EcoS Guest Lecture with Prof. John Delury

The Biden years marked a nadir in US-DPRK diplomacy, as North Korea policy sunk to the bottom of national security priorities in Washington DC. Kim Jong Un reciprocated the apathy, redirecting his strategy toward nordpolitic of military alliance with Russia. For the first time since the end of the Cold War, a US presidential term passed without any talks whatsoever between North Korean and American officials. Professor John Delury will offer an autopsy on the Biden approach to North Korea, arguing that in reviving Barack Obama’s “strategic patience,” Biden presided over the death of denuclearization as a viable objective. Looking forward to a second Trump term, Dr. Delury will suggest an optimal re-engagement path the new administration could pursue with Pyongyang, given the strategic goals, domestic political constraints, and leadership styles of Kim Jong Un and Donald Trump. He will also consider how the prospect of revived contact between the US and DPRK might affect South Korea, China, and Russia.

John Delury is Visiting Professor in the Department of Political Science at LUISS University in Rome. During the 2023-24 academic year, he was the inaugural Tsao Family Prize Fellow in China Studies at the American Academy in Rome. For over a decade prior to relocating to Italy, he served as Professor of Chinese Studies at Yonsei University Graduate School of International Studies (GSIS) in Seoul, Korea. Dr. Delury is the author of Agents of Subversion: The Fate of John T. Downey and the CIA’s Covert War in China (Cornell University Press, 2022) and co-author with Orville Schell, of Wealth and Power: China’s Long March to the Twenty-first Century (Random House, 2013). He has written extensively on the Korean Peninsula and US policy toward North Korea, including “The Disappointments of Disengagement: Assessing Obama's North Korea Policy” (Asian Perspective, 2013) and “Trump and North Korea: Reviving the Art of the Deal” (Foreign Affairs, 2017). He is a public intellectual fellow of the National Committee on US-China Relations, senior fellow of the Asia Society, board member of the Pacific Century Institute, leadership council member of the National Committee on American Foreign Policy, member of the Council of Foreign Relations and National Committee on North Korea, and non-resident fellow at the Sejong Institute, CSIS, and University of Vienna’s European Centre for North Korean Studies. Delury received his BA, MA, and PhD in history from Yale University.

Date: December 9 (Monday), 2024, 4:45–6:15 pm (CET)
Venue: Sinology Conference Room (adjacent to the EcoS Office, 2F-O1-27A), Hof 2, Entrance 2.3, AAKH Campus, Spitalgasse 2, 1090 Vienna, Austria