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“Introduction” to the Special Issue on Transforming U.S.-Korean Relations, Asian Perspective, Vol. 28, No. 4, 2004 by John Feffer, Guest Editor Profound asymmetries of power and perception haunt U.S. relations with both North and South Korea . Over the last four years, these power imbalances have worsened, leading to increased tensions among the three countries. An uneasy, eight-year truce over North Korea ' nuclear ambitions ended in 2002, and the United States moved closer to a war footing. In South Korea , meanwhile, anger and resentment over an unequal partnership, combined with an ongoing U.S. reevaluation of its security role on the peninsula, have put an enormous strain on a longstanding alliance. The victory of George W. Bush in the U.S. elections in 2004 suggests that unless the administration can be persuaded to alter its policies – by moderates within the Republican Party, allies in the region, or an energized and concerned U.S. electorate – these power imbalances will degenerate into outright conflict. Even if the Bush administration has no plan to precipitate conflict in East Asia , its policies may well lead to unintended consequences. Miscalculations could impel both the United States and North Korea toward a war that both sides acknowledge would have catastrophic effects but that, because of the logic of military escalation, neither side can avert. War, however, is never inevitable. This special issue, an initiative of the Alliance of Scholars Concerned about Korea , explores the downward spiral in U.S. relations with the Korean peninsula, provides analysis that runs counter to conventional interpretations, and offers clear and balanced policy recommendations for remedying the crises. Korea and the World In 2000, the United States and North Korea seemed on the verge of détente. After North Korean Vice-Marshal Jo Myong Rok visited Washington to sign a joint communiqué with President Bill Clinton in October, Secretary of State Madeleine Albright made a reciprocal visit to Pyongyang . Clinton planned to follow up with the first ever visit of a sitting U.S. president to North Korea to conclude a deal on the country's missile program. The election of George W. Bush, however, spelled the end of U.S. attempts to engage North Korea . The administration failed to follow up on the potential missile deal and missed other opportunities to conduct negotiations with North Korea . After September 11, these positions hardened. The administration declared North Korea part of the “axis of evil,” identified it as a potential target of a first strike of nuclear weapons in the Nuclear Posture Review, and confronted Pyongyang over a secret uranium enrichment program in October 2002. In short, the administration traded in the Clinton policy of “carrots and sticks” for a golfer's approach that relies only on clubs of various sizes to address the North Korea problem. These shifts in U.S. policy toward the two Koreas have taken place against the backdrop of a radically reconfigured American foreign policy. Particularly after September 11, the Bush administration has broken with a “balance of power” tradition to put greater emphasis on military force and unilateral pressure. In the 1990s, despite a commitment to sustaining the “unipolar moment” created by the collapse of the Soviet Union , Washington still accepted the global security architecture of the post-World War II era. Madeleine Albright declared the United States an “indispensable nation,” but the Clinton administration still managed to maintain close relations with key allies in Europe and Asia, attempted to shape rather than shred multilateral institutions and treaties, and relied more on the “soft power” of economic and political influence than the “hard power” of the military. In contrast, the Bush administration has sought to remake the global order in a way that upsets the balance of power in different parts of the world in favor of a strengthened and extended U.S. military dominance. Dramatic changes have also taken place in East Asia . Several factors have disrupted the traditional alignment of the post-World War II period. North Korea 's Taepodong rocket test of 1998 and disclosures of the kidnapping of Japanese citizens further frayed relations between these two historic adversaries and accelerated Japanese efforts to replace its Self Defense Forces with a more offensively arrayed military. China has carved out for itself a more assertive diplomatic role in the region, symbolized most vividly by its mediating role in the current Korean nuclear crisis. And despite increased tensions between Washington and Pyongyang , there has been considerable movement forward in inter-Korean rapprochement. The jointly sponsored industrial zone at Kaesong , a city just north of the Demilitarized Zone, suggests that both countries support a slow, bottom-up reunification process that can proceed incrementally even as substantial disagreements persist over security questions. In short, the traditional roles of all four major actors in the region have shifted, with Japan becoming more militarily assertive, China more adroitly diplomatic, and the two Koreas more explicitly cooperative. While the policies of the United States and the key actors in the region have shifted, one thing has remained the same. Multilateral agreements and institutions that might otherwise even out regional disparities in political and economic power, as integration has done to a certain extent in Europe , remain very weak in East Asia . North Korea remains a diplomatic black hole, recognized by most European countries but still treated as an outlier by Washington , Tokyo , and, to a lesser extent, Seoul . North Korea 's ambiguous status serves as a significant obstacle to the creation of a multilateral security framework for the region. Nor does East Asia have a regional free-trade agreement under consideration (though countries in the region are exploring bilateral agreements). Cold War divisions have been blurred in recent years with China 's accession to the World Trade Organization and its vigorous diplomatic efforts to resolve the current nuclear crisis. The maladroit diplomacy of the Bush administration has helped East Asian countries grope toward some common positions. But the region is still marked by high levels of military preparedