Peacemaker General - An Assessment of Dan Leaf's Strategic Thinking on North Korea & U.S. Policy

In the highly polarized and often intractable debate over United States policy toward North Korea, Lieutenant General Daniel P. Leaf, USAF (Ret.), emerges as a paradoxical yet uniquely credible voice. A decorated combat fighter pilot with over 3,600 flight hours, including missions in the skies over Iraq, Serbia, and Kosovo, and the former Deputy Commander of U.S. Pacific Command (PACOM), General Leaf possesses the unimpeachable credentials of a military strategist steeped in the realities of deterrence and warfighting.1 Yet, in his post-military career, he has become one of the most articulate and persistent advocates for a fundamental reorientation of U.S. policy—one that prioritizes peacemaking and diplomacy over the perpetual management of conflict.4 This apparent tension between his background as a warrior and his advocacy as a peacemaker is not a contradiction, but rather the source of his strategic authority.

General Leaf's strategic thinking on North Korea represents a pragmatic and coherent evolution, rooted in his deep operational understanding of the catastrophic risks inherent in the status quo. His proposals are not a sudden, late-career conversion to dovish idealism, but a calculated response to decades of what he views as demonstrable policy failure.5 His intellectual journey has progressed from establishing a broad methodological framework for engagement—the award-winning "federated approach" of 2017—to championing a specific, urgent, and actionable policy imperative: formally resolving the Korean War as the foundational "Step Zero" for achieving lasting peace, risk reduction, and the eventual denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula. His body of work constitutes a direct and sustained challenge to the foundational assumptions that have guided U.S. policy for generations, demanding a shift from managing a perpetual crisis to resolving its underlying cause.5

To provide a comprehensive assessment of his strategic thought, this report will first examine the formative military and diplomatic experiences that have shaped General Leaf's worldview. It will then analyze the evolution of his core ideas, tracing their development from his 2017 Peacewriter Prize-winning essay to his most recent publications and interviews. Following this, the report will deconstruct his detailed policy roadmap for achieving a formal end to the Korean War. Finally, it will critically examine the consistency of his views, reconciling his calls for military readiness with his diplomatic advocacy, and assess the reception and influence of his proposals within the broader public, academic, and governmental policy ecosystem.

To understand Leaf's approach to North Korea, one must first appreciate the dual foundations of his career: the disciplined pragmatism of a combat aviator and the theater-level perspective of a senior strategic commander. His 33-year career in the U.S. Air Force was not peripheral to his current advocacy for peace; it is the very source of its credibility and intellectual rigor. His experiences provided him with a visceral understanding of the costs of conflict, a strategic appreciation for the complexities of the Indo-Pacific, and a philosophical commitment to solutions that are, above all, practical.

General Leaf’s military service was extensive and distinguished, marked by command at every level from a flight to two fighter wings.3 His combat experience is particularly salient. He flew and led F-16 combat missions against Serbian and Kosovar targets during Operation Allied Force and served as the Director of the Air Component Coordination Element with land forces during the initial combat operations of Operation Iraqi Freedom.2 This direct exposure to the realities of modern warfare—its immense destructive power, its inherent unpredictability, and its profound human cost—instilled in him a deep-seated conviction that armed conflict must always be the last resort.8 This is not the abstract conclusion of a theorist but the earned wisdom of a practitioner who has operated at the sharpest end of national policy.

His strategic perspective was forged through extensive service in the Indo-Pacific. With multiple tours of duty totaling four years in the Republic of Korea (ROK) and another four years in Japan, he gained an on-the-ground appreciation for the unique dynamics of the Korean Peninsula and the broader Northeast Asian security environment.3 This culminated in his assignment as Deputy Commander of U.S. Pacific Command from 2005 to 2008, a role that placed him at the apex of U.S. military strategy for the entire region.3 From this vantage point, North Korea was not an isolated problem but the central node of regional instability, a persistent threat that demanded constant vigilance and immense resources to deter. This experience managing the day-to-day risk of a catastrophic war provides the context for his later work; he has an intimate understanding of the military architecture that has kept a fragile peace for over 70 years, as well as its inherent limitations and dangers.

This career trajectory cultivated a worldview he describes as quintessential to his profession: "Fighter pilots are necessarily pragmatic – they care about what works. Everything else can kill you".8 This ethos is the philosophical core of his entire approach to North Korea. It explains his profound impatience with policies, such as "strategic patience" or "maximum pressure," which he argues have demonstrably failed for decades to halt North Korea's nuclear program, deter its provocations, or improve the human rights of its people.5 For Leaf, continuing to pursue a strategy that consistently produces negative results is not just ineffective; it is a dangerous and illogical dereliction of duty.

Upon retiring from the Air Force, General Leaf transitioned seamlessly from implementing national security policy to shaping it. His tenure as the Director of the Daniel K. Inouye Asia-Pacific Center for Security Studies (DKI APCSS) from 2012 to 2016 was a pivotal period.1 Leading this Department of Defense institution, which is dedicated to security cooperation and education, provided a formal platform to translate his operational insights into diplomatic and academic advocacy. It allowed him to engage directly with civilian and military leaders from across the region, honing his ability to articulate complex security challenges to a diverse, international audience and fostering a deeper understanding of conflict resolution and effective governance.10

The establishment of his consultancy, Phase Minus 1, LLC, in 2017 marked the formalization of his post-military mission.1 The company's name itself is instructive, referring to the phase of conflict prevention and peacebuilding that precedes military planning. Its focus areas—"peacebuilding, conflict resolution, sustainable development, national security"—explicitly signal his commitment to finding alternative, non-military solutions to the world's most complex challenges, with a primary focus on the Korean Peninsula.1

General Leaf's career path thus represents a fundamental evolution in perspective, from managing the risk of conflict to resolving the underlying conditions that perpetuate that risk. As a military commander at PACOM, his primary duty was deterrence and warfighting readiness—the constant, resource-intensive management of the ever-present possibility of a second Korean War.3 This posture, while essential for preventing immediate hostilities, locks the region into what he terms a "dangerous status quo," a stalemate that he identifies as a profound policy failure.5 The risk is merely contained, not reduced or eliminated. His post-military work, therefore, is the logical continuation of his service. He recognizes that true, lasting security cannot be achieved by perfecting the management of a perpetual threat. It requires dismantling the political and legal architecture that makes such a threat a constant and growing danger. His advocacy for peace is not a repudiation of his military past but its ultimate fulfillment: having spent a career preparing for a war he hoped would never come, he now dedicates his efforts to ensuring it never has to be fought.

In 2017, amidst a period of exceptionally high tension on the Korean Peninsula characterized by North Korean missile tests and heated rhetoric from Washington, General Leaf introduced a novel strategic concept that would become the foundation of his subsequent work. His essay, "An urgently practical approach to the Korean Peninsula," which won the inaugural Oslo Forum Peacewriter Prize, presented a direct intellectual counterpoint to the prevailing "maximum pressure" campaign.4 It diagnosed a fundamental flaw in decades of U.S. policy and proposed a new methodology for diplomacy.

Leaf's analysis begins with a powerful metaphor: the situation in Korea resembles a "Gordian Knot".10 This is not merely a literary flourish but a precise strategic diagnosis. The knot is composed of multiple, tightly interwoven threads: the 1953 Armistice Agreement that ended the fighting but not the war; unresolved territorial disputes on land and at sea; the appalling human rights conditions within the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK); and, most critically, North Korea's advancing nuclear weapons and ballistic missile programs. Each problem is inextricably linked to the others, creating a seemingly impossible tangle.

The core of Leaf's critique is aimed at the "integrated approach" that has long dominated U.S. and international policy. This strategy holds that progress on any of the lesser threads—such as humanitarian aid, family reunions, or economic engagement—is contingent upon North Korea making concessions on the central issue of denuclearization.10 He argues this approach is intrinsically flawed and doomed to fail because it allows the most difficult and intractable issue to act as a permanent veto on any and all potential progress. By binding every potential success to the single greatest challenge, policymakers have created a recipe for perpetual stalemate. Leaf minces no words in his assessment, invoking Albert Einstein's definition of insanity—"doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results"—to argue that it is the policy of expecting this integrated approach to succeed, not North Korea's behavior, that is truly irrational.10

In place of this failed model, Leaf proposes a "comprehensive, federated strategy which addresses the various threads independently to establish a lasting peace on the peninsula".8 The key to this approach is to sever the artificial linkages between issues. The central mechanism is to metaphorically "pull out the yoke pin" of nuclear capability from the center of every negotiation, allowing for transactional diplomacy to proceed on parallel tracks.10 This would enable the U.S. and its partners to pursue small, achievable successes in areas of mutual interest. For example, negotiations on joint remains recovery operations, resolving maritime boundary disputes in the West Sea, or providing humanitarian assistance could proceed on their own merits, without being held hostage to progress on the nuclear file. The strategic logic is that these smaller agreements, while not solving the ultimate problem, could begin to build a modicum of trust, establish channels of communication, and create positive momentum that might, over time, create more favorable conditions for tackling the larger security issues.

The "federated approach" is best understood not as a single, prescriptive policy but as a new methodologyfor conducting diplomacy. It is a strategic framework designed to change the process of negotiation in order to make success possible. The 2017 essay does not lay out a detailed end-state, such as a peace treaty, but instead diagnoses a fundamental procedural failure in U.S. diplomacy. The term "federated," likely drawn from his experience with complex military and technological systems, implies a structure of independent but coordinated components working toward a common goal.14 Leaf applies this systems-thinking concept to a deeply entangled geopolitical problem. As will be shown, his later, more specific proposals are not new or separate ideas, but are concrete applications of this federated methodology. The 2017 essay established the foundational operating system—the "how"—upon which his subsequent policy applications—the "what"—were designed to run. Winning the prestigious Peacewriter Prize from the Centre for Humanitarian Dialogue provided this innovative framework with immediate international credibility and a significant platform, establishing Leaf as a major intellectual voice in the debate.13

Following the intellectual groundwork laid by his "federated approach," General Leaf's thinking continued to evolve, becoming increasingly specific and urgent in response to changing conditions on the Korean Peninsula. His proposals matured from creative, tactical ideas designed to create diplomatic openings to a singular, strategic imperative focused on fundamentally altering the political landscape. This evolution reflects a deepening conviction that the core problem is not a lack of dialogue, but the unresolved state of war itself.

In May 2021, Leaf published "Vaccine Valor: Making Something Out of Nothing with North Korea," a quintessential application of his federated methodology.4 The proposal was both bold and simple: the United States should make a unilateral and unconditional offer to provide North Korea with enough COVID-19 vaccines to inoculate its entire population of 26 million people, bypassing international distribution mechanisms like COVAX.4 The explicit aim was to leverage a global humanitarian crisis to "reopen the doors to diplomacy" and, in the long term, create a more conducive environment for denuclearization talks.4

The strategic brilliance of the proposal lay in its "win-win" framing. Leaf acknowledged that the most probable outcome was a refusal from Pyongyang, which is deeply suspicious of outside aid, particularly from the U.S..4 However, he argued that even in rejection, the United States would achieve a significant victory. By making a generous, unconditional offer, Washington would seize the moral high ground and starkly illustrate the Kim regime's failure to fulfill its "responsibility to protect" its own citizens, thereby strengthening the international human rights case against it. If, against the odds, Pyongyang accepted, it would necessitate a level of technical cooperation and transparency—from verifying the vaccine's chain of custody to coordinating delivery—that would in itself constitute a significant diplomatic breakthrough.4

