This paper addresses the policy directions of the Obama administration with emphasis on Northeast Asia security policy, looking both at key bilateral relationships and the prospects and priorities for building a Northeast Asia security architecture. It focuses in particular on U.S. Korea policy (South and North) while also assessing the prospects for the currently ill-fated Six-Party Talks (involving North and South Korea, China, Japan, Russia, and the U.S.), discussing how this Korean Peninsula denuclearization process both informs and impacts U.S. attitudes toward broader regional security cooperation. One central conclusion is that the current primary role of Northeast Asia regional cooperation, as manifested in the Six-Party Talks and from a U.S. perspective, is more to deal with (and balance) bilateral issues – U.S.-DPRK denuclearization, alliance management with Japan and the ROK, and U.S.-China relations – than it is to lay the groundwork for developing a broader regional security architecture. The key to future stability on the Korean Peninsula in particular is for the ROK and U.S. to build upon their current Joint Vision Statement to allow it to serve as a better blueprint for future cooperation both today and after eventual Korean Peninsula reunification. It is this future role of the alliance that is the most critical and the least often discussed or explained.