In Red Rogue, Bruce Bechtol analyzes the changing nature of North Korea's national defense, foreign policy, and illicit economic activities in the post-9/11 era. He describes how North Korea has adapted to a changing global and regional environment to ensure regime survival and has often dictated the agenda in East Asia. Bechtol explains why North Korea frequently resorts to brinkmanship and provocations as foreign policy tools and why North Korea remains a threat to the United States and South Korea. After a detailed discussion of North Korea's internal politics and foreign policy,...

Since the 1990s, the American government has under prioritized the North Korean threat to global security, according to Bruce Bechtol, an associate professor of political science at Angelo State University. Because North Korea appears economically weak and politically unstable, it is therefore often categorized as a state on the brink of collapse, or a failed state. But Bechtol makes a convincing case that North Korea is more complex and menacing than it how it has often been characterized.Defiant Failed State shows how the North Korean government has adapted to the post-Cold War...

Edited by Bruse E. Bechtol, Jr. Provides papers from a symposium that was held on September 1, 2010. Sponsors were the Marine Corps University, the Korea Economic Institute, and the Marine Corps University Foundation.