direct results. Yet, subsequent developments show
that most of the initial missteps and setbacks eventually yielded beneficial unintended consequences and
game-changer breakthroughs via several rough patches and unsuspected pathways to success.
To account for these counter-intuitive developments, the author puts forth a path dependence approach
embedded in the logic of increasing return processes going back and forth between the variables of context,
agency, and opportunity. To this end, the author hypothesizes Mandela’s 1962 trip as a “critical juncture”, that
is, a new departure that does “establish certain directions of change and foreclose others in a way that shape
development over long periods of time” (Mahoney 2000, p. 504). The result is a multifaceted, historicized, and
balanced account of the complex and conflicting dynamics behind the under-studied process of
Pan-Africanizing the anti-apartheid struggle, a step that set apart Mandela-led ANC from and above all other
anti-apartheid forces in South Africa.
Sources and Methods
The article originates from the field research undertaken in Tanzania over six years with a focus on the
genesis and the genealogies of the political awakening and intellectual vibrancy that blossomed in the 1960s in
Dar-es-Salaam—the economic and intellectual capital of the United Republic of Tanzania1. A great deal of the
materials thus collected includes a comprehensive literature review of the available literature (books, articles,
online resources, etc.) and a vast archival research work in Dar-es-Salaam notably at the Mwalimu Nyerere
Foundation, the University of Dar-es-Salaam, the national public library, Mkuki na Nyota publishers, and
several newspapers. It is also informed by insights from extensive interviews and chats the author has had with
five dozens of privileged witnesses and keen observers including former and current officials, civilian, and
1
The fieldwork includes a 2-year long stay in Tanzania during the period 2011-2012 followed by short summer trips in 2014,
2015, and 2017.
FROM NATIONALIST REBELLION TO PAN-AFRICAN LIBERATION 629
military alike, as well as researchers, journalists, and ordinary people who happened to be in the right place at
the right moment to witness some of the issues of interest. However, updated information tailored to the scope
and purpose of this article was collected during the author’s fieldwork in Dar-es-Salaam in the summer of 2017.
Additional insights were gathered from a wealth of South Africa’s documents now accessible online as well as
precious data received from and/or under the auspices of several institutions including the Nelson Mandela
Foundation, the Desmond Tutu Peace Center, and the Boston-based Partners of South Africa, and the UMass
Boston-affiliated O’Malley―The Heart of Hope website.
In terms of methods, the study puts forth the tools and techniques of critical social inquiry embedded in
the “close-to-the-ground” descriptions and “explanations of reality” in the tradition of Shapiro (2005). In doing
so, the analysis “moves back and forth between theoretical and historical levels, using one to amplify and
illuminate the other” (Meierhenrich, 2008, p. 10). All along the way, the path dependence argument is validated
through a rigorous process-tracing, meant to “uncover the causal mechanisms that link the constitutive events in
the intensive type of processes” (Falleti, 2016, p. 455) with the aim to “investigate and explain the decision
process by which various initial conditions are translated into outcomes” (George & McKeown, 1985, p. 35).
Originality and Contribution to Knowledge
The originality of this paper is to empirically document and critically test the validity of the hypothesized
historical cause between Mandela’s trip across Africa in 1962 and his rise to power in 1994. The impetus to an
inquiry into this topic stems from the author’s awareness of the longstanding knowledge gaps surrounding this
historic trip. For, as one analyst has shown, “[a] literature review of Nelson Mandela’s 1962 activities as
Commander in Chief [of Umkhonto we Sizwe] identified information gaps and inconsistencies while recent
publications perpetuate myths and factual distortions” (Benneyworth, 2011, p. 82). This situation is of
particular concern because even the much-vaunted first accounts, such as “Mandela’s memoir and Anthony
Sampson’s biography briefly mention certain military specifics, yet provide no detail of him” (Benneyworth,
2011, p. 82). Moreover, while “[t]he end of apartheid has opened up new research possibilities into the history
of the African National Congress (ANC)”, as Lissoni and Suriano (2014) had shown, “the scholarship on the
ANC’s armed wing, Umkhonto we Sizwe (MK), remains largely restricted to questions of strategic, political
and military effectiveness” while “the transnational character of the anti-apartheid struggle is mostly absent
from nationalist historiographies” (p. 129). In this regard, the paper’s major expected contribution to
knowledge lies in digging deeper beneath the iceberg of “Mandela’s 1962 activities” to shed light on the
transnational dimensions of the anti-apartheid struggle from a Pan African perspective.
Outline
The article is structured into three major parts in addition to this introduction and the closing remarks. Part
1 sets the stage by situating the anti-apartheid struggle in a broader historical perspective. Part 2 addresses the
puzzle of the ANC lion’s share in the anti-apartheid’s endgame. The focus is on the serendipitous nature and
mixed results of Mandela’s 1962 trip across Africa as well as the decisive role of Tanzanian President Nyerere
in Pan-Africanizing Mandela’s cause—a determinant factor that would take the endangered ANC through
several rough patches towards unsuspected pathways to success. Part 3 synthesizes the insights from the
previous parts to highlight the validity and limits of the hypothesized causal relation between Mandela’s 1962
trip across Africa and his triumphal rise to power three decades later.
The Roots and Routes of the Anti-apartheid Struggle: A Brief History

