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 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.

CLARITY PRESS, INC.

A. B. Abrams has published widely on Korean politics and security, including several dozen articles in outlets such as 38North, The Diplomat and SinoNK among others, as well as multiple prior books. He holds Masters degrees in related subjects from the University of London. Having studied the Korean language at university in Pyongyang, he has spent considerable time in both North and South Korea and formed many contacts across the two countries. Abrams' prior works on geopolitics and security have received strong endorsements from multiple senior military officials, diplomats, professors and UN experts among others. He is proficient in multiple other Asian languages including Chinese.