Another approach to the Korean issue: the Two Plus Three Strategy

Oct. 14 (UPI) — For more than seven decades, diplomats, strategists and scholars have sought to resolve “the Korea question,” which is the unnatural division of the peninsula that paragraph 60 of the 1953 Korean Armistice Agreement declared must one day be settled peacefully.

Yet, despite countless rounds of talks, communiqués and summits, the peninsula remains divided, the armistice unreplaced, the North possesses nuclear weapons and 26 million Koreans remain captive under the most despotic regime of the modern era.

The failure is not one of effort or sincerity, but of paradigm. Traditional international relations theory and conventional negotiation strategies have repeatedly misdiagnosed the problem, treating North Korea as a normal state rather than what it is: a revolutionary, criminal, and hereditary cult whose survival depends on perpetual hostility.

Because every conceivable traditional technique, such as deterrence, containment, maximum pressure, inducement, arms control, summit diplomacy, sanctions relief and even maximum regime engagement, has been tried and failed, the time has come for a new approach: the “Two Plus Three Strategy.”

This strategy recognizes that the key to solving the Korea question lies not in negotiating with the Kim family regime, but in helping the Korean people in the North create the conditions for change themselves.

The structural failure of traditional international relations theory

Classical realism views states as rational actors pursuing survival within an anarchic system. Liberal institutionalism presumes that engagement, commerce and dialogue can socialize regimes toward cooperation. Constructivism argues that shared norms and identity can reshape behavior.

All three lenses assume a basic rationality and self-preservation instinct tied to the welfare of a population. North Korea violates each assumption. The Kim regime’s legitimacy derives not from performance or consent, but from absolute control through surveillance, repression and ideological isolation.

It does not behave as a rational state maximizing national interest. It acts as a family-run mafia enterprise whose overriding imperative is regime survival at all costs. The welfare of the population is irrelevant except insofar as it sustains the regime’s security.

Attempts to apply realist balance-of-power logic (e.g., deterrence and containment) ignore the regime’s need to fabricate external threats to justify internal control.

Liberal hopes that trade and aid might induce moderation fail because any influx of information or prosperity threatens the regime’s monopoly on truth.

Constructivist efforts to foster mutual understanding collapse because the North’s ideological foundation of Juche and Songun, and hereditary deification rejects coexistence as ideological heresy.

In short, the Kim family regime does not seek peaceful coexistence. It seeks permanent confrontation to sustain its domestic control. The problem is not miscommunication between rational states, but the irreconcilable nature of a totalitarian system whose very identity depends on the division of Korea — until it can achieve domination.

Exhaustion of conventional negotiation strategies

Since 1953, nearly every U.S. administration and South Korean government has tried some permutation of negotiation, deterrence, pressure and inducement:

• Armistice diplomacy (1950s-60s): Failed to transform the ceasefire into peace because Pyongyang refused mutual recognition.

• Sunshine Policy and engagement (1990s-2000s): Delivered billions in aid and investment, which the regime diverted to weapons programs and elite enrichment.

• Six-party talks (2000s-2010s): Produced photo-ops and temporary freezes, but never disarmament. Each time, Pyongyang pocketed concessions, cheated on verification and resumed provocations.

• Maximum pressure and sanctions (2010s-2020s): Weakened, but never altered core behavior, as China and Russia provided lifelines and the regime expanded illicit finance and cyber theft.

• Deterrence-plus-dialogue Stabilizes crises but institutionalizes the division, granting the regime strategic space to advance its nuclear capabilities.

Every cycle follows the same pattern: provocation, negotiation, concession, violation, new provocation. The world mistakes the regime’s tactical feints for strategic compromise. The result has been strategic paralysis — 72 years of “crisis management” without resolution and generations of Koreans in the North condemned to indoctrination, starvation and imprisonment.

The Kim dynasty has mastered “blackmail diplomacy:” It fabricates crises to extract benefits, knowing that outside powers prioritize stability over transformation.

In this sense, conventional negotiation sustains but does not solve the problem. Each proposal for “peaceful coexistence” with Pyongyang effectively concedes the permanent division of Korea and abandons the people of the north to tyranny.

Moral and strategic bankruptcy of “Peaceful Co-existence”

The notion of peaceful coexistence between North and South Korea and “respect” for the North Korean system appeals to fatigue, not foresight. It offers the illusion of stability while entrenching an intolerable status quo.

To accept coexistence is to normalize crimes against humanity: political prison camps, generational punishment, mass surveillance, forced labor and absolute information control. It is to tell 26 million Koreans that their freedom is inconvenient to our diplomacy.

Strategically, coexistence also perpetuates instability. A nuclear-armed, brittle dictatorship cannot co-exist peacefully. It must externalize tension to survive. Its nuclear arsenal is not a bargaining chip, but an insurance policy for regime longevity and coercive leverage.

Each year of co-existence strengthens the regime’s weapons complex, deepens China’s buffer and weakens the moral legitimacy of the free world.

History teaches that totalitarian systems collapse not through appeasement, but through the empowerment of their people and the erosion of internal control. The division of Korea is not a frozen conflict — it is an unfinished liberation.

As paragraph 60 of the Armistice reminds us, the ultimate objective is a “peaceful settlement of the Korea question,” meaning an end to unnatural division, not its management. True peace will come not from coexistence with tyranny but from the emergence of a free and unified Korea.

The case for a new “Two Plus Three Strategy”

Because the old frameworks have failed, a new strategic construct is required — one that integrates military deterrence with political hardball, human-rights advocacy and information empowerment. The Two Plus Three Strategy provides that framework.

The Two:

1. Deterrence and defense: Maintain and modernize combined ROK-U.S. deterrence to prevent war, deny coercion and defend the South and United States from attack from the North. Strengthen integrated air-missile defense, cyber and space resilience and combined multi-domain operations.

2. Diplomacy and strategic strangulation: Coordinate a unified alliance narrative that exposes the regime’s criminal nature, isolates it diplomatically and makes clear that normalization is impossible without transformation. Interdict its global illicit activities and cut off external funding.

The Three:

1. Human rights up-front: Center all policy on the rights and dignity of the Korean people in the North, linking any negotiation to measurable human-rights progress. Elevate human rights from a “secondary issue” to the moral and strategic foundation of policy.

2. Information and influence: Break the information blockade through broadcasting, digital engagement and escapee networks. Empower Koreans in the North with knowledge of the outside world and the truth about their regime. Information is the modern form of liberation.

3. Preparation for unification: Build alliance structures, economic planning, and transitional-justice frameworks for an eventual unified Korea — a United Republic of Korea that inherits legitimacy from the South’s democratic institutions and fulfills the promise of 1945 liberation and the 1919 Korean March First Declaration of Independence.

This strategy does not seek the regime’s immediate collapse through force, but rather its gradual internal disintegration through exposure, empowerment and erosion of control.

It treats the Korean people as the main effort — not the regime. It recognizes that sustainable peace will emerge only when the Korean people in the North themselves are able to act as agents of their own destiny.

Toward a solution of the Korea Question

Solving the Korea question requires courage to abandon comforting illusions. Traditional diplomacy has preserved the armistice but perpetuated injustice. The Two Plus Three Strategy reframes the challenge: from regime management to human liberation; from coexistence with tyranny to completion of Korea’s unfinished revolution of freedom.

Practically, this means aligning all instruments of national power — diplomatic, informational, military, economic and moral — around three imperatives: deter aggression, empower the people and prepare for unification.

It means mobilizing the global community not for another round of fruitless negotiations, but rather for a sustained campaign of political warfare: exposing crimes, amplifying truth and supporting escapees and diaspora who are the vanguard of a future free and unified Korea.

Most importantly, it restores agency to the Korean people themselves. They, not foreign diplomats or think-tank theorists, will ultimately resolve the division. Our task is to create the conditions in which they can. The Two Plus Three Strategy provides a roadmap.

From armistice management to liberation strategy

After 72 years, we must admit that traditional approaches have achieved only an uneasy stalemate and immeasurable human suffering. The persistence of the Kim family regime is not proof of its strength, but of our strategic failure to think differently.

The world has tried every conventional method: appeasement, sanctions, deterrence and negotiation, and none has worked because the premise has been wrong. We have negotiated with a regime that does not negotiate in good faith and sought coexistence with a system that cannot coexist with the free world.

The time has come to shift from managing the armistice to fulfilling its purpose. Paragraph 60 of the 1953 agreement remains the mandate: to achieve a peaceful settlement of the Korea question.

Peaceful, however, cannot mean passive, and settlement cannot mean surrender to division. The only genuine peace will be the peace of a free and unified Korea — a United Republic of Korea (U-ROK), whole and democratic, standing as a beacon of liberty in Asia and the world.

The Two Plus Three Strategy is not simply another policy option. It is the moral and strategic necessity of our time. It acknowledges that the path to peace runs through the freedom of the Korean people. Anything less is coexistence with oppression — and history will judge us for having abandoned 26 million Koreans to darkness when collectively, South Korea, the United States and the international community had the power to help them see the light.

David Maxwell is a retired U.S. Army Special Forces colonel who has spent more than 30 years in the Asia Pacific region. He specializes in Northeast Asian security affairs and irregular, unconventional and political warfare. He is vice president of the Center for Asia Pacific Strategy and a senior fellow at the Global Peace Foundation. After he retired, he became associate director of the Security Studies Program at Georgetown University. He is on the board of directors of the Committee for Human Rights in North Korea and the OSS Society, and is the editor at large for the Small Wars Journal.