Modern South Africa is a multi-racial country of 55 million people, bordered by Namibia to the northwest,
by Botswana and Zimbabwe to the north, and by Mozambique and Swaziland to the northeast and east. While
its coastlines border the Indian Ocean to the southeast and the Atlantic Ocean to the southwest, its eastern part
includes an enclave called Lesotho, which is a sovereign kingdom. While little is known about early social and
political life in this part of the world2, linguistic studies (Mesthrie, 2002) suggest that early settlements resulted
from three waves of the Bantu migrations from which emerged the current major 11 tribes: Zulu (28%), Xhosa
(20%), Swati (3%), and Ndebele (3%) who belong to the Nguni group; Pedi (11%), Sotho (11%), and Tswana
(10%) who form the Sotho-Tswana group; and Venda (3%) and Tsonga (5%) who form a group of their own
(Statistics South Africa, 2011; 2017). As in many other African regions, these tribes had various forms and
structures of governance ranging from a village-style government with a council of elders to kingdoms and
empires with centralized governments.
Following the Dutch settlement in the Cape of Good Hope in 1652, South Africa became home to three
major waves of immigrants: White Europeans, Asians, and the Coloureds. The Europeans include three major
sub-categories: Boers aka Afrikaners who are descendants of the Dutch, German and French who settled in
South Africa from the 17th century onwards; English-speakers who were descendants of settlers from the
British Isles who came to the country from the late 18th century onwards; and immigrants and descendants of
immigrants from the rest of Europe, including Greeks, Portugueses, Eastern European Jews, Hungarians, and
Germans.
The Asian community originates from indentured Asian workers who were brought from India to work on
the sugar plantations in Natal in the 19th century. As to the so-called Coloureds, they are the descendants of
mixed parentage from the black slaves (who were brought to South Africa from east and central Africa to the
Cape Colony from 1653 until 1822) and people from other races, notably the Europeans and the Asians.
The descendants of the first Dutch settlers eventually fought, and then joined forces with the other Whites
including the British colonizers to form the Union of South Africa in May 1910. To the chagrin of black
populations, however, this “white minority state consolidated its grip passing more laws to dislodge African
people, who had survived land dispossession through entering into sharecropping and tenancy in white-owned
farms” (SAHO, 2017b).
It was in this context that a group of young men recently returned from Western universities3 formed on
January 8, 1912, a trans-tribal organization known as the South African National Congress (SANC)—the future
African National Congress (The Black Sash, 1976). The struggle led by this national platform will be largely
nonviolent until 1948 when a supremacist white party, the National Party (NP), rose to power and established
the apartheid system. In response, a new generation of educated young men including Nelson Mandela, Oliver
Tambo, Walter Sisulu, and Robert Sobukwe launched within the ANC an insurgent movement known as the
Youth League which eventually took the mother umbrella ANC from its longstanding non-violent stance
2
One recent study contends that “evidence of early humans living on the coast in South Africa, harvesting food from the sea,
employing complex bladelet tools and using red pigments in symbolic behavior” goes back to “164,000 years ago (Science Daily,
2007).
3
They include Reverend John Dube (1871-1946), a Zulu educated at Oberlin College (USA); Solomon Plaatje (1876-1932), a
Soweto-born lawyer and writer educated at Berlin in Germany; and Reverend Waller Rubusana (1858-1936), a statesman from the
Cape Colony who had strong ties to London.
towards a more militant and confrontational approach. Eventually, the scale of apartheid policies and practices
would radicalize the young activists and brought them to embark on a new path, namely, the turn to violence
(Landau, 2012) which was championed by two rival rabble-rousers, Robert Sobukwe at the helm of the Pan
African Congress (PAC), and Nelson Mandela in command of Umkonto we Sizwe (MK)—a group initially
conceived of as “a new military organization, separate from the ANC” (Mandela, 2013, p. 274).
Roughly speaking, the anti-apartheid struggle can be divided into five defining moments: (i) The
nonviolence era I (1948- 1959) marked by a campaign of defiance and peaceful demonstrations under the
leadership of the ANC in partnership with its multiracial allies; (ii) Underground armed resistance (1959-1970)
dominated by violent acts of sabotage by the ANC through MK activists and to a lesser extent, the insurgent
forces affiliated with the Communist Party (CP) and the Pan African Congress (PAC); (iii) the era of Black
militancy movement (1970-1980) marked by massive labor strikes and student uprising; (iv) the nonviolence
era II (1980-1990) characterized by mass mobilization and multiracial pro-democracy activism; and (v) the
decline of the apartheid system (1990-1994) that coincided with a negotiated path to multi-racial democracy.
Of these periods, the last one marks a milestone of its kind, beginning by 1990, the year when “the world
witnessed the extraordinary spectacle of the South African government and the African National Congress
socializing, even bantering, with each other for the first time” (Adam & Moodley, 1993, p. 43). This historic
spectacle consisted of a three-day meeting between top officials of the apartheid regime and the ANC exiled
representatives at the foot of Table Mountain in Cape Town, few miles from the Robben Island prison where
the ANC top leadership had spent nearly three decades in jail. This official meeting was actually the
culmination of secret negotiations that had begun in 1986 (Rajab, 2017) in London. These informal contacts
rapidly gained momentum under the auspices of F. van Zyl Slabbert and Alex Boraine and came to the fore,
first during the historic meeting between ANC exiled representatives and a group of liberal Afrikaners in July
1987 in Dakar, Senegal, and later, in October 1988 in Leverkusen, Germany, at a conference including on the
one hand, Soviet academics, ANC delegates and representatives of the South African Communist Party, and on
the other hand, liberal Afrikaners (O’Malley, 2005). Meanwhile, while the government threatened the Dakar
meeting organizers with charges of treason, top South African officials including President P. W. Botha began
holding several meetings with the imprisoned Nelson Mandela (Rajab, 2017). However, it was the
serendipitous rise to power of Frederick de Klerck in August 1989 to replace Botha (then incapacitated by a
mild stroke) that set in motion a new era—what one scholar has termed the age of “the opening of the apartheid
mind” (Adam & Moodley, 1993). All began with the lifting of the ban on the ANC and other anti-apartheid
forces on February 2, 1990, followed by Mandela’s release on February 11. Then followed the gradual repeal of
the discriminatory laws during 1991 which culminated in the historic D-day of March 17, 1992, when
two-thirds of South Africa’s white voters approved a negotiated end of the minority regime and the apartheid
system. For the next two years, “several meetings between the government and the ANC laid the basis for the
Convention for a Democratic South Africa (CODESA) and a transition to democratic rule” (Rajab, 2017). The
whole process culminated in the first all-inclusive democratic elections in April 1994 from which the ANC
emerged as the big winner with 62.65% of the votes and with Nelson Mandela as the first black president of
South Africa. Accounting for why the lion’s share of the downfall of the apartheid went to the exiled ANC and
the imprisoned Mandela is the purpose of the next section.
Accounting for the ANC Lion’s Share: Mandela’s 1962 Trip & Its Legacy
Gene Sharp (1980), among others, had forcefully contended the non-violent resistance movement trumped
the apartheid’s military in many ways. Among other achievements, the emphasis is on the non-violence
movement’s ability to boost maximum participation among nonwhites, to divide the white community and
move some toward acting on behalf of nonwhites and to bring international pressures to bear on the
government. “[I]n the end”, concludes Kurtz (2010), “a concerted grassroots nonviolent civil resistance
movement in coalition with international support and sanctions forced the white government to negotiate” (p. 1).
But negotiate with whom and for what ends? Logically, one would expect to see the apartheid regime negotiate
directly with the so-called nonviolent movement, which through the ebb and flow of its strategic actions and
spectacular achievements had proven to be, in theologian Walter Wink’s words, “probably the largest
grassroots eruption of diverse nonviolent strategies in a single struggle in human history” (Wink, 1987, p. 4).
Surprisingly, against all odds, the apartheid regime opted for negotiating with the least nonviolent side
incarnated by Mandela and the exiled ANC. The findings show neither being legally banned, nor having its
leaders in jail didn't prevent the ANC from maintaining a unique position that made her indispensable in the
endgame of the apartheid. This section documents how and explains why. The overall argument is that the
ANC’s upper hand resulted from its unique status as, in Nyerere’s words, an “adopted child”4 For this new
status provided the banned ANC with, not only a new home and family ties, but also a safe haven for its
political and military activities, all of which would make its invisible hand to remain the major driving force
behind the anti-apartheid movement inside the country.
Digging deep into the roots and routes of these dynamics, the findings point to Mandela’s 1962 trip as a
starting point. Paradoxically, as detailed below, the ANC’s status as an “adopted child” and the resulting
Panafricanization of its struggle was at odds with the anticipated outcomes of the trip as such. Instead, they
emerged as unintended consequences resulting from numerous missteps, setbacks, and misfortunes. To make
this case, the Pan African road that took the ANC all the way to power can be summed up in three points:
1). Mandela’s trip as a bittersweet journey with mixed results;
2). The ANC coming into being a privileged “adopted child” and the resulting process of Pan-Africanizing
the anti-apartheid struggle;
3). The exiled ANC’s return to its roots in South Africa as an “emancipated child”.
All along the discussion, the role of Tanzania’s founding father and Pan-African prominent leader, Julius
Nyerere, is explored as a crosscutting issue while light is shed on the counter-intuitive developments and
paradoxical moves of various actors.
Mandela’s 1962: A Bittersweet Journey With Mixed Results
Per ANC official accounts (see notably https://www.nelsonmandela.org/content/page/timeline), the trip
happened roughly as follows: On January 11, 1962, Mandela leaves the country for military training and to
gather support for the newly formed armed wing of the ANC, Umkhonto we Sizwe [Spear of the Nation]. On
January 21, 1962, he lands in Dar-es-Salaam where he meets President Nyerere and secures a travel document
that allows him to embark on a seven-month long journey that takes him to other several countries including
4
Per one of his closest aide in the 1960s that I interviewed in Dar-es-Salaam in July 2017, President Julius Nyerere justified his
commitment to host the headquarters of the exiled ANC in 1964, saying, “How do we treat watoto yatima [orphan kids] in our
culture? Isn’t it upon the large family to adopt them?”
Ethiopia, Egypt, Ghana, Guinea, Senegal, Morocco, and Algeria. He returns to South Africa via Botswana on
July 23, 1962, only to be arrested at a roadblock near Howick in KwaZulu Natal on August 5, 1962. First
sentenced to a five-year imprisonment, for incitement and leaving the country illegally in November 1962, this
revolutionary-turned-prisoner will not walk tall and free any sooner until his release from Victor Verster Prison
on February 11, 1990, only to rise to power as the first Black President of South Africa in April 1994.
While this rough summary cannot pretend to do justice to the existing accounts about this trip, it is striking
to observe how the trip as such has received scant attention in both the primary accounts of the concerned
players and the scholarly writings. Yet, like an iceberg of which we only see the tipping point, beneath this
7-month trip lies a vast ocean of, in the words of a keen observer, ‘information gaps and inconsistencies’ in
addition to “myths and factual distortions” perpetuated by recent publications about “Nelson Mandela’s 1962
activities as Commander in Chief [of Umkhonto we Sizwe]” (Benneyworth, 2011, p. 82).
Overall, the findings suggest that this trip is best understood as a bittersweet journey that yielded mixed
results in many ways. First, unlike what the official narrative that Mandela left the country “for military
training and to gather support” for the MK may suggest, the truth is that neither the trip had a prior room in the
initial strategic plans of the MK, nor was Mandela enthusiastic about undertaking this trip in the first place.
Worse still, Mandela left behind a divided ANC over the MK’s means and ways of carrying out the
anti-apartheid struggle. Per Mandela’s own confession, even Chief Luthuli, then ANC president, felt that
Mandela and his colleagues were conducting the MK business behind his back (Mandela, 2013, 285-290).
Second, the trip allowed Mandela to make his case and to cement strong ties with various African leaders
including Senegal’s President Senghor who provided him with a passport and air ticket that allowed him to
travel to London. The trip also allowed him to learn a good deal of guerilla warfare techniques from firsthand
experiences of the battle-tested guerillos notably in Morocco, Algeria, and Ethiopia.
Third and worth noting, all along his trip, Mandela was “dismayed” and “shocked” by the fact that the
vision and strategies of the MK were poorly understood, and therefore less appealing to African leaders
including Tanzanian Nyerere, Ethiopian Sellasie, and Zambian Kaunda, all of the attention and support being
given to the ANC’s rival, the Pan African Congress.
Fourth, Mandela’s sudden decision to return to South Africa in July 1962 apparently ruined all that he had
accomplished. To begin with, he deceived his two prominent godfathers, namely, Haile Sellasie in Ethiopia
where he completed only eight weeks of the six-month training course he was offered, and Nyerere in Tanzania
who warned him against the risks of going back to a garrison state without proper backup. Alas, Nyerere’s fears
were to be proven right when Mandela returned only to be arrested and sent behind the bars for the next 27
years with no chance to make good use of the contacts as well as the military training and weapons he had
acquired abroad. Worse still, the police ended up seizing the military strategy, the famous Operation Mayibuye,
which his comrades-in-arms, namely Joe Solvo and Govan Mbeki, had put together in light of his notes and
instructions (Wieder, 2013).
Surprisingly, far from weakening the ANC, these setbacks and misfortunes would transform the ANC
along with its MK army from an obscure underground rebellion into a true liberation movement at the center of
African politics and politicking. Two interrelated factors can explain this spectacular move: Tanzania’s
adoption of the ANC and the resulting Panafricanization of the anti-apartheid struggle.
An Orphan in the Good Hands: ANC Journey From Rivonia to Safe Haven in Africa
By the time Mandela was touring Africa, Nyerere was busy helping the freedom fighters from the southern
Africa region to join forces and launch a coordinated armed struggle. However, while he succeeded to unify
various Mozambican nationalist groups which met in Dar-es-Salaam in May 1962 and formed the FRELIMO,
he tried and failed to unify MPLA, FNLA, and UNITA from Angola, and the ZANU and ZAPU from
Zimbabwe (then Rhodesia) (Mwakikagile, 2007, p. 209). He tried also in vain to convince Mandela of the
opportunity to form a joint front with Poqo, the armed wing of the Pan African Congress.
Official sources in Tanzania suggest that during Mandela’s stop to Dar-es-Salaam in July 1962 on his way
back to South Africa, Nyerere begged him to stay and take the lead of a unified high command of the liberation
struggle, not only in South Africa, but also in the whole region of Southern Africa5. While Mandela insisted
that he could not afford to delay his return to South Africa any longer, it is not clear whether he rejected
Nyerere’s offer for good. In any case, Nyerere was reportedly so disappointed in Mandela’s risky defiance that,
for a while, he pondered the idea of supporting the Poqo at the expense of the MK6. It is reported that Nyerere
changed his mind after Joe Solvo paid him a call in June 1963 and briefed him on the merits of the Operation
Mayibuye, convincing him in the process that Mandela’s arrest would not jeopardize the realization of the
operation.
As it turned out, not only would Joe Solvo not return to South Africa any sooner to oversee the Operation
on behalf of Mandela, the Operation itself was to be seized by the police on July 11, 1963. Nyerere could not be
more disappointed in Mandela’s poor appreciation of the need for a strong and reliable rear base before
launching a successful guerilla warfare in a tightly controlled state. Yet, far from contending himself to blame
Mandela and his colleagues, Nyerere surprised his aides by declaring unilaterally the ANC his “adopted child”
and the anti-apartheid struggle an African affair par excellence.
One anecdote the author learned from Dar-es-Salaam is that Nyerere reportedly asked a couple of his aides
sometime in July 1962 what a typical African extended family should do for an orphan child who just lost his
father. After a good chat on how extended families had historically been relied upon to accommodate orphans
(Kandiwa, 2010, p. 2), Nyerere asserted that the same cultural norms and practices should apply to the case of
Mandela’s ANC. What he eventually did by giving the exiled ANC special treatments. First, the ANC was
invited to relocate its headquarters from London to Tanzania in 1964. Second, Tanzania fully backed the exiled
leadership of the ANC incarnated by Oliver Tambo all along the way. This became particularly evident in 1969
when Tanzania helped the ANC to hold a congress that revived the organization, which was until then dormant
and marred with tensions and suspicions between the exiled leadership and the underground movement.
Meanwhile, the ANC’s struggle was already an African affair.
From a Nationalist Rebellion to an Africa-Backed Liberation
The process of Pan-Africanizing the ANC-led anti-apartheid struggle can be summed up in three
institutional frameworks: The Organization of African Union (OAU), the Frontline States (FLS), and the web
of Africa-led global initiatives.
The first move materialized on May 24, 1963―the day the Addis Ababa Conference of Independent
African States adopted the Charter of the Organization of African Unity (OAU). In the margins of this
5
Personal interviews, Dar-es-Salaam, July 2017.
6
Idem.
assembly, Tanzania’s leader Nyerere “led his colleagues to create a subsidiary organ of the OAU, the OAU
Liberation Committee, which, at his invitation, set up its headquarters in Dar es Salaam” (Sahnoun, 2009, p.
61). For the next three decades, this committee proved an ideal forum through which African countries
managed “to navigate through the choppy seas of big power priorities and conflicts with consummate mastery”
and thus “build a broad front of solidarity and support, material and diplomatic, from Africa, Asia, the
Non-Aligned Movement, the Nordic countries and of course, both China and the USSR” (Sahnoun, 2009, p.
61).
The second framework emerged from the momentum of the coming into power of the sister liberation
movements, namely, MPLA in Angola and FRELIMO in Mozambique in 1975, and later, ZANU-PF in
Zimbabwe in 1980. In addition to providing the ANC fighters with military bases closer to the home country,
they joined forces with the neighboring Botswana, Swaziland, Lesotho, Zambia, Malawi, and Tanzania to form
a common front known as the Frontline States group. This front played a vital role, not only in supporting the
ANC with increased diplomatic, political, and military facilities, but also in containing the apartheid regime’s
efforts to destabilize its neighbors through proxy wars, notably in Angola and Mozambique (Tvedten, 1997, pp.
29-36). Per a report submitted by Angola to the United Nations on August 3, 1979, Angola registered 25
attacks by South African ground forces and 24 aerial bombardments between March 1976 and June 1979. To
face such incursions, the Frontline States’ coordinated efforts benefited much from massive support from
Russia and Cuba. For instance, when South African troops launched a massive military campaign in the late
1980s that destroyed the headquarters of SWAPO in Angola and damaged several ANC military bases, they
failed to dislodge the anti-apartheid forces thanks to the direct intervention of Cuba whose troops increased
from 35,000 men in 1982 to 40,000 in 1985 (Franklin, 1997, p. 212).
As to the diplomatic front, two developments are worth noting. First, the ANC remained a unifying factor
in Africa despite numerous personal, ideological, and ethnic divisions that hampered the efforts to unify the
continent around a common political and economic Grand Strategy. One telling case is the fact that the ANC
continued to receive support from both Morocco and Algeria at a time when the former was excluded from the
OAU for its occupation of the Algeria-backed Western Sahara. The same paradox is true for the support from
Gaddafi’s Libya despite its nasty relations with other major ANC sponsors including Tanzania and Egypt.
On the other hand, in addition to isolating the apartheid regime through diplomatic, political, and
economic mechanisms across the continent, Africa succeeded in getting the regime of Pretoria expelled from
international forums, such as the Commonwealth or repeatedly condemned by the United Nations and other
international organizations. By the same token, while the ANC had strong ties with the West, starting by
London, which hosted briefly its headquarters in the early 1960s, its Africa-backed struggle attracted extra
support, notably from North Europe in the late 1980s (Sellström, 1999, 2000; Soiri & Peltola, 1999).
Thanks to these Africa-based operational frameworks and efforts, the ANC flourished abroad and
managed to increasingly drive behind the scenes the various forms of resistance that shaped the political
landscapes from the labor militancy and student uprisings in the 1970s to the massive pro-democracy
campaigns in the late 1980s. The ANC’s show of strength became particularly a reality in the late 1980s when
its activists and sympathizers “created alternative community-based institutions—such as cooperatives,
community clinics, legal resource centers, and other organizations—that increasingly marginalized and
replaced official governmental institutions” (Kurtz, 2010, p. 3).
On the battleground, until then the ANC guerilla strategy was to limit its operations to occasional
bombings of government facilities and thus avoid civilian deaths7. By the late 1980s, however, the guerilla had
multiplied and reinforced its military bases in the neighboring countries while intensifying recruitment and
training of new fighters. For instance, alongside other Frontline states’ troops and the MK commandos,
Mugabe’s North Korean-trained unit elite, the famous Fifth Brigade, is credited to have played a major role in
the planning and execution of massive guerilla operations including the September 1984 massive attacks
against police stations and military installations in response to the Vaal Uprisings, the 1985 Amamzimtoti
bomb attack, the May 1987 car bomb explosions outside the Johannesburg Magistrates Court which killed four
policemen, the July 1987 massive car bomb that severely damaged the South African army’s Witatwersrand
Command complex in Johannesburg, and the 1989 military attack on a South African Air Force secret radar
installation at Klippan in the Western Transvaal which caused extensive damage and undisclosed casualties
(O’Malley, 2005). While these attacks were no closer to dismantle the apartheid military power, it cannot be an
exaggeration to endorse the idea that, for the first time in its history, “[th]e NP realized, through the ANC’s
campaign of mass action, that revolution was possible” (Meierhenrich, 2008, p. 194).
All being considered then, a strong case can be made that the privileged position of the ANC as an
Africa’s adopted child and the resulting Panafricanization of its struggle proved a necessary, though not
sufficient, condition that forced the apartheid regime to negotiate a peaceful settlement. In this regard, the
resulting rapport can be best understood as a forced, but useful marriage as beautifully summed up by Adam
and Moodley (1993):
The ambivalent alliance between the two major contenders for power, the National Party (NP) and the African
National Congress (ANC), results from a balance of forces where neither side can defeat the other. It is their mutual
weakness, rather than their equal strength, that makes both longtime adversaries embrace negotiations for power sharing.
Like a forced marriage, the working arrangement lacks love but nonetheless is consummated because any alternative
course would lead to a worse fate for both sides (p. 9).
Yet, as the author has demonstrated in the foregoing, it would have extremely difficult, if not impossible,
for the apartheid regime to reach out to the ANC, if the later had not been adopted, housed, and supported
militarily, politically, and diplomatically by Nyerere’s Tanzania first, and later the African continent as a whole,
all along the way from the Rivonia Trial to the negotiation table. In this view, Mandela’s encounter with
Nyerere in 1962 appears as a critical juncture that set in motion the complex chain of events that made the ANC
the ideal partner that the ruling NP could only ignore on its own peril and the peril of South Africa as a nation.
From Adoption to Emancipation: The Africa-Backed ANC’s Triumphant Return to Its Roots
Shortly after behind-the-scenes negotiations between the government and the ANC gathered pace, the
officially Africa-backed leadership of the exiled ANC announced its intent to emancipate from its adoptive
status to return to its roots. This materialized in January 1990, when eight underground ANC operatives,
together with the leader of the Mass Democratic Movement (MDM) and the Congress of South African Trade
Unions (COSATU) left South Africa to meet the hierarchy of the exiled ANC at its headquarters in Lusaka,
Zambia. One of the resolutions of this meeting was to endorse Nelson Mandela’s acceptance of the apartheid’s
7
A case can be that this strategy was one of the lessons learned from the counter-productive Wankie and Sipolio battles, which
raged from August 1967 until late 1968 opposing the famous “Luthuli Detachment”―a group of fighters comprising ANC and
ZAPU guerrillas—against South African and Rhodesian armies.
offer to release him and legalize the banned political organizations including the ANC. Boosted by this
endorsement, Mandela ensured the government of the ANC’s full commitment to a negotiated settlement. In
response, President F. W. de Klerk announced in a historic speech of February 2, 1990, the lifting of a 30-year
ban on the anti-apartheid organizations including the ANC and the PAC. A week later, upon his release on
February 11, Mandela addressed a crowd of approximately 50,000 people from the steps of the Cape Town
City Hall. Yet, Mandela had still to pledge his allegiance to and consult with the Africa-backed ANC
headquarters in Zambia. What he eventually did on February 27, thus paving the way for his election as Deputy
President of the ANC on April 2, 1990. Meanwhile, the MK military commander, Joe Modise, had announced
in an exclusive interview with The Herald on March 14 that his troops were open to the suspension of the
armed struggle to facilitate negotiations (SAHO, 2017a).
The ANC emancipation culminated in a formal “return to the roots” ceremony of April 28, 1990, when the
exiled leadership including Joe Solvo, Thabo Mbeki, Alfred Nzo, and Ruth Mompati returned to South Africa.
Once reunited, the ANC confirmed its legitimacy and bargaining power through the Groote Schuur talks of
May 2-4 upon which it signed with the government a memorandum that outlined the two parties’ commitment
to reach a peaceful settlement (SAHO, 2017c). From there, like a typical African emancipated son whose first
harvest products must be presented to his father, Mandela was soon to leave South Africa on May 9, 1990 to
embark on a thanksgiving six-nation African tour, starting by Dar-es-Salaam (Tanzanian Affairs, 1990)—yes,
Dar-es-Salaam where the journey had started in January 1962. The struggle had gone the full cycle. A new era
was in sight. For better or worse, freedom was within the reach of every South African.
Conclusion
Like the long journey on which South Africa has embarked from racist policies to multi-racial democracy
through the brutal system of apartheid and enormous sacrifices of the anti-apartheid forces, this article has
taken unexpected turns. In the end, the rough paths the author went through obliged to let the research findings
lead the process, generally in disregard of the initial plans. For instance, my initial research proposal intended
to document and demonstrate how the intellectual vibrancy and political awakening that blossomed in
Dar-es-Salaam in the 1960s put Tanzania at the hub of the successful wars that culminated in the fall of the
White-minority controlled regimes in the Southern African region. To this end, I devoted my initial efforts to
gather and review the available written materials on this topic before embarking on the fieldwork part to collect
new data by the means of interview using a pre-established set of open questionnaires.
However, after I spoke to a number of keen informants in Dar-es-Salaam8, it became clear that most of the
pre-determined research questions were too simplistic, if not naive, to capture the unique and challenging
features of Tanzania’s involvement in the anti-apartheid struggle. In the process, like Monsieur Jourdain who
spoke in prose without being aware of it, it later came to my attention that free-style of allowing my sources
and the resulting data guide the research endeavor was in line with the (de)constructivist school according to
which, in Derrida’s words, “every discourse…carries with it a system of rules for producing analogous things
and thus an outline of methodology” (Derrida, 1995, p. 200). Taking this view as a clue, I started treating each
8
My primary sources include 20 one-on-one chats and 12 focus groups of 3 to 5 people. Yet, the chats I had were too informal to
meet the classic format of interviews constrained by the rules of confidentiality, yet risk-free and generally mutually enriching like
typical discussions among the strangers who debate a hot topic of common interest. More importantly, meaningful insights
generally did not emerge until the end of my trip when I invested extra time and energy on follow-up exchanges through
cutting-edge tools of communication, notably Skype and Whats App.
of the available pieces of information—along with their contradictions and gaps therein—as a discourse that
has something to reveal about the way forward. It was in this regard that I embarked on the journey to
demonstrate how Mandela’s 1962 trip across Africa, notably the disconcerting, but game-changer Mandela-
Nyerere encounter in Dar-es-Salaam in January 1962, proved a “critical juncture” that set in motion a complex
set of self-reproductive, but nonlinear sequences that ended up reuniting the exiled ANC and its jailed
leadership to bring about what the ANC had fought for: a multi-racial democratic South Africa.
I am not suggesting, however, that Mandela’s trip and its outcomes were the only causal factors―or
sufficient conditions—that brought about the apartheid’s endgame as we know it. As discussed throughout the
article, many other factors were necessary to end the dishonorable apartheid including internal uprisings and
external pressures as well as geopolitical developments, such as the collapse of the Portuguese colonial rule in
the neighboring countries and the end of the Cold War-era rivalries. Additionally, the shrinking support of the
apartheid policies among the Whites resulted in the rise of a moderate and democracy-bound leadership within
the ruling National Party. And yet, had the banned and decapitated ANC not received a safe haven in
Dar-es-Salaam in the early 1960s and coordinated military and diplomatic support, first from the Organization
of African Union’s Liberation Committee, and later from the Frontline Zone countries in the 1980s, it would
hardly make it to the negotiation table. All along the way, the whole dynamics proved consistent with the logic
of increasing returns process according to which, when the benefits of pursuing a charted path outweighs the
cost of switching to plausible alternatives, the probability of further steps along the same path increases with
each move down that path (Meierhenrich, 2008, p. 192). To explain this phenomenon, the findings are
consistent with the view of a path dependent process as a tree in the language of Levi as quoted in Meierhenrich
(2008):
From the same trunk, there are many different branches and smaller branches. Although it is possible to turn around
or to clamber from one to the other and essential if the chosen branch dies the branch on which a climber begins is the one
she tends to follow (p. 192).
In this regard, the enduring survival of the outlawed and exiled ANC as the principal driving force behind
the anti-apartheid struggle can be best conceived of as an “irreversible branching process” (David as quoted in,
Meierhenrich, 2008, p. 192) within and against which the NP-led despicable regime found the Africa-backed
ANC in a better position to help save face by satisfying both local demands and external expectations. Above
all, the ANC’s strong ties with Africa were even more vital to the regime which, “despite its powerful security
forces, mineral wealth and industrial capacity” was dependent on southern African neighbors (Kurtz 2010, p. 2).
In the end, political developments in South Africa have so far proved consistent with the path dependence
premise that, “agents do not select outcomes, they select strategies” (Meierhenrich, 2008, p. 192). For,
[a]lthough the nonwhite population gained what former Tanzanian president Julius Nyerere called ‘flag independence’
by gaining the vote and electing an ANC-dominated government, the country’s economy, civil service, and military remain
largely dominated by the white minority, forcing continued compromise and power struggles. (Kurtz, 2010, p. 2)
But for how long? Only history will tell. Yet, while this puzzle is beyond the scope of this article, it is the
author’s view that the rise of the rainbow government from the ashes of the apartheid’s regime is a new critical
junction which is likely to prevail for a while, narrowing the options of choice available to current and future
leadership in such a way to force them to play by the rules of “continued compromise and power struggles”
rather than violating them.
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doi: 10.17265/2328-2134/2018.12.002
D
DAVID PUBLISHING
Visualizing Need: Using Data Visualization as a Decision

