In search of a middle power rethink

An international commission would benefit the Korean peninsula

Given its many foreign policy priorities, there will be around six months before the Biden administration can turn to North Korea. Pyongyang will not wait patiently. If expectations are correct, the incoming president will be forced into early action. Encouraging middle-power partners to pursue a guided, multilateral approach through an international commission on the Korean peninsula could see progress from day one. An international commission would then lay the foundations on which the Biden administration could build an informed, sustainable, practical and ultimately successful North Korea policy.

International commissions are ad hoc transnational investigative mechanisms, which can be constituted as either a temporary intergovernmental organisation (IGO) or a non-governmental organisation (NGO). Their significance lies in their ability to transform the assumptions and staid thinking that plague long-standing problems in international relations – such as the question of Korean penin…