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On June 29, 1950, the U.S. launched its first ever air strikes on the North Korean capital, Pyongyang, marking the start of what would become the longest conflict in history between two industrial powers. Four decades later, the end of the Cold War in 1989 and the disintegration of the Soviet Union in 1991 marked the beginning of a new phase of the conflict, with a new unipolar world order centered on the power of the U.S. and Western world leaving North Korea in unprecedented isolation. Now unsupported in its fight against a Western superpower intent on its destruction, the small but technologically adept and heavily militarized East Asian state would need to adopt more radical measures to ensure its security. Over the next 35 years, the conflict would transform from a period of North Korean decline in the face of tremendous economic and military pressure, to one of an ascent in its power and decline in the West as international order evolved past the unipolar era

Surviving the Unipolar Era elucidates the conflict’s transformation, beginning with unprecedented U.S.-led efforts to achieve North Korea’s total collapse and elimination through maximum pressure, and ending three decades later with a subsiding of Pyongyang’s international isolation and the modernization of its economy, armed forces and nuclear deterrent. A. B. Abrams highlights how the small state has been able to hold its own in multiple standoffs with the world’s superpower, successfully weather economic sanctions, and prevent penetration of its information space, and the implications that this has had for the country, the region and the wider world. He details the strong consistency in American objectives, and the evolution of consensus across five separate administrations on how these should be pursued as the circumstances of the conflict transformed. In the context of prevailing geopolitical, economic and security trends, Abrams projects the future course of the conflict including aspects such as Western difficulties coming to terms with North Korea’s ascent, U.S. policy priorities going forward, and the growing opportunities that an emerging new global cold war is likely to provide Pyongyang.

“In this timely, much-needed overview and analysis of North Korea in the world from the end of the Cold War to the current era of the Second Cold War, Abrams details how North Korea indeed “survived the unipolar era”, and how the emergence of a new geopolitical environment may be more conducive to it than any time since the late 1950s. This careful and well-researched study is an invaluable corrective to the stereotypical and ahistorical assumptions that underlie most Western views on the subject.” CHARLES K. ARMSTRONG, former Korea Foundation Professor of Korean Studies, Columbia University, author of numerous books and articles on North Korea.

“A. B. Abrams has produced another exceptionally well researched book with a depth of nuance and understanding of the DPRK (North Korea) few others can provide. The book unravels the tenacity of the North Koreans to survive the continuous onslaught of debilitating Western actions against their country over decades. It blows away the smoke of misleading and derogatory Western propaganda, and labelling, to reveal truths seldom told about their resiliency, in spite of the myriad puerile attempts by Western powers and their media apparatus to castigate and dehumanise them. Abrams’ work provides very timely and much needed realistic context to North Korea’s role on the geopolitical chessboard in the current rapidly devolving geopolitical environment.” PHIL HYNES, former Head of Research & Political Risk at ISS Risk, former British Army counterinsurgency specialist, and longstanding expert on North Korean politics, and longstanding expert on North Korean politics, the ‘Shadow Economy’ and commercial business environment who has spent considerable time in the country over 15 years.  

“A highly effective case study of a world on the more-or-less constant brink of nuclear war. A. B Abrams’ book reads like a thriller but tells you much of what you need to know.” RICHARD C. COOK, retired analyst for the U.S. Treasury Department, NASA and the Jimmy Carter White House, author, Our Country, Then and Now

“Surviving the Unipolar Era portrays an epic struggle between North Korea (the DPRK) and the US-led West. A.B. Abrams’ book is engaging and rich in factology.” ARTYOM LUKIN, Professor, Far Eastern Federal University