Support Tool in the Formulation of Social Policy
Randy Basham
University of Texas at Arlington, Texas, United States

International social work is facing an exponentially growing number of critical challenges in developing nations in
meeting essential social needs as well as the distribution of material goods, social and economic resources and the
provision, and effective services delivery to populations of need. There is a need to respond rapidly to populations
in need and adapt to quickly changing socio-economic conditions. However, the resources needed to evaluate data
and make effective decisions to provide support are often limited by the availability of trained data analysts who
can interpret statistical findings and make relevant service delivery decisions for such communities of need.
Modern computing technology shows promise of providing a graphical evaluation approach to enriching
understanding of the available information. Thereby, the need to make critical decisions is augmented for those
decision-makers that are working most closely with marginalized groups. A recent research effort undertaken by
the Adventist Development and Relief Agency (ADRA) sought to provide administrators and policy-makers with
information regarding the associations between social capital, economic development, and food security in the
mountain region of Perú. Survey data collection and descriptive statistical analysis were used to provide
information on the relationship between socio-economic development services and the emergence of social capital
needed to develop effective human self-support systems. This paper demonstrates how to provide a graphical
interface between areas of economic need and development initiatives. A visual exploration of data patterns would
serve to inform human service decision-makers as they develop policies and programs. Visualization of data helps
to enrich meaning and understanding of core areas of population need. This enhanced information format can
identify needs for social policy development and improve the delivery of critical services and resources. This paper
will provide a conceptual argument for considering data visualization methods in the evaluation of significant needs
for, at risk, international populations. The paper will also present a number of examples for improving data
evaluation and the understanding of need through data visualization methods through widely available computing
technology. Procedures for graphically representing data will be demonstrated using the Perú survey, and
applications for social policy formulation will be discussed.
Keywords: data visualization techniques, inform social policy, program development
Introduction
The developing world and Latin America in particular, are experiencing great economic, nutritional, and
social support needs. Because of this, hundreds of non-governmental organizations collaborate with national,
regional, and local governments in an effort to promote socio-economic development. These efforts, however,
Randy Basham, Ph.D., associate professor, School of Social Work, University of Texas at Arlington, Texas, United States.
642 USING DATA VISUALIZATION AS A DECISION SUPPORT TOOL
are often hampered by the lack of empirical findings and decision-support information that can justify
interventions. The lack of such empirical supports is often exacerbated by a shortage of well-trained researchers
and development professionals who can bridge the gap between theory, research, and practice. Sophisticated
data analysis and interpretation skills are usually needed to inform decision-making in development work as
well as the social policies that should guide and justify such action. The previously-described situation
challenges social work researchers to identify new and more effective ways to use research and technology to
inform decision-making.
New techniques have recently emerged that use widely available computer technology to graphically
illustrate data in highly sophisticated and informative ways. These data visualization techniques, some of which
will be illustrated in this paper, involve a spectrum of graphical representation procedures that allow us to
explore complex data sets and derive greater meaning from them. Numerical information reported in tabular
form may not provide the optimal medium for exploring data trends and conceptualizing policy needs often
aggregated in large data sets.
To demonstrate the advantages of data visualization in evaluating need, the author has performed a
secondary analysis of a survey data set. This effort dramatically illustrates the ease of conveyance of meaning
derived from numerical data using graphical representation as a data exploration technique. The initially
analyzed survey data was collected in 1999 as a portion of social and economic needs study conducted in Perú,
South America. The research aimed at exploring the associations between social capital, economic
development, and food security in a highly impoverished region of the country (Dí az, Drumm,
Ramí rez-Johnson, & Oidjarv, 2002). The research evaluated the efforts of the Adventist Development and
Relief Agency (ADRA) in Perúto meet social, economic, and nutritional need in 10 experimental communities
while comparing needs and efforts to 10 control communities.
Adventist Development and Relief Agency (ADRA)

The Adventist Development and Relief Agency (ADRA) in Perú operates the Andean Food Security
Development Project with USAID Title II funds. The project, which initially started in 1996, comprises the
Infant Nutrition and the Agricultural Income Generation programs. These programs have targeted areas of
extreme poverty in 13 of the country of Perú’s political departments.
The project’s qualitative midterm evaluation was completed on 22 January 1998 reported that ADRA had
performed outstandingly in the area of community confidence building and mobilization (ADRA, 1998).
Furthermore, the ADRA/Perú leadership strongly believed that repairing social relations and mobilizing
communities in a country torn by years of violence and natural disasters is a critical preliminary step for further
development. There was subsequently a need to critically evaluate relief and support effort effectiveness.
For these reasons, in 1999, ADRA/Perú commissioned the original study with the purposes of: (1)
quantitatively testing the findings of the mid-term evaluation; (2) testing the validity of social capital theory for
non-western cultures; and (3) evaluating the impact of socio-economic development services on an
experimental (N = 10) and a comparison group (N = 10) of communities. The surveyed communities are
located in Perú’s mountain region. ADRA operates most of its programs in the mountain region because of its
well-documented high incidence of poverty (Pillai, Diaz, Basham, & Ramí rez-Johnson, 2011).
USING DATA VISUALIZATION AS A DECISION SUPPORT TOOL 643
High Poverty in Perú’s Mountain Region

A history of oppression, racial discrimination and inequality, legal barriers, adverse weather conditions,
and insufficient means of communication and transportation are factors that have contributed to the high
incidence of poverty in Perú’s mountain region. Therefore, there is a substantial social need and a subsequent
need to evaluate economic and policy efforts aimed at providing relief. Methods to evaluate need that serves to
provide decision support for policy initiatives are critical.
Socio-economic inequality in Perú dates back to the Inca Empire before the arrival of the Europeans.
Forced labor and extremely high taxes in the Inca Empire led to poverty and social stratification (Gisbert, 1999).
This situation worsened with the arrival of the Spaniards who imposed a system of institutionalized
discrimination against Mestizos whom they perceived as morally impure (Cadena, 1997). The arrival of African
slaves who were mostly settled in the mountain region, and the subsequent arrival of Asians contributed to the
complexity and inequality of the Peruvian social stratification system (Gisbert, 1999).
Crabtree and Thomas (1999) identified other factors contributing to the region’s high level of poverty.
First, prior to 1923 residents of the mountain region were not considered legally Peruvian, could not own
property and lacked legal and social protections. Secondly, this area is mostly populated by peasants who are at
the bottom of the socio-economic strata.
Adverse weather, such as drastic temperature changes, little rain, and severe erosion makes farming
extremely difficult, and in this way contributes to poverty (Gisbert, 1999). Besides, from 1979 to 1992, the
Peruvian government did not provide needed protections to the country’s agriculture (Ferrary, 1992).
According to Espinoza-Uriarte, (1997, p. 36) and Crabtree and Thomas (1999), life in the mountain region is
made more difficult by inadequate housing, lack of clean drinking water, and insufficient means of
transportation and communication (Crabtree & Thomas, 1999).
The Need for Decision Support in Social Policy Formulation

