Sino-NK

Wit, Joel. Fallout: The Inside Story of America’s Failure to Disarm North Korea. New Haven: CT, Yale University Press, 2025. 535 pp. ISBN 978-0-300-27877-4.

Cover image: Yale University Press, 2026

Over the past 30 years, the US has cycled through five presidents, each of which has promised to fix the mess their predecessor made of North Korea. Each time, the results have been disappointing. Joel Wit’s book Fallout: The Inside Story of America’s Failure to Disarm North Korea, helps explain why this has been the case. The book argues that US administrations, even those built explicitly on the preferences of Donald Trump, have neither found a coherent and consistent strategy for engaging the North, nor demonstrated a sound understanding of the regime’s internal dynamics and goals.

It is important to note at the outset that this is a book less about North Korea itself than about the inner workings of US administrations. In that sense, it shares its DNA more with previous studies of the dealings of US presidents than with the strategy of the North Koreans – closer to Bob Woodward’s Fear: Trump in the White House than Ankit Panda’s Kim Jong-un and the Bomb, for example. It is perhaps for this reason the author reminds us at the end of the book that the North has made its own share of poor decisions that have undermined negotiations, and that US choices are not all that matter. For instance, Wit argues that North Korea’s behaviour has “created a negative feedback loop dominated by the view that it couldn’t be trusted” (page 356).

Fallout does, however, capture for the reader a precise picture as to where the North fits in the overall, shifting hierarchy of US priorities. The book starts with the early post-Cold War period, quickly summarising the Bush 1.0 through Bush 2.0 years (Chapters 1 to 4). It then moves on to the administration of Barack Obama, who came to office with high hopes of turning the page on his predecessor’s War-on-Terror bellicosity, at one point citing the willingness of both Ronald Reagan and John F Kennedy to meet with the leadership of the Soviet Union. The author presents this as evidence of bipartisan appreciation for diplomacy, surmising that talks were not – in themselves – a reward for misbehaviour (p 35).

Obama and his team were, however, quickly taken aback by the North’s refusal to give up weapons testing in the face of US condemnation, settling into a path of inaction, as noted by Wit. Following the rise of Islamic State in the Middle East and Russia’s annexation of Crimea, Fallout notes that the Obama administration moved onto other diplomatic struggles, not wishing to expend further energy and risk on North Korea (p 165). With the rise of Kim Jong-un, the third generation of leadership in Pyongyang, this US passivity proved ill-timed, since the latest Kim brought a different attitude toward missile tests, according to the author: “Unlike [Kim Jong-il], who thought failures made North Korea look bad, the younger Kim was willing to learn from his mistakes.” (p 174).

By the end of his eight years, Obama’s subordinates were left to lament “a stalemate of stagnant options” (p 190) – options where progress was slow and difficult, but the risk of catastrophe loomed. The book also laments that, by the end of Obama’s second term, the loudest voices in Washington DC were bureaucrats from the intelligence community who considered negotiations futile because North Korea would not give up its nuclear weapons (p 191). Unclassified sources, including journalists, academics and those organising humanitarian work in the North, were all but boxed out. Wit contrasts this with the information the administration utilised on Iran, perhaps explaining why Obama reached a deal with Tehran, but not Pyongyang (p 191).

Unsurprisingly, the book’s most enthralling chapters concern the Trump 1.0 years (Chapters 12 to 20). The broad contours of those dynamics may be familiar to many readers – Trump’s sudden shifts in attention, John Bolton’s rivalry with the similarly hawkish but more opportunistic Mike Pompeo, the possible impact of domestic politics on Trump’s mindset (such as Michael Cohen’s Congressional testimony) – yet this story is told by Wit in a captivating manner.

One of the book’s most intriguing, yet enigmatic, portrayals is that of Kim Jong-un himself. Kim is identified as holding tempestuous views of China, remaining less than willing to defer to Beijing on nuclear testing (p 153), and is described overall as a “well-meaning” leader trapped in an authoritarian system (p 247). When he finally shows up for summits, the North Korean leader is described as “polite and respectful” to former South Korean president Moon Jae-in (p 255), and accommodating of the US – particularly regarding US troops on the Korean Peninsula (p 294). At one point in the book, Kim is viewed as less keen to see American soldiers depart than Trump himself (p 298), a salient point given reports Kim Jong-il reportedly wanted US troops to remain, even after eventual reunification, while China has continued to appear less accommodating on this issue.

Yet, when Kim meets Trump in Hanoi in 2019, he cannot close the deal over the nuclear program. The North Korean leader repeatedly declines Trump’s offers for sanctions relief in exchange for dismantling Yongbyon, saying “his people” would not allow it (p 315). It is not made clear in the book whether Kim meant the actual citizens of North Korea, or the elites propping up the country’s economy and military (what Bruce Bueno de Mesquita and Alastair Smith might call the “essential coalition”). Perhaps Kim offered no further details at the time, even to those who might have had the opportunity to ask; or he deferred, to deflect responsibility, when in fact this unwillingness to decommission Yongbyon represented the North Korean leader’s own position.

The book’s repeated references to Kim’s discomfort with Chinese interference in DPRK affairs, and his determination not to abandon his deterrent, go a long way in explaining his more recent turn to Russia, a country that plays a much smaller role in the book than China. In discussing Trump’s return to the White House in the book’s epilogue, Wit notes optimistic comments from both Trump himself and his secretary of state-cum-national security advisor, Marco Rubio, noting that Kim is by this point in the midst of a pivot away from North Korea’s decades-long pursuit of diplomatic normalisation with the US (p 364). The book ends with recommendations regarding risk-reduction measures and the development of North Korea’s rare earths deposits (p 369). However, it concludes on a dour note, given the US president’s tendency toward short-sighted decisions (p 371).

Should we really be as encouraged by the prospect of further negotiations with Pyongyang, as Wit suggests? US-DPRK deals, such as the Agreed Framework of 1994 and Leap Day Deal of 2012, were hailed in some circles as breakthroughs at the time they were struck, but both quickly collapsed. US behaviour alone cannot be blamed for that. While the US we see in Fallout remains dysfunctional, and Kim Jong-un humanised, the author perhaps overextends in painting North Korea as a more reliable partner than they really have been.

Otherwise, Fallout offers a much-needed diplomatic account of how the US has approached North Korea in recent decades. It therefore serves to compliment other scholarship and policy analysis on human rights, internal narratives, and geopolitical dynamics which together help define the DPRK and its shifting position on the broader Asian strategic chessboard.

Rob York is Director for Regional Affairs at Pacific Forum in Honolulu, Hawaii. He earned his PhD in Korean history in 2023.