This line of thinking was not new for Leaf. He revealed that he had made a similar "crazy" proposal in 2007 while serving as PACOM Deputy Commander, suggesting a U.S. military airdrop of humanitarian rations in response to devastating floods in the DPRK.4 Though that opportunity was missed, it demonstrates that his instinct for using creative, humanitarian-based initiatives to alter diplomatic dynamics is a long-standing element of his strategic toolkit. The "Vaccine Valor" proposal was a tactical gambit, an attempt to find a single, independent thread to pull from the Gordian Knot within the existing framework of hostility.

By 2024, a discernible shift is evident in Leaf's public advocacy. His focus sharpened from proposing tactical openings to championing a fundamental, structural change in the U.S.-DPRK relationship. His recent writings and interviews, particularly his April 2024 analysis for the U.S. Institute of Peace (USIP) and a comprehensive interview with 38 North, reveal a singular, primary objective: formally resolving the Korean War.5

He now frames this as "Step Zero"—the absolute precondition for any meaningful and sustainable progress on other fronts.7 This represents a significant evolution of his argument. The core problem, in his current view, is not the nuclear weapons program in isolation, but the technical state of war that provides the primary incentive for the DPRK to develop, retain, and potentially use such weapons for regime survival. As long as the United States and North Korea remain legally and politically at war, any diplomatic progress will be fragile and reversible, and the risk of catastrophic conflict, whether accidental or intentional, will remain unacceptably high.

A crucial catalyst for this sharpened focus was Kim Jong Un's late 2023 declaration abandoning the long-standing policy of peaceful reunification and redefining South Korea as a separate, hostile state.7 While many observers, including highly respected experts Robert Carlin and Siegfried Hecker, interpreted this as a strategic decision by Kim to go to war, Leaf offered a counter-intuitive and strategically creative analysis.7 He views this development not as a barrier, but as a strategic "opening".5 For decades, the notion of "one Korea" and the impossibly complex path from a state of war to peaceful reunification has been a primary "Gordian Knot" blocking a final peace settlement. By officially discarding reunification, Kim has inadvertently simplified the diplomatic challenge. As Leaf argues, it is "far easier to transition from his designation of North and South as distinct enemy states to separate friendly states" than it is to navigate the "ultimate bridge too far" of proceeding directly from war to reunification.5 This allows for a more straightforward negotiation of a peace agreement between two de facto sovereign states, a far more achievable diplomatic objective.

This evolution in Leaf's thinking from "what if we tried this?" to "we must do this" is driven by a heightened assessment of risk. The combination of North Korea's advanced nuclear and missile capabilities, its declared first-use doctrine, the complete breakdown of U.S.-DPRK communication since 2019, and Kim's newly belligerent posture has created a situation Leaf describes as "more dangerous than it has been at any time since early June 1950".7 This urgent threat assessment compels the conclusion that tactical diplomatic openings are no longer sufficient. The fundamental structure of the relationship—the unresolved state of war—is now the primary driver of existential danger. His focus has therefore shifted from a diplomat's search for a creative angle to a strategist's demand for a paradigm shift, one that addresses the root cause of the conflict rather than merely managing its symptoms.

General Leaf's advocacy for ending the Korean War is not merely a conceptual argument; it is accompanied by a detailed, actionable, and phased policy roadmap. He has systematically outlined a blueprint for how the United States can and should lead this process, moving from internal preparation to multilateral negotiation. This plan, articulated most clearly in his 2024 USIP article and his interview with 38 North, is grounded in historical lessons and pragmatic statecraft.5

The foundational step in Leaf's blueprint is a cognitive and strategic shift within the U.S. government itself. He argues that the United States must consciously reimagine its primary role on the Korean Peninsula, moving from a focus on "war prevention" to one of "peacemaking".5 This does not imply an abandonment of military readiness. On the contrary, he insists that the