Social scientists and development professionals, such as those exploring need in Perú, need to know how
social capital relates to economic development and food security since such a finding would have direct and
significant implications for the theory and practice of development. Faced with the reality of limited financial
resources, professionals often need to make difficult and strategic decisions related to what programs to
implement first and where. They often struggle with questions, such as:
1. Should development programs be started only in communities that possess high levels of social capital
in an effort to enhance the likelihood of success and sustainability?
2. Should economic development programs be implemented first in order to increase social capital?
3. Should social capital be increased through alternative means prior to implementing economic
development programs?
4. Should social capital be viewed as a precondition for development or an outcome of economic
development projects that must be monitored and assessed?
Policy-makers and development program administrators often struggle to agree on how, when, and where
to allocate scarce resources. Decisions aimed at developing social capital, economic development, and
community infrastructure are dependent on the collection and organization of data and information. New
computer programs and applications are playing an increasingly important role in data collection and analysis
needed to inform decision-making. Technological supports are especially crucial when the data available to
inform decisions is highly complex given that this makes the deductive and inferential process more elusive.
Recent trends in social service practice emphasized the need for evidence-based decision-making in
human service delivery. This type of decision-making is especially important during times and in locations of
economic uncertainty. The poverty and human need of the mountainous regions of Perú can rapidly take
advantage of evaluation methods that explore data trends and provide understanding.
Data Visualization in the Determination of Need
Data visualization refers to a range of graphical representation procedures used with complex data sets that
are often augmented by computer technology (Yu, 1995). The application of data visualization techniques show
promise for increasing understanding and effectively enhancing decision-making. Computer support is
necessary for creating graphics from large data sets, while historically handmade images or graphics may have
sufficed to determine need when working with smaller data sets (J. W. Tukey & P. A. Tukey, 1988; Tukey,
1988a).
Data visualization methods make it possible to rapidly evaluate significant needs and identify at risk,
vulnerable, or marginalized populations. These methods provide visual feedback and improved understanding
of data available to guide policy formulation. Furthermore, the visual feedback is reinforced by available data
and made cost-effective through the use of commonly available computing technology.
Image Development Methods to Assess Need
Commonly available computer spreadsheet applications have been demonstrated to have the capacity to
collect and analyze complex data sets and generate graphical representations of complex data (Haber, 1988).
Recent advances indicate that data visualization methods may be employed to capture process and outcome
variables simultaneously and to compare change across multiple units of analysis and in multiple groups over
time (Patterson & Basham, 2002; Basham, 2002). Furthermore, data visualization methods have the capacity to
be used to convey meaning and enhance understanding across domains or levels of human service
organizations (Patterson & Basham, 2003). Graphical representations may be matched to specific research
questions so as to provide meaningful information for specific interests, including multivariate research
questions and those that would address multiple areas of need (Yu, 1995) and as decision support for
evidence-based practice in governmental service delivery systems (Schoech, Basham, & Fluke, 2006).
The creation of simple to interpret graphics reported along with the critically associated statistical
information can improve data evaluation in the understanding of social and economic need (Tukey, 1988b).
Graphical representation of relevant data sets may be accomplished through widely available computing
technology through the vehicle of spreadsheet programs. Data may be analyzed by the use of traditional data
analysis functions of a spreadsheet program, such as those incorporated into Microsoft Excel programs and
through use of a robust data analytic pivot table technology incorporated into the program. The resulting
numerical information can then be graphed using the chart wizard function of the program to produce readily
interpretable graphical representations of the data. The procedures for graphically representing data include
entry of data into a spreadsheet application and determination of the variables that may be useful for
representation through a particular graphical display. Thereafter, variable data are selected and entered into the
pivot table function of the spreadsheet application. Tabular information entered into the pivot table may then be
exchanged as needed with other variables of interest. To create any number of pivot table configurations of
relevant data. The pivot table function quickly allows the evaluator to recalculate data so that sums, counts,
averages, standard deviations, variation, and minimum and maximum data range may be selected. Once
selected, the data may be formatted to graphically display by using functions of the chart wizard. Various
graphs may be selected and sampled until a graph type with the best display properties for the data is finally
chosen. Table 1 demonstrated the tabular data derived from the pivot table application to categorize high and
low levels of social capital within 20 communities surveyed in Perú.
Communities with high social capital totaled 44.43 across 11 communities and communities with low
social capital totaled 26.14 across nine communities.
Table 1
Excel Pivot Table for High and Low Social Capital in 20 Communities
Frequency of food need (past 12 months)
Low or high social capital
Community 1.00 2.00 Grand total
1.00 3.27 3.27
2.00 2.22 2.22
3.00 4.53 4.53
4.00 1.98 1.98
5.00 3.13 3.13
6.00 3.46 3.46
7.00 3.05 3.05
8.00 4.29 4.29
9.00 3.52 3.52
10.00 1.45 1.45
11.00 5.96 5.96
12.00 2.38 2.38
13.00 4.65 4.65
14.00 2.74 2.74
15.00 3.53 3.53
16.00 3.02 3.02
17.00 3.74 3.74
18.00 6.51 6.51
19.00 5.18 5.18
20.00 1.96 1.96
Grand total 44.43 26.14
The 3-dimensional bar graph depicted in Figure 1 readily illustrated that the 20 communities were nearly
evenly split in reporting whether their community was perceived as having high (dark gray bars) or low (light
gray bars) social capital. Columns on the bar graph numbered 1 through 10 represent the experimental
communities receiving ADRA services. Columns 11 through 20 represent the comparison communities that did
not receive ADRA services. The average number of times that respondents reported needing food, during the
previous 12 months, is represented by the vertical axis. Community 11 reported both high social capital and a
high incidence of respondents being able to obtain adequate food over the previous year. The incidence rate of
hunger and the inability to secure adequate food was more, nearly twice as likely, in communities with low
social capital as in the pivot table in Table 1.
Figure 1. A 3-dimensional bar graph representing lack of food access in 20 communities.
In the pivot table depicted in Table 2, there are nine comparison communities where ADRA services were
not provided, but where respondents reported residing. In these nine comparison communities, only three
communities were identified as having low social capital (Communities 1, 4, and 9). Comparison communities
with high social capital totaled 22.81 across communities and control communities with low social capital
totaled 7.87 across communities.
Table 2
Excel Pivot Table for High and Low Social Capital in Comparison Communities
Comparison communities 1.00 2.00 Grand total
1 0.00 2.38 2.38
2 4.65 4.65
3 2.74 2.74
4 0.00 3.53 3.53
5 0.00 0.00
6 3.74 3.74
7 6.51 6.51
8 5.18 5.18
9 0.00 1.96 1.96
Grand total 22.81 7.87 30.69
The 3-dimensional bar graph depicted in Figure 2 readily illustrated that the comparison communities
were somewhat split in respondents reporting whether their community was perceived as having high (dark
gray bars) or low (light gray bars) social capital. As in the pivot table in Table 2, one community did not report
levels of social capital and associated instances of inability to obtain adequate food (Community 5), and so
there is no corresponding bar for this community. In the comparison communities, low instance of hunger or
inability to obtain food in the past year is reported for communities identified as having high social capital.
Communities reporting low social capital had a higher number of reported instances of inability to obtain
adequate food in the previous year.
Figure 2. A 3-dimensional bar graph representing the lack of access to food in experimental communities.
Graphical Representations as Decision Support

Recent literature has demonstrated the capacity of line graphs enhanced by upper bound and lower bound
standard deviations to detect agreement and turbulence in small groups (Patterson & Basham 2003). These have
the potential of providing decision support for the progress and determining the conflict level within groups or
as a supervisory tool for self-directed or supervisor directed work teams. Additional literature points to the
guidelines for effective graphical use in the evaluation of group related services or interventions (Basham,
2002). The 3-dimensional surface plots through the addition of a third axis for displaying information derived
from data can demonstrate information about more than one unit of analysis, such as individuals within groups
and at the comparison of group level dimensions (Patterson & Basham 2002). Furthermore, data visualization
has been considered as a method of providing decision support at multiple levels of human service agency need
and more recently as an information feedback system for key decision makers within state government
providing protective services to children (Schoech, Basham, & Fluke, 2006). However, the graphical displays
that would provide critical decision support from one administration of survey data, or for static population
information that is not of a time series nature, as available on a particular population, and over the lifespan have
been difficult to represent.
The pivot table in Table 3 provides aggregated information of a static or single survey nature for three
continuous variables. These include age of the residents of the experimental communities, the education level
of these residents, and the income level of the survey respondent.
Table 3
Excel Pivot Table for Age Education and Income in 10 Experimental Communities
Average of
Grade
income
Age 1-2 3-4 5-6 7-8 9-10 11-12 13-14 15-16 Grand total
18-22 1303.75 1627.69 1594.28 2550.00 1080.00 3280.00 1927.41
23-27 2437.50 1898.35 2012.52 2213.00 1771.69 1671.17 2400.00 2600.00 1994.72
28-32 1604.09 1698.71 1633.61 2551.87 2467.69 1664.00 250.00 652.00 1830.79
33-37 1538.46 1722.16 1788.33 2530.66 2747.50 2193.00 5390.00 2137.01
38-42 2091.08 1326.50 1731.37 3417.00 2993.33 1888.00 2400.00 11300.00 2182.06
43-47 754.77 2696.15 1394.00 1653.12 2671.25 1686.42 1769.19
48-52 1278.68 1211.68 1454.20 2842.22 350.00 2400.00 5600.00 1698.18
53-57 2512.00 1340.00 2388.00 1364.00 11500.00 3000.00 2284.40
58-62 1635.83 2038.00 1030.00 800.00 2100.00 7200.00 1633.75
63-67 1882.00 1225.00 630.00 2100.00 870.00 1339.41
68-72 5015.71 2700.00 1245.00 1440.00 2700.00 600.00 3139.37
73-77 2160.00 1920.00 2000.00
78-82 2617.50 2617.50
Grand total 1902.50 1695.63 1662.40 2507.08 2283.80 2152.36 2581.25 4891.50 1967.18
These three variables of age, education, and income level of survey respondent can be displayed to provide
decision support for the possible allocation of resources, such as economic aid, social capital, and nutritional
supports through the plotting of these three variables on a rarely used radar graph available in the spreadsheet
application of Microsoft Excel programs. In Figure 3, age is plotted as the circumference of the outer circle
from age of 18 to age of 81 years and constitutes a first axis of plotted continuous information. Then,
concentric nested circles that radiate outward from the midpoint of the radar graph represent differing levels, or
strata of potential income for survey respondents represented in soles, the currency of Perú. The range depicted
for the 20 experimental counties is from zero to about 35,000 soles and represents the second axis of
continuous data for survey respondents. Finally, the third axis of continuous data that are plotted as line graphs
conforming to a central midpoint of the chart as the baseline point for no education, is the educational levels of
respondents, depicted as lines, with the point values of the lines indicating the income level of the respondent
and plotted at the radar location that conforms to the respondents reported age. By viewing the graph and
following the circumference axis of age income levels are seen to gradually increase from age 18 to about age
of 42 years and then decrease gradually until about age of 53 years. Thereafter, much of the elderly respondents
are represented to have little education and are impoverished with the exception of a small group of
respondents who are seen as outliers and are financially well of and well educated and are about 68 years of age.
This graphic provides a great deal of unique information that captures the relationship between age and
education to income level across an adult generation of respondents within the 20 experimental counties. This
information provides valuable decision support in term of allocating nutritional programs and intensifying
educational opportunities. The graphic also painfully points out the plight of the devastating poverty affecting
most respondents average age is 53 years old. The visual display of this complex information both explores the
data and provides a rapid understanding of the interaction of age, education, and income.
Figure 3. A “radar” chart for age education and income in 10 experimental communities.
Utility: The Visual Analysis of Data

Visual analysis of data only refers to the visual array of one set of information relative to another
collection of information (Tufte, 1983). Graphical representations or arrays are preferred when at least one set
of the information is quantitative. Pictures or diagram arrays are preferred when all of the sets of information
are qualitative (Tufte, 1990). Many conventions have been proposed for interpreting data using a graphical
representation that emphasize the provision of perceptual clues, such as grid marks, surface lighting, and
varying texture, color, and orientation (Haber, 1988).
The utility questions of which data visualization approaches are the most useful with differing types of
social policy data have not yet been well established. However, the usefulness of graphical representation in the
ability to illustrate trends in complex data and provide meaningful decision support information for those who
determine or evaluate the effectiveness of social policies is rapidly becoming an established convention.
Discussion: Data Visualization and Social Policy

The application of data visualization with respect to the utilization of graphical representation to inform
and guide decision-makers in the formulation of social policy is a relatively new concept (Cobb, 2003) and has
been used primarily with geographic information systems to guide educational policy. In this study and case
example, disparities in communities in terms of social supports and available resources may be rapidly
evaluated using the visual representation of data. Decision- and policy- makers can interpret and understand
these difference and design useful policy measures to reduce excessive need and poverty and to promote
sharing behaviors and community self-help.
Conclusion
Readily available and robust data analytic tools exist in desktop software like Microsoft Excel that can
provide decision support for community projects involving micro-economic development. Input data may be
quickly analyzed using a range of tools that improve comprehension of complex social and economic issues
through graphical representation. Once understood, these outputs can provide the basis for developing
comprehensive social and economic policy. Equitable distribution of goods and services can be improved to
those in greatest need in communities suffering from economic need or various times of food, shelter or other
insecurities.
Community, group and family, or individual needs may also be analyzed and deficits addressed. The same
data imaging and visualization processes could also be used in temporary service, economic, or goods
disruptions in distribution, such as in small local negative or traumatic events and even in case of disaster’s so
long as adequate data in the population is either available or can be quickly and efficiently collected.
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doi: 10.17265/2328-2134/2018.12.003
D
DAVID PUBLISHING
The New Situation on the Korean Peninsula and China’s

Diplomatic Policy
YUAN Xuezhe
Sichuan University of Science and Engineer, Zigong, China
There are some positive changes on the two sides of the Korean Peninsula in 2018; the situation on the peninsula
has released a signal of relaxation; it seems that the Korean Peninsula presents the “double suspension” situation
which has been advocated by the Chinese government, and both the two sides of the Korean Peninsula have shown
a strong will to ease the tension on the peninsula, and promote the inter-Korean relations to ease and improve the
bilateral relations. As a close neighbor of the Korean Peninsula, in the face of the current situation on the peninsula,
China should focus on deepening cooperation between China and the United States on the Korean nuclear issue,
institutionalize the development of inter-Korean relations, and enhance its capability to resolve the Korean nuclear
issue peacefully.
Keywords: inter-Korean relations, the situation on the Korean Peninsula, China’s foreign diplomacy
For more than two years, the situation on the Korean Peninsula has been in a spiral of confrontation, with
North Korea not only engaged in a war of words with South Korea and the United States, but also increasingly
tense military preparations. However, North Korean supreme leader Kim Jong UN has repeatedly expressed his
desire to improve inter-Korean relations in his 2018 New Year’s message, and the situation on the Korean
Peninsula has quickly shown signs of easing. Following the inter-Korean telephone talks and the decision of the
United States and South Korea not to hold joint exercises during the winter Olympics, the high-level
representatives of the two Koreas held face-to-face bilateral talks in Panmunjom on January 9, 2018 to discuss
the DPRK’s participation in the Pyeongchang Winter Olympics. On January 10, the two Koreas restarted
military communication lines in the Xihai area. Since the Pyeongchang Winter Olympics, the two Koreas have
restored a military hotline on the peninsula, leading to high-level talks and a consensus on holding bilateral
military talks. Relations between the US and the DPRK ease after the presidential palace of the ROK issued a
“five-point agreement” between the two Koreas on March 6, 2018. On March 8, the White House confirmed
that U.S. President Donald trump would meet with North Korean supreme leader Kim Jong UN. On April 1,
the United States and South Korea launched military exercises postponed for the Pyeongchang Winter
Olympics, but they were scaled back in size and schedule, and Kim Jong UN offered a rare “understanding” of
the resumption of joint drills. With the easing of inter-Korean relations, the DPRK decided on April 21 to stop
its nuclear test, intercontinental ballistic missile launch test, and nuclear missile test, creating a favorable
external environment for the inter-Korean summit and the relaxation of the situation on the Korean Peninsula.

Fund: A special project of China scholarship council in 2018. No. 201808515154
YUAN Xuezhe, Ph.D., associate professor, Institute of Marxism, Sichuan University of Science and Engineer, Zigong, China.
NEW SITUATION ON THE KOREAN PENINSULA AND CHINA’S DIPLOMATIC POLICY 653
On the basis of elaborating the new situation of de-escalation on the Korean Peninsula since 2018, this paper
analyzes the factors of the situation on the Korean Peninsula, explores the challenges faced by China’s policy
on the Korean Peninsula, and proposes China’s countermeasures.
A New Situation on the Korean Peninsula That Is Easing

On April 27, 2018, North Korea’s leader, Kim Jong UN, and South Korea’s President in historic meeting
held in constant across the military demarcation line, and in Panmunjom Korean side of the “home of peace”,
signed the declaration of Panmunjom, no more war, jointly announced the peninsula and the improvement of
bilateral relations, peninsula to build the peaceful system to realize the denuclearization of the Korean
Peninsula and reach a consensus. As far as the results of the talks are concerned, they are as follows: (1) The
two sides decided to hold dialogue and consultation in various fields and hold summit talks on a regular basis to
fully implement the agreement reached at the summit. It also demonstrated the special friendship between the
north and the south of the Korean Peninsula as one nation. (2) De-escalate military tensions and achieve peace
on the peninsula. The two sides pledged to cease all hostilities against each other, establish the demilitarized
zone as a zone of peace, restart inter-Korean military dialogue, and resolve any military issues that arise. (3)
Build a system of peace on the peninsula. The declaration of Panmunjom declares that there will be no more
war on the peninsula. The two sides pledge not to violate each other, implement disarmament in stages
according to the enhancement of mutual trust, strive to end the state of war on the peninsula within this year,
and realize the transition from armistice agreement to peace mechanism.
The easing of tensions on the Korean Peninsula has reversed the tension on the peninsula since 2017 and
reduced the possibility of war on the peninsula in the short term. In the long run, there are still greater risks and
uncertainties. There have been unexpected situations in the history when the situation on the Korean Peninsula
was eased, and it is difficult for the inter-Korean relations to get rid of the cycle of tension and easing. For more
than 60 years since the armistice of the Korean War, the two Koreas have been continuously deploying heavy
troops on both sides of the 38th parallel, forming a confrontation situation. The level of strategic and political
mutual trust between the two Koreas is extremely low. The Korean Peninsula is located at the intersection of
the strategic interests of China, the United States, Japan, Russia, and other major powers. The success of the
inter-Korean summit meeting in Panmunjom laid a good foundation for the following DPRK-US dialogue, and
the DPRK-US talks were also put on the agenda. U.S. President Donald trump said at a rally of supporters on
April 28 that he could meet with North Korean leader Kim Jong UN in three to four weeks (CRI Online, 2018).
As the key parties of the Korean Peninsula issue, the outcome of the DPRK-US talks is of vital importance. The
trump administration will not abandon its policy of “extreme pressure” on North Korea, even if the United
States insists on its “complete, verifiable and irreversible” denuclearization. Therefore, the differences between
the US and the DPRK on the Korean nuclear issue are obvious.
Analyze the Factor of the Situation on the Korean Peninsula

The inter-Korean summit and the signing of the Panmunjom declaration show that the situation on the
Korean Peninsula is moving towards peace and reconciliation. The favorable atmosphere of dialogue on the
peninsula can be attributed not only to the willingness of the two sides to ease tensions and improve relations
on the peninsula, but also to the joint efforts of relevant parties in the international community.
654 NEW SITUATION ON THE KOREAN PENINSULA AND CHINA’S DIPLOMATIC POLICY
Internal Factors
The DPRK and the ROK are major parties to the situation on the peninsula, and the inter-Korean policy
interaction is an internal factor in analyzing the situation on the peninsula. From the perspective of the DPRK,
its nuclear superiority and the deterioration of its domestic economic environment lead to its contact and
dialogue with the US and the ROK. Kim Jong UN sanctions in the face of the international community strongly
after the ruling; the North Korean nuclear guide still unswervingly promotes development process; so far, North
Korea has been underway for six times test, and in the end of November 2017, North Korea announced that it
had tried to launch its newly developed intercontinental llistic missile (mercury 15) and the completion of the
"nuclear missile project" made the DPRK believed that it had a bargaining chip. Meanwhile, the deterioration
of the economic environment within the society of the DPRK is also one of the reasons for easing the situation
on the peninsula. Kim Jong UN’s regime is under the harshest economic sanctions in history after the United
Nations Security Council imposed new sanctions on North Korea in response to its nuclear and missile tests.
North Korea had reacted furiously to sanctions after the UN Security Council adopted Resolution 2371 in
August 2017. Under Resolution 2371, the sanctions target North Korea’s four export industries: coal, iron and
iron ore, lead and lead ore, and seafood. The resolution also bars countries from accepting new workers from
North Korea. It would reduce North Korea’s foreign exchange earnings by at least $1 billion a year, or about a
third of its foreign exchange earnings (Economic Information Daily, 2017). “This year is the third year of the
country’s five-year strategic plan for economic development. The important task of socialist economic
construction this year is....To strengthen the independence and subjectivity of the national economy and
improve people’s lives” (Sina News, 2018). Some Chinese scholars of North Korea argue that
North Korea’s interaction with the world is beginning to enter a state of complete isolation. This situation has not only
dealt a heavy blow to the economy and people’s livelihood, but also completely deprived the economy of the opportunity
to develop. (Zhu, 2018, pp. 9-10)
North Korea is eager to establish diplomatic relations with the United States, sign a peace agreement, and
obtain security guarantees, so as to achieve the purpose of providing security guarantees for the North Korean
regime and easing economic sanctions.
From South Korea Level, in the beginning of the Yin government came to power; he made clear at the
heart of its foreign policy goal is to achieve peace and prosperity of the Korean Peninsula; Han Guowen in Yin
reflects the new government policy, and the surrounding countries actively communication, tries to dominated
by native peninsula solution, and develop the civil relationship based on mutual respect, its policy with North
Korea insisted on the principle of “our nation” considerable “fit”. In Yin thinks, present is the best time to
improve the reconciliation between north and south; he hosted in the blue house chief secretary and assistant
meeting emphasized that we are faced with a peaceful solution to the Korean nuclear issue and build peninsula
peace precious time, the current atmosphere of inter-Korean dialogue when can continue into the unknown,
cannot blind optimistic, to keep the dialogue should be condensed wisdom and effort (Eastday News, 2018).
Moon Jae-in’s government aims to steer north-south relations toward reconciliation, cooperation, and
independent peaceful reunification (2018, p. 23).
External Factors
The Korean Peninsula issue is a continuation of the Cold War mentality in Northeast Asia. In essence, the
connotation of the Korean Peninsula has far exceeded the geographical scope of the DPRK and the ROK. The
Korean Peninsula involves Northeast Asian countries, and China, the United States, Russia, and Japan all have
important strategic interests on the Korean Peninsula. China opposes any destruction of peace in the region, and
safeguard peace and stability on the Korean Peninsula is one of China’s consistent position, tension in the
peninsula, the situation of China put forward the “double pause” initiative and “double-track” train of thought,
the bridge for the parties to realize dialogue, not only help to ease tensions on the peninsula, but also can solve
the most pressing security concerns, and provide opportunities to resume peace talks, create conditions, and
find out the breakthrough (Sohu, 2018). Russia has always stressed the diplomatic solution to the Korean
Peninsula crisis and hopes to strengthen economic cooperation among Russia, the DPRK, and the ROK. In
order to maintain peace on the peninsula, China and Russia have jointly put forward a road map to maintain
peace on the peninsula. On July 4, 2017, the joint statement on the Korean Peninsula issued by the foreign
ministers of China and Russia put forward a road map to solve the Korean nuclear issue. Under the joint
initiative of China and Russia, the DPRK should make a voluntary political decision to suspend its nuclear test
and ballistic missile test, and the US and the ROK should suspend their large-scale joint military exercises
accordingly. The opposing parties have started negotiations at the same time to define the general principles of
their relations, including the non-use of force, non-aggression, and peaceful coexistence. They are ready to
work for the denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula and the comprehensive settlement of all issues including
the nuclear issue. Russian foreign minister Sergei Lavrov said during a meeting with his Chinese counterpart
Wang Yi on April 23, 2018 that all parties involved in the dialogue on the Korean Peninsula should take
simultaneous measures to meet each other halfway and hope that the Korean Peninsula can be resolved in
accordance with the China-Russia “road map”. The diplomatic efforts of China and Russia have created a
favorable external environment for easing tensions on the peninsula and resolving disputes over the peninsula
issue. United Nations Security Council Resolutions 2371 and 2375, as well as U.S. sanctions against North
Korea, have begun to bear fruit. U.S. secretary of state Rex Tillerson said at this time that the United States is
willing to engage in unconditional dialogue with North Korea as long as it is willing to return to the negotiating
table (Xinhua News Agency, 2017). Tillerson and in America’s defence secretary, Matisse joint published a
signed article in the Wall Street journal, said diplomacy is the preferred that promotes to change tack; peaceful
pressure on North Korea’s goal is to realize the denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula; America has no
intention of changing the regime or accelerating the process of the two Koreas to be unified, has no intention of
making excuses in the north of the DMZ garrison, and didn’t mean to hurt the people (Xinhua News Agency,
2017). The United States, under increasing pressure, has signaled that diplomacy is the main measure to resolve
the North Korean nuclear crisis and cool the escalating situation on the Korean Peninsula.
Challenges Facing China’s Policy on the Korean Peninsula

As a close neighbor of the Korean Peninsula, China is happy to see the hard-won improvement of
north-south relations and the relaxation of the situation on the peninsula. Whether the inter-Korean summit and
the declaration of Panmunjom can truly open a new era of peace on the Korean Peninsula remain to be seen in
the following US-DPRK talks and the future policy direction of the DPRK as well as the direction of
inter-Korean and US-DPRK relations. China’s security interests are at stake in the changing situation on the
Korean Peninsula. At present, China’s policy on the Korean Peninsula still faces many challenges, such as the
Korean nuclear issue and the uncertainty of China-ROK relations.
The DPRK Nuclear Issue

The Chinese government has always advocated denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula and opposed war
and chaos on the peninsula. The Korean nuclear issue remains an important factor affecting China-DPRK
relations.
China supports and actively implements the UN Security Council’s economic sanctions against the DPRK,
which is an important factor causing difficulties in China-DPRK relations. On the Korean nuclear issue, the
DPRK’s continuous nuclear and missile tests, in the final analysis, aimed at solving the issue of the DPRK’s
survival and development and safeguarding national sovereignty. China has always called on the international
community to understand the DPRK’s security concerns and adhere to the position of resolving the Korean
nuclear issue through political and diplomatic channels. With the warming of the situation on the peninsula, the
leaders of China and the DPRK held a “historic meeting” in late March 2018 for the first time since 2012,
indicating that China-DPRK relations are entering a new stage and it is in the respective interests of the two
countries to maintain friendly relations. After the US-DPRK summit meeting in Singapore, if the DPRK
nuclear issue can be resolved through US-DPRK political negotiations, it is in line with the expectation of
China’s policy on the Korean Peninsula. China supports the US-DPRK summit talks with a view to realizing
the goal of denuclearization on the Korean Peninsula.
Uncertainties in China-ROK Relations
In Northeast Asia, China and the ROK share many common interests in maintaining peace and stability in
Northeast Asia and realizing common prosperity and development. China and the ROK have made new
progress in policy consensus, economic and trade promotion, and people-to-people exchanges. Since the
establishment of diplomatic ties, the two countries have made great achievements in cooperation in the political,
economic, cultural, and other fields. Bilateral relations were once regarded as a model in the diplomatic field.
But high-level talks between China and South Korea were almost completely suspended after the THAAD
launch. To ease relations with China, the South Korean government has promised the “three no principles” to
China. After President Moon Jae-in’s state visit to China, China-South Korea relations have been gradually
repaired and improved, but are full of uncertainties.
China’s Strategic Choice Under the New Situation

China as the key to the Korean Peninsula peace and stability in northeast Asia countries, is the main force
to promote regional cooperation, in the face of the current the situation on the peninsula; China should continue
to use geopolitical advantage and strength to keep influence, in the Northeast Asia pattern of diplomacy,
continue to deepen the collaboration on the Korean nuclear issue, promote the inter-Korean all-round
cooperation, and improve the ability of a peaceful solution to the nuclear issue.
First, Deepen Cooperation Between China and the United States on the Korean Nuclear Issue
Peace on the Korean Peninsula is the common aspiration of all countries in Northeast Asia, and the final
settlement of the Korean Peninsula issue is a systematic project involving many aspects. It not only requires the
improvement of the relations between the north and the south, but also relies on the active efforts and joint
progress of all stakeholders. As a signatory to the armistice agreement on the Korean War, China has always
been committed to maintaining peace and stability on the Korean Peninsula and actively supports the
establishment of a peace mechanism on the peninsula. Both sides need to continue coordination and
cooperation to ensure a nuclear-free peninsula and establish a peace mechanism. China and the United States
are peninsula, one of the most influential countries, both sides jointly build “six-party talks”, reached the
September 19 joint statement
important results, in order to solve the DPRK nuclear issue through dialogue, negotiation means laid a good
foundation, to safeguard peace and stability in the peninsula has played an important role, the two countries on the
denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula is still cooperation space, should continue to promote and strengthen the
cooperation and coordination between China and the United States. Strengthening China-US cooperation can create
conditions for timely control of the situation and change it for the better, thus contributing to the resolution of the DPRK
nuclear issue. (Huang & Cheng, 2013, p.42)
Second, Institutionalize Inter-Korean Relations

After decades of division between the two Koreas, the reason why inter-Korean relations are difficult to
break out of the cycle of detente and tension is largely due to the fact that both sides are always reluctant to get
rid of the zero-sum mindset. After the end of the cold war, although the north and the south joined the United
Nations at the same time and inter-Korean relations have undergone many changes, both sides have never given
up the goal of reunifying the other side with themselves as the main body. The level of strategic mutual trust
and political mutual trust between the two sides is extremely low. It is not hard to see from the process of
improving inter-Korean relations in recent days that both sides are willing to improve relations and have made
some practical efforts to this end. Guarantee the stability of inter-Korean relations, never allow peninsula
fighting which is on the Korean Peninsula policy goals in China, as a result, China should enhance the ability of
a peaceful solution to the problem of the Korean Peninsula, with the aid of international pressure; North Korea
nuclear, should get into the process of regional development, get rid of the North and South Korea a zero-sum
competition thinking, institutionalization, and to promote the development of inter-Korean relations is finally
solved the root of the dilemma of the Korean Peninsula.
Thirdly, Enhance the Capability of Peacefully Resolving the Korean Nuclear Issue
Under the current situation on the Korean Peninsula, China should seize the opportunity of easing the
situation on the peninsula, timely adjust its policies towards the DPRK and the ROK, continue to enhance
mutual trust between the two sides, maintain good communication and coordination, and at the same time
skillfully balance its regional interests on the peninsula. China will continue to strengthen cooperation with the
United States to improve the external security environment of the DPRK, gradually return the DPRK to the
international community, and guide the DPRK to join regional cooperation in due course. China should not
only safeguard the traditional friendship between China and the DPRK, but also safeguard the interests of
China and the international community, respond to the sanctions imposed by the international community
against the DPRK, and adhere to dialogue and consultation.
In terms of China-ROK relations, China and the ROK share common security interests in safeguarding
peace and stability of the Korean Peninsula and Northeast Asia. Leaders of the two countries should conduct
effective communication and coordination to enhance political mutual trust. At the same time, we will
strengthen public diplomacy and enhance people-to-people friendship between China and the ROK. There are
other worrying factors in the development of China-South Korea relations. For example, Chinese and South
Korean citizens sometimes exaggerate the contradictions between the two countries. China must
simultaneously expand its security cooperation with the United States and Japan while expanding its security
cooperation with the republic of Korea, and should explore China’s “revitalization of the Northeast China
policy”, the economic development of South Korea and North Korea’s economic changes combined joint
project, in the emerging field and financial investment, further development of China-ROK strategic
cooperative partnership, work together to create conditions, with South Korea to restart the “six-party talks”.
Conclusion
In a word, the Korean Peninsula is a sensitive point of China’s security interests in Northeast Asia and an
indispensable part of the peaceful and stable surrounding environment that China’s centenary rejuvenation
seeks. At present, with the improvement of inter-Korean relations and the relaxation of the situation on the
Korean Peninsula, there is a historical opportunity for the summit meeting between the DPRK and the ROK
and the contact between the US and the DPRK to turn into a new change in the situation on the peninsula. The
direction of the situation on the Korean Peninsula depends on the substantive outcome of the US-DPRK
summit and the fulfillment of the DPRK’s nuclear disarmament commitment. It is in line with China’s
expectation that the DPRK nuclear issue will be resolved politically through negotiations. China welcomes and
supports the DPRK-US summit and hopes to take this as an opportunity to construct a peace mechanism on the
Korean Peninsula and realize the goal of denuclearization on the peninsula. In the future, China will be more
active and steady in pursuing peace, security, and common development with the Korean Peninsula based on
the long-term perspective. This will not only help safeguard national interests, but also be a positive factor for
peace and development in Northeast Asia
References
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Retrieved from http://www.Sohu.com/a/218554981_
Huang, M. Y., & Cheng, J. (2013). On China’s strategic choice on the Korean nuclear issue. Theoretical Observation, 1(42), 42.
President Moon Jae-in of the Republic of Korea called on the Winter Olympic Games to promote inter-Korean dialogue. (2018).
Eastday News. Retrieved from http://news.eastday.com/w/20180123/
Park Jianyi. (2018). The comprehensive introduction of the Moon Jae-in government’s policy on North Korea. World Knowledge,
3, 23.
Trump: Could meet with Kim Jong UN in three to four weeks. (2018). CRI Online. Retrieved from
http://news.cri.cn/20180429/aea1a466-2c02-242f-ef0b-f77a4e1f2328.html
The new sanctions will cost North Korea $1 billion a year in lost revenue. (2017). Economic Information Daily. Retrieved from
http://intl.ce.cn/sjjj/qy/201708/07/t20170807_24834791.shtml
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Tillerson said the United States is willing to talk to North Korea without preconditions. (2017). Xinhua News Agency. Retrieved
from http://www.xinhuanet.com/mil/2017-12/13/c_129765069.htm
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Zhu, F. (2018). Winter Olympics diplomacy, inter-Korean contact and US-DPRK summit talks—will there be historic new
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doi: 10.17265/2328-2134/2018.12.004
D
DAVID PUBLISHING
What Comes First, Denuclearization or Peace? Using Willy

Brandt’s Ostpolitik as a Case for an Integrative Engagement
Approach on the Korean Peninsula
Andrew S. Millard
Busan University of Foreign Studies, Busan, South Korea
The Korean peninsula is witnessing historic events and a dramatic improvement in relations between the two
Koreas and their allies. However, there must be caution not only over the true intentions of all actors involved, but
also the approach taken to the renewed relations must be carefully considered. In the past engagement policies have
been tried and failed, whilst the US has committed itself firmly to a pre-condition that the DPRK foregoes its
nuclear weapons program and denuclearizes. This paper argues that the US policy is flawed in that the demand of
CVID does not create any spillovers for future relations to be bound by, as shown by the 1994 Agreed Framework.
As such, an engagement policy should be employed that follows characteristics of West Germany’s Ostpolitik in
the 1970s and Kim Daejung’s Sunshine Policy.
Keywords: denuclearization, engagement, spillovers, linkages, cooperation
Introduction
Everyone knows the philosophical question “what came first, the chicken or the egg?” Everyone also
knows that there is no answer to this question. However, in international relations a similar conundrum often
arises between states: Namely how do states approach the dilemma of improving relations by demilitarizing in
a hostile environment? This paper focuses that exact question on the current situation on the Korean peninsula,
wherein certain groups advocate an engagement policy that could lead to improved relations and in time
demilitarization, whilst others demand the complete denuclearization of North Korea as the starting point of
negotiations.
The situation on the Korean Peninsula is rather unique. Since the collapse of the Soviet Union the two
Koreas have followed polar-opposite foreign policy trajectories. Whilst the South has furthered its domestic
democratization, as well as its global economic and political development, emerging as a key regional power in
Northeast Asia, the North has travelled on a rollercoaster of rapidly changing foreign policy decisions, seeing it
participate in positive Talks and Summits, then quickly resorting to aggressive and isolationist policies. Despite
the past experiences, however, the current climate is witnessing a period of unequalled détente, with
inter-Korean summits and a US-North Korea summit having taken place.
Yet the summit that took place between the US and North Korea in Singapore on June 12, 2018, was not
Andrew S. Millard, Ph.D., Assistant Professor, Department of Paideia, Busan University of Foreign Studies, Busan, South
Korea.
660 WHAT COMES FIRST, DENUCLEARIZATION OR PEACE?
straight forward, having also endured a bumpy journey to get there. The sudden cancellation of the summit by
President Trump in late May was due to various reasons, although one reason that stood above all others was
the policies of the parties regarding denuclearization of the Korean peninsula—the US following its policy of
CVID and the North following its policy of maintaining a nuclear deterrent.
This paper will look at the two different approaches to the Korean problem and analyze whether an
approach of engagement that develops trust and, through spillovers, leads to peace and eventual
denuclearization is more productive, or whether an aggressive unilateral stance demanding full denuclearization
from the start is preferable. This paper concerns itself primarily with the idea of using spillovers, and hence the
first section will define what spillovers are and also how spillovers can be separated into positive and negative
spillovers. The following section will take a closer look at how engagement can produce positive spillovers,
namely by studying the rapprochement policy of Willy Brandt in the early 1970s and the more recent Sunshine
Policy in Korea in the 1990s and early 2000s. The next section will analyze the US policy of CVID and its
likelihood of producing either no spillovers or negative spillovers, using examples of failed attempts at
denuclearization, such as the 1994 Agreed Framework.
This paper aims to expand the discourse on the question of denuclearization by utilizing the current
situation on the Korean peninsula to advocate a diplomatic approach of integrative engagement, rather than
unilateral force. The literature to date focuses mainly on whether denuclearization should happen or not, and
fails to analyze how denuclearization should be brought about. By analyzing examples such as Ostpolitik this
paper will show that engagement can foster relations leading to peaceful co-existence and cooperation, even if
denuclearization is not achieved.
Theoretical Approach
This study follows the theoretical approach of spillovers, as introduced by Ernst Haas in his re-inventing
of functionalism in the 1950s. In order to fully understand why spillovers can be applied to this case, a short
analysis of functionalism should also be included. Daddow (2013, pp. 93, 94) discusses the general idea of
David Mitrany’s post-WWI functionalist theory, stating,
Mitrany argued (1933) state authority in the modern era had been called into question as people began to find
solutions to shared security, economic and political concerns across state borders, rather than working within the confines
of those borders. Such efforts would increase as individuals saw the benefits of collective endeavours and this
interdependence would then lead to peace and further integration across state borders through what has become known as
the “spillover” effect of integration.
The main idea behind functionalism, as summarized by Mattli (1999, p. 22), is that “political divisions are
a source of conflict among nations. These divisions can be transcended only gradually by seeking out areas of
mutuality and establishing a ‘working’ web of international functional institutions”. Mattli further adds, “Areas
of functional cooperation are likely to be found in ‘low-politics’ areas of economic and social life” (ibid.).
Mitrany’s focus on initial cooperation in “low-politics” areas is also noted by Börzel (2013, p. 504). Heywood
(2007, p. 152) defines functionalism as, “incremental steps towards regional integration, within specific areas
of policy-making”. Based on these ideas, functionalism taken as a whole is far too broad for individual
agreements, but the definitions do draw us close to the idea of starting with small areas of cooperation that can
be used to build relations. Further, the future integration of the two Koreas into some form of federal or
confederal system could also be applied at a later date, and in the mean time the “specific area of policy-making”
WHAT COMES FIRST, DENUCLEARIZATION OR PEACE? 661
could be applied to economic policy, developing political relations, and also the thornier issue of
denuclearization.
The idea that the specific policy areas are varied and plural leads us into Haas’ neofunctionalist theory,
which Heywood (ibid.) defines as, “a revision of functionalism that recognizes that regional integration in one
area generates pressures for further integration in the form of spillover”. Chari and Kritzinger (2006, p. 39) also
note that neo-functionalism “argues that nation states are forced to enter into relationships with others in order
to gain economic benefits, which are presumably no longer confined within state borders. This leads to the
development of supranational institutions”. Again, we will temporarily ignore the idea that this concept is
specific to regional integration and assume that the theory can be applied to relations between two states on
more specific areas, especially since in this case the DPRK is being forced to enter into relationships with
others for economic benefit. As such, this paper cannot specifically follow the general theory of
neo-functionalism, since it is not concerned with the creating of any new supranational institutions; however, it
can adopt certain features, namely the characteristic of spillovers.
This paper advocates that positive engagement can only be the result of a process that develops spillovers,
or as Greenstein and Polsby (1975, p. 384) call them “functional linkages of issues”. Börzel (2013, p. 504) adds,
“the functional linkage between issue areas was to create further incentives for the gradual expansion of tasks
(Mitrany 1943)”. According to Sonny (2015, p. 1), a spillover is “an unexpected consequence of the spreading
of cooperation from one area to another”. A more detailed definition is given by Stone Sweet (2012), in which
he defines them as being the production of “new cycles of feedback” (Stone Sweet, 2012, p. 8). Stone Sweet
continues, “In its most basic form, spillover occurs when actors realize that the objectives of initial
supranational policies cannot be achieved without extending supranational policy-making to additional,
functionally related domains” (ibid.).
A further definition of spillover is given as,
a situation in which a given action, related to a specific goal, creates a situation in which the original goal can be
assured only by taking further actions, which in turn create a further condition and a need for more action. (Lindberg, 1963,
p. 10, cited in Wunderlich, 2007, p. 14)
The notion of spillover is further divided in to two parts: political spillover and functional spillover. The
political spillover concept focuses on the role of supranational institutions, as well as subnational actors, “as
they create further pressure for more integration to pursue their interests” (Sonny, 2015, p. 1). Wunderlich
(2007, p. 15) furthers the idea of political spillovers requiring a form of supranational institution, “careful
direction and coordination by a central agency is required for spillover to occur. … the creation of a High
Authority with supranational powers”. Since political spillover is directly linked with the building of a political
community and the “pooling” of sovereignty within a supranational institution, this paper will not concern itself
in particular with this spillover effect.1
On the other hand, functional spillovers are more confined and focus on the expansion of cooperation in
one specific policy area to related areas. Sonny (2015, p.1) defines functional spillover as, “the way on which
integration in one policy area … creates pressure for integration in further areas”. Whilst this does arguably
relate to regionalization, the narrower view can be taken as one policy area simply connecting and forming
1
For further specific details on political spillovers see Ilievski, N. J. (2015), “The Concept of Political Integration: The
Perspectives of Neofunctionalist Theory”, Journal of Liberty and International Affairs, 1(1), UDC 327|ISSN 1857-9760.
linkages with other policy areas. As Mattli (1999, p. 23) points out, with regards to general functionalist theory,
“it is … a normative method. It describes a way that should be pursued to attain peaceful coexistence”.
Whilst Mitrany and Haas viewed functionalism/neofunctionalism and its corresponding spillover effect
through the lens of political community building through regional integration—namely global integration and
the integration of Western European states, respectively—the concept of spillovers can be, and has been,
applied to more specific cases of international relations and further still to defined policy areas in domestic
politics. Truelove, Carrico, Weber, Raimi, and Vandenbergh (2014), for instance, wrote a comprehensive study
on the positive and negative spillovers in environment policy, while Angelucci and Di Marro (2015) offer a
practical insight about providing evaluations for spillover effects, noting numerous different applications in
which spillovers can occur, including welfare programs, genetically-modified crops, and immunization
programmes, amongst others.
Ostpolitik
This section begins to analyze the policy reversal of the Federal Republic of Germany (FRG)2 with
regards to its relations with the German Democratic republic (GDR). In context, this is an important policy shift,
since it set in motion a chain of events that started to develop spillover effects that led to economic, political,
and social exchange, and facilitated the later reunification. More importantly, the advent of Willy Brandt’s
Ostpolitik began against the backdrop of the Cold War, a period when the entire European continent was
nuclearised. This section will show that rather than focusing on the “high politics” of denuclearization, instead
Brandt’s concept of rapprochement was more successful and indeed leads to peaceful coexistence.
Pre-Ostpolitik Relations
The post-WWII situation in Germany was symbolic of the wider ideological divide that was washing over
Europe and the wider world. After the events of 19483, the inclusion of the “West German state” into the
International Monetary Fund (IMF) in 19524 and the later implementation of the Hallstein Doctrine in 1955,
the division between East and West Germany was solidified. Of these events, the Hallstein Doctrine was
arguably the most important, since under the Doctrine “the Federal Republic would reduce or sever diplomatic
ties with any government (apart from the Soviet Union) which recognized the GDR as a sovereign state”
(Riordan, 1995, p. 676). The doctrine, introduced by the then Chancellor of the West German state, Konrad
Adenauer, effectively set an aggressive foreign policy approach to relations with the communist bloc, whilst at
the same time, strengthening the alliance between West Germany and the emerging European community5. In
1954, the FRG had also been accepted as a member of NATO, leading to the establishment of the Warsaw Pact
in 1955 as a communist-version of the western security organization.
2
The Federal Republic of Germany (in German, Bundesrepublik Deutschland, BRD) was the official name of the West German
state. Its opposite half was the German Democratic Republic (in German Deutsche Demokratische Republik, DDR).
3
In 1948 the London Conference increased calls for a united Western German state comprising of the three zones under
administration by the US, France, and the UK, after the USSR had rejected any offers of Marshall Aid being provided to the
eastern zone. The resulting “conflict” saw all land-based transportation links cut-off to the Western sectors in Berlin between June
1948 and May 1949. This incident can be considered as the symbolic start of the Cold War.
4
This was possible since the three administrating powers had granted the West Germans limited sovereignty.
5
In 1952 the European Coal and Steel Community had come in to force and following the failure of the European Defense
Community (EDC) in 1954, the Messina Conference in 1955 began the negotiations for what, two years later, emerged as the
Treaty of Rome.
Konrad Adenauer, having been elected as the first Chancellor of the FRG in 1949, stayed in power until
1963, after which he was succeeded by fellow Christian Democrat and long-term economic minister Ludwig
Erhard.6 Erhard remained in office until 1967, although he oversaw a period in which the Grand Coalition of
the CDU-SPD became weak, leading eventually to the Social Democratic party winning power in 1969 under a
new coalition with the liberals. Willy Brandt, as leader of the SPD, became Chancellor in 1969. As Noetzoldt
(1998, p. 22) mentions, this had some major implications,
The new government made it apparent that it would embark on a new conciliatory course toward Eastern Europe and
the USSR that it wished to conduct an active foreign policy, more independent from the United States and other major
allies and that, unlike the conservative CDU/CSU, it was ready to compromise with the Soviet-led orbit in Eastern Europe.
In his first government declaration on October 28, 1969, Chancellor Brandt proposed a new policy of detente toward
Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union.
When it came down to it, “Brandt was more interested in long term objectives than in short term results”
(Handrieder, 1981, cited in Noetzoldt, 1998, p. 4). The reasoning behind Brandt’s decision to apply a policy of
détente was the failure of the Hallstein doctrine to force any change in the division of Germany, as Fink and
Schaefer (2009, p. 2) note,
Brandt and his close adviser Egon Bahr recognized that the “German problem” would not be solved by the
superpowers, who seemed content with the “two-state solution”. Brandt and Bahr … jointly and gradually devised a new
approach to the Cold War with West Germany as an active player pursuing its own interests.
This has strong similarities with the Korean division, where the superpowers of the US and China have played
a significant role to the detriment of Korean sovereignty.
Prior to the election of Brandt, relations between both Bonn and East Berlin and Bonn and Moscow were
poor to say the least. Stent (2002, p. 177) summarizes the main difference that Ostpolitik introduced, “Brandt’s
Ostpolitik represented a more fundamental alteration of German foreign policy goals than Brezhnev’s
Westpolitik7 of Soviet foreign policy goals. The FRG had ceased to be a revisionist power politically”. In
simple terms, Brandt no longer pursued a policy that aimed for change, but instead pursued a policy of
coexistence and accepting the reality of a divided Germany. Fink and Schaefer (2009, pp. 3, 4) continue the
idea that Brandt was following a polar-opposite foreign policy, stating,
His {Brandt} frank confrontation with the German past—combined with Bonn’s eagerness to de-emphasize Cold War
polarities—enabled the chancellor and his colleagues to pursue German political and economic interests even more
assertively than his Christian Democratic Union (CDU) predecessors.
Brandt’s Ostpolitik truly saw big changes in West German policy. Noetzoldt (1998, p. 26) notes, “One of
the first major steps of the social-liberal coalition toward detente occurred on November 28, 1969 with the
Federal Republic’s signing of the non-proliferation treaty (N. P. T.)”. Whilst this will be discussed in more
detail in the next sub-section, it also points towards another similarity between the current divide on the Korean
peninsula, with South Korea having also signed the NPT and committed to being nuclear weapons-free.
6
Adenauer resigned his position as Chancellor having achieved his goal of signing a cooperation agreement with France,
although he remained the Chairman of the Christian Democratic Union (CDU) until 1966.
7
The basic foundation of the Westpolitik was to ensure that the FRG did not attempt to re-define the Eastern border of Germany
and to leave them as they existed at the end of WWII. Stent (2002, p. 177) notes, “The goal of Soviet Westpolitik, which the
Kremlin had consistently pursued since 1955, had been achieved”.
Features of Ostpolitik
The implementation of Brandt’s Ostpolitik was well accepted by both domestically and internationally, yet
it was also met with heavy criticism. Niedhart (2003, p. 120) states that “The CDU/CSU opposition complained
that Ostpolitik was a capitulation to Moscow and the final acceptance of the division of Germany”. The major
capitulation was a reference to the policy that recognized the territorial borders as they were at the end of
WWII, specifically the Oder-Neisse line. Stent (1990, p. 6) also notes that “Basket One of the final act of 1975
recognized the current borders of Europe”.8
The final acceptance referred to the end of the Hallstein doctrine. Through the new Ostpolitik the FRG
was now willing to have diplomatic relations with any state that recognized the GDR, in effect the FRG now
recognized the GDR as an independent state. As such, Brandt and his close advisors were quick to capitalize on
the rapidly thawing relations and within a couple of years several agreements had been signed, most notably;
the Moscow Agreement, signed on 12 August, 1970, a treaty with Poland in December, 1970, the Allied
Agreement on 3 September, 1971, and the Basic Treaty was signed on 21 December, 1972, formally
recognizing each state and normalizing diplomatic and trade relations. In addition, the more problematic treaty
regarding relations with Czechoslovakia was also brought to the negotiating table, with the thorny issue of how
to resolve the Munich Agreement of 1938 and German citizens having been deported at the end of the war from
the Sudetenland.9 What this brief rundown of events shows is that if a serious push towards establishing basic
relations is approached first, then more complicated issues can be resolved later, once a degree of trust and
interdependence—positive spillovers—has been built.
In fact, the relative urgency of the Bonn administration to complete agreements also took it away from the
position of its close Western allies, namely the US. Despite that, Brandt was keen to push on and enforce the
reforms he intended to, but at the same time keep the allies informed. Niedhart (2003, p. 125) states, “Bonn’s
policy of linkages ran parallel but not always in complete harmony with Kissinger’s efforts to construct
linkages”, the linkages referring to Bonn’s bilateral relations with its neighbouring states and the USSR.
Similarities with the Korean case can again be made, with Seoul pushing for improved bilateral relations,
maybe slightly out of line with the wishes of Washington. Is Seoul mirroring the Brandt administration’s stance
of regaining some of its lost “liberty”? Niedhart (2003, p. 123) quotes the British ambassador to Bonn at the
time as saying, “Among its features are a greater self-reliance, a feeling that the period of atonement for the war
is over, impatience with restraints on German liberty of action”. This is significant because, as the next section
will discuss, the North Korean policy coming out of the US over the past two decades has been one of hard
power driven, unilateral denuclearization of the DPRK. The current Moon administration, on the other hand,
was elected into office on the campaign manifesto of engagement with the North and improving relations in a
(somewhat) return to the Sunshine Policy of Kim Daejung.
Brandt’s Ostpolitik, as Quigley states, was not completely new10, but instead it was the re-framing of
former German reunification policies that had failed, but that still encompassed the basic characteristics of
“establishing trade relations, expanding human contacts, and placing priority on relations with Moscow” (1994,
8
Crump (2014) gives a detailed analysis of the domestic (within the USSR) divisions that existed with regards to the Westpolitik.
See pp. 153-198.
9
For more detailed information on the individual agreements see Haftendorn, H. (2006), “Ostpolitik and Détente:
Rapprochement With the East”, in Haftendorn, H. (2006), Coming of Age: German Foreign Policy Since 1945 (ch. 5, pp.
157-195). Lanhma, Md: Rowman & Littlefield.
10
Hence Brandt’s Ostpolitik is generally referred to as “Neue Ostpolitik”, New Eastern policy.
p. 41). There are stark similarities with the South Korea engagement policy introduced by Kim Daejung, but
also more recently by incumbent President Moon Jae-in. Moreover, the policy includes no pre-conditions for
successful negotiations, whereas the current US policy towards North Korea hinges firmly on denuclearization.
Ostpolitik and Non-proliferation
Maintaining the basic tenet of this paper, the nuclear problem did exist during the entire Cold War period,
and as such when Brandt was reforming the FRG’s foreign policy, yet from the start the notion of
denuclearization was not a deal-breaker. In other words, it was a part of the problem, but not the main problem.
Indeed, Brandt’s basic aim was to garner basic relations first through political relations and also by ending the
use of economic disincentives (Stent, 2002, pp. 177, 178).
Under Brezhnev the nuclear arms race did become a concern for the Western alliance, and the FRG.
Crump (2014, p. 155) remarked that “Détente could, according to Brezhnev, only be cultivated from a position
of strength, and between 1965 and 1970 the Soviet expenditure on defense increased by 40 percent in order to
reach nuclear parity with the United States”. Crump noted further that this policy of military spending was a
reversal of Khrushchev’s policy of reducing spending on conventional forces (2014, p. 156).
Militarism and the nuclear sandwich that the FRG found itself trapped in was a major area of concern.
Allin (2015), in an article about Egon Bahr’s role in Ostpolitik, writes, “He likewise confirmed that he made no
secret, in his conversations with Kissinger, that Ostpolitik was driven by nuclear necessity”, although this
“nuclear necessity” was the driver not of talks for rapprochement through denuclearization, but instead
ensuring the FRG’s security through détente. Likewise, in the current Korean situation, for the two Koreas,
détente should be the first step in a much longer process, with the long-term goals of denuclearization.
It is necessary to mention that the 1960s had seen a general trend to somewhat limit the militarization of
Europe and stop the spread of nuclear weapons. Haftendorn summarizes,
The Test Ban Treaty was followed by the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT) in 1968. In
addition, in the late sixties the Soviets and Americans began negotiations on strategic arms limitation (SALT) as well as on
foregoing the construction of antiballistic missile systems (ABM). (2006, p. 157)
This important background provides an opportunity for Brandt to avoid any encroachment on to military issues
that may otherwise have proven too difficult to overcome.
Haftendorn furthers the argument that negotiation should be based around trust-building measures and
policies that can further spillovers and cooperation by noting that the FRG was encouraged, in 1966, by
politicians from both the US and USSR “to give up its entrenched position and work toward improvement in
East-West relations and stop making it conditional on progress on the German question” (2006, p. 158). The
ongoing, and still firm, position of the US towards any deal with the DPRK is fully conditional on the DPRK’s
willingness to denuclearize along the lines of CVID. The next section will focus on the lack of spillovers that
can be created through this tactic.
Korean Peninsula
The Korean peninsula has, for several decades, been the continuing legacy of the Cold War. It has
maintained the ideological divide between the two opposing political systems, and has often resorted to threats
and isolated acts of aggression. The main issue, however, has centered on the ceaseless development of nuclear
weapons by the DPRK’s leadership, despite international condemnation. Based on this weapons program, from
the early 1990s right through to the present day, there has been a rollercoaster of relations among the DPRK,
Republic of Korea, and their allies—namely China and the US. Yet the reason behind these inconsistent
relations has been the unwavering policy of the US to demand complete denuclearization of the DPRK as a
pre-condition to further negotiations. This policy must be reformed to follow Brandt’s Ostpolitik of détente
leading to an atmosphere conducive to denuclearization.
CVID
Since the Bush administration (2001-2008) the US has followed the policy of Complete, Verifiable,
Irreversible, Dismantlement (CVID) of the North Korean nuclear weapons program and related facilities. In his
June 2018 statement, Victor Cha, in a testimony to the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations, stated, “The
United States must maintain that the objective of our negotiations is the complete end to North Korea’s WMD
and missile threat”. Based on a report from CNN journalist Joshua Berlinger, the day before the US-North
Korea summit on June 12, US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo was quoted as saying, “Sanctions will remain
until North Korea completely and verifiably eliminates its mass-destruction programs”, confirming that the US
position on denuclearization has not changed.
The CVID policy itself is not necessarily a bad one, after all it aims at denuclearizing the Korean
peninsula and thus establishing sustainable peace in the region. In the 1994 Agreed Framework11, the DPRK
agreed to give up its nuclear weapons program in exchange for aid in various forms, and thus the current
situation will be loosely based on the agreement previously accepted. However, that agreement ended up failing
and subsequently the DPRK withdrew from the Treaty on the Non-proliferation of Nuclear Weapons in 2003
and officially restarted its nuclear weapons program.12
What are the implications of past events regarding the DPRK and its actions regarding nuclear agreements?
Simply, they show that the DPRK is not to be fully trusted, on the one hand, whilst on the other, it shows that
once the agreements based centrally on the ending of nuclear weapons programs was violated then all relations
were cut off. Following the theory of spillovers, nuclear-oriented agreements with the DPRK create no
spillovers. Greenstein and Polsby (1975, p. 384) remarked, “Not only may spillover in some cases not occur at
all; in others, the response can be negative. Dissatisfied actors may decide to undo the original linkage, rather
than become enmeshed more thoroughly in the process”. In the 1994 Agreed framework the DPRK simply got
to a point where it wanted to break the linkage. Since no trade or economic ties were formed, i.e.,
interdependence had not been established, this linkage break was clean and swift.
On June 12, 2018, President Trump and Chairman Kim met in Singapore. They signed a document
declaring their intentions, which again had denuclearization efforts at the heart of it.13 Whilst the document is
11
For specific details of the terms of the 1994 Agreed Framework, see Kim, S. S. (2006), The Two Koreas and the Great Powers.
New York: Cambridge University Press. Ch. 5. In particular, p. 252.
12
It is generally accepted that the Agreed Framework was being implemented, although the DPRK had secretly been continuing
with its nuclear weapons program until it was discovered in the late 1990s. Victor Cha (2013, p. 247) points out, “There were
concerns about DPRK nuclear cheating at a suspected underground facility at Kumchangri in 1999”. Samuel Kim, on the other hand,
says that the North Koreans never actually stopped their weapons program, “A majority of Russian experts believe that Pyongyang
never completely halted work on its military nuclear program, despite signing the Agreed Framework in 1994” (2006, p. 131).
13
The exact details of the document signed are: “The United States and the DPRK commit to establish new U.S.-DPRK relations
in accordance with the desire of the peoples of the two countries for peace and prosperity; The United States and the DPRK will
join their efforts to build a lasting and stable peace regime on the Korean Peninsula; Reaffirming the April 27, 2018 Panmunjom
Declaration, the DPRK commits to work toward complete denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula; The United States and the
DPRK commit to recovering POW/MIA remains, including the immediate repatriation of those already identified” (Rosenfeld, E.,
“Read the Full Text of the Trump-Kim Agreement Here”, CNBC. June 12, 2018.
https://www.cnbc.com/2018/06/12/full-text-of-the-trump-kim-summit-agreement.html (accessed June 12, 2018).
merely a statement of intention and not a specific agreement, it clearly shows a lack of economic and trade
linkages, but focuses more on general relations and denuclearization. The current situation can learn from the
engagement processes of Ostpolitik and Kim Daejung’s Sunshine Policy by encouraging increased trade and
exchanges, whilst simultaneously applying gradual pressure towards denuclearization. As Fink and Schaefer
(2009, p. 2) noted, Brandt, amongst other important issues, “renounced the use of force and the acquisition of
nuclear weapons”. As such, the issue became a smaller part of a much bigger framework agreement.
Engagement
Since the Basic agreement of 1991 relations between the North and South have somewhat improved—at
times. There have been periods of engagement, and periods of heightened tension.14 During Roh Tae-woo’s
term in office (1988-1993) a new engagement policy, Nordpolitik,15 was introduced which “sought diplomatic
normalization with communist bloc countries and then attempted to pursue engagement with North Korea”
(Lee & Moon, 2016, p. 226). The basic Agreement had followed earlier declarations from President Roh that
South Korea wanted to restart and develop inter-Korean trade, in a move way from confrontational relations.
Significantly, “the RTW administration adopted the principle of separation of economics and politics,
significantly fostering inter-Korean economic relations” (2016, p. 227). The Nordpolitik was continued on
through the Kim Young-sam administration (1993-1998), at the start of which the leaders of South and North
Korea agreed to meet in the first inter-Korean summit.16 As mentioned, above, despite the failure to realize the
inter-Korean summit, the 1994 Agreed Framework was signed. A clear spillover effect can be seen from the
engagement process of Nordpolitik between 1988 and 1994, although the Framework Agreement produced no
spillovers, thus ending all progress, or even going as far as to produce “negative spillover (‘spillback’)”
(Wunderlich, 2007, p. 22).
The high point of relations came with the term in office of President Kim Daejung. The liberal leader, after
a few years of instability following the inauguration of Kim Jong-il as Chairman and the complications of
enacting the Agreed framework through Korean Peninsula Development Organization (KEDO)17, took office in
1998 and declared, as one of his six major initiatives for reform in South Korea, “I intend to promote a new
relationship of exchanges and cooperation between the South and the North”, after which he continued, the
government “will remove the wall of distrust between the two Koreas to promote exchanges and cooperation in
accordance with the principles of separating politics and economics” (Kim Daejung, 1998 Address, Korea
Observer, Autumn 1998).
The policy of trust and confidence building follows the new Ostpolitik of Brandt. Quigley (1994, p. 43)
states, “By relaxing tensions and building trust and confidence between East and West, the West would
encourage the rulers in the East to relax their iron grips at home”. For Kim Daejung the same would happen in
North Korea through cooperation. The Sunshine Policy that Kim implemented had, according to Moon (2012),
14
In particular, in 2010 the North attacked South Korea in two separate incidents, one sinking a South Korean navy corvette and
on the other occasion the island of Yeonpyeong was shelled by North Korean artillery.
15
Under the Nordpolitik, South Korea “normalized diplomatic ties with communist countries, first with Hungary in 1989, then
Poland and Yugoslavia in 1989, the Czechoslovakia, Bulgaria, Mongolia, Romania, and the Soviet union in 1990, and finally
China in 1992” (Lee & Moon, 2016, p. 226).
16
That summit did not happen due to the sudden death of North Korean leader Kim Il-sung in July 1994.
17
The Korean Peninsula Development Organization (KEDO) was set up to finance and organize the actualization of the two
light-water reactors promised to North Korea in the 1994 Agreed framework.
had five “major ideals”18 and five “operating principles”19, of which amongst the five operating procedures the
second principle of “flexible dualism” referred to “the sequence of inter-Korean engagement” (2012, p. 26).
The specific sequence was listed as follows, “(1) Easy tasks first, difficult tasks later, (2) Economy first,
politics later, (3) Non-governmental organizations first, government later, (4) Give first, take later” (ibid.). As
Lee and Moon (2016, p. 228) state in their analysis of “flexible dualism”, “previous governments were
preoccupied with the primacy of politics and its linkage to the economy, which entailed structural barriers to
the promotion of inter-Korean exchanges and cooperation”. Thus the Sunshine Policy’s approach was a
reversal of this old approach, namely an economic engagement approach that would create linkages.
However, its final step of the sequence—“give first, take later”—became a thorny issue both within
domestic South Korean politics and also within the general public. Moon (2012, p. 34) points out that “The
Sunshine Policy encountered no major domestic setback or opposition at the start. The public generally
supported it”, whilst Kirk (2001, p. 410) also notes that in December 2000, “among 26,300 respondents … 66
percent were in favor” of Kim Daejung receiving the Nobel Peace prize. However, the optimism and praise for
the policy was wearing off at this point. Kirk then goes on to say, “Respondents were far less enthusiastic about
the government’s efforts to implement the Sunshine Policy by providing assistance to North Korea without
compensation in return” (ibid.).
This point should be noted for any future engagement policies towards the North. The existing
infrastructural development in Kaesong—the industrial park—and the Mount Kumgang tourist complex were
both aspects of the Sunshine Policy and they created an economic linkage, and to a degree social linkage,
between the two Koreas. However, they have both been closed down due to the poor relations—the Mount
Kumgang complex in 2008 following a shooting incident which resulted in the death of a South Korean woman,
and the Kaesong industrial complex in 2016 following rising tensions over the DPRK’s nuclear and missile
testing programs.
Framework for Success in Korea

This section will provide a possible framework for a successful new agreement, based on the German and
Korean experiences with Ostpolitik and Sunshine Policy.
Without doubt, the framework will follow the Ostpolitik and assume that there are no pre-conditions, in
this case that means that the issue of denuclearization should not be an initial condition. That is not to say it
should be excluded altogether, but it remains a longer term goal that can be achieved following the success of
the earlier cooperative processes. As mentioned earlier, Brandt recognized that the Hallstein Doctrine and
related policies of confrontation had made no progress in improving relations between the FRG and GDR.
Similarly, the nuclear problem in Korea has been the major stumbling block towards developing relations in
northeast Asia.
Continuing on, the framework should start from a point of furthering trade and economic ties, but through
a continuation and expansion of the industrial and tourist zones in North Korea, helped financially by the South
and its allies. In an op-ed piece for Brookings, Lee (2015) wrote that “Advocates say tourism facilitates
much-needed cross-cultural learning, with foreigners experiencing that North Koreans are as human as anyone
else, and North Koreans getting information about life outside their borders through their visitors from abroad”.
18
See pp. 21-25.
19
See pp. 26-30.
Tourism could therefore act as both an economic incentive, as well as a social learning process. This furthers
spillover in that as the North Koreans become more exposed to foreign cultures and products they will demand
further opening up, creating increased interdependence.
The process of developing economic links through trade and industry will take time. The new framework
must therefore be willing to take small steps, rather than big steps, but recognize that these smaller steps will
eventually lead to the establishment of trust, cooperation, and economic growth and interdependency. Once
such links are created then the second major phase, political and security measures can be negotiated. The key
point is, that strong linkages that are very difficult and costly to break, must be created first through
engagement, before tougher issues are brought to the table.
Thus the framework should go as follows:
1. Sign a basic agreement that promises a new atmosphere of engagement and peaceful cooperation, with
long term goals of peace, security, and prosperity
2. Begin by implementing economic policies that create strong links between the two Koreas, and North
Korea and other countries. This could involve reopening Kaesong and Mount Kumgang.
3. Introduce more exchanges both economically, infrastructurally, and socially. Encourage tourism in
certain areas of the DPRK, allowing for economic growth and social spillover. Provide training and education
for infrastructural improvements in the North. This would include cooperation with outside construction
companies, for example.
4. With progress, introduce more political and security issues into discussion, for example human rights
issues and political prisoners. Having established economic growth and dependence, these trickier issues will
be less difficult to negotiate.
5. Approach reductions and limitations of armaments, with a timeline for disarmament on certain
categories.
Conclusion
The current situation on the Korean peninsula is finely balanced. It could be the start of a new era of
peaceful and prosperous relations between the two Koreas and their allies or it could be the continuation of a
pattern of good and bad relations. What is clear is that there is an opportunity and with the right approach the
former is highly possible. It all depends on the specific type of any agreement that is negotiated.
As we have seen with Willy Brandt’s Neue Ostpolitik in the late 1960s/early 1970s a dramatic reversal in
policy can create positive relations and spillovers, resulting ultimately in peaceful co-existence and prosperity
for all. Moreover, the German example shows that even under the gloomy cloud of nuclear deterrence and
heavy militarization, peace can be achieved through a functional process, developing economic and social
linkages, rather than coming to agreements by demanding the resolution of pre-conditions. Whilst the major
problem was different in the German and Korean cases, Brandt’s decision to forego the “German question”, in
particular territorial claims, proved pivotal in forging cooperation and trust between the two Germanies.
In Korea, the advent of democracy has also seen, since the late 1980s, a shift in policy towards North
Korea. Starting with basic non-aggression treaties and moves to develop a stronger, more cooperative
relationship was working, until the 1994 Agreed framework focused too much on political and security linkages,
resulting in the failure of all negotiations. The lack of spillovers that comes with political deals cannot work in
future agreements with the DPRK. There must be a return to the Sunshine Policy of Kim Daejung that focused
on building economic ties and gradually building trust and interdependence, followed later by more difficult
issues such as political issues and denuclearization.
Yet the Sunshine Policy itself cannot simply be reinstated. As seen, whilst its basic theory was sound, the
idea of “give first, take later”’ was a crux in the whole deal. The South Korean public began to disapprove of
the government’s generosity towards the North while receiving very little in return. As such, any new policy
should focus on helping the North build its economy and developing strong inter-Korean trade links, as well as
trade links between the DPRK and other countries. In doing so, this will strengthen the DPRK’s economy and
at the same time induce an environment of security wherein nuclear weapons will be seen as unviable and
unnecessary.
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