Fallout

A behind-the-scenes look into US efforts to contain North Korea¿s nuclear capabilities and why they have not worked For almost four decades, the United States has tried to halt North Korea¿s march to build nuclear weapons and the missiles to deliver them. Joel S. Wit, a former State Department official, takes readers to the front lines of nuclear negotiations, to fierce policy debates and secret diplomatic gambits, recounting how perilously close the United States and North Korea have come, on various occasions, to nuclear confrontation. Based on more than three hundred interviews with officials in Washington, Beijing, and Seoul, as well as with the author¿s contacts in North Korea, this book chronicles how six American presidents have approached the problem of North Korea. Wit points to Barack Obama and Donald Trump as the two presidents most responsible for the failure to halt the march to nuclear capability, since it was under their successive tenures that North Korea acquired the a