Strategizing aid: US-China food aid relations to North Korea in the 1990s

Abstract

This study sets out to analyze strategic relations of two major donors - the United States and China - in delivering food aid to North Korea in the 1990s. By reviewing the historical evolution of US-China strategic relations in line with food aid and adopting a game model to verify historical findings, it addresses two significant observations. First, the North Korean food aid dynamics were constructed and crystallized by donors' strategic interactions, rather than humanitarian intention to save the famine-stricken North Korea. Both donors first took into account strategic interests in aid dynamics, and then utilized food aid as a strategic instrument for their own purposes. Second, any multilateral cooperation for delivering food aid to North Korea dooms to failure, despite the potential of aid coordination among donor states. Donors' competition for the primacy in the region of Northeast Asia hampered policy coordination for institutionalizing aid networks. It is concluded that the two donors were bound to strategize food aid as a logical outgrowth of their own interests in the wake of North Korea's humanitarian disasters. © The author [2011]. Published by Oxford University Press in association with the Japan Association of International Relations; all rights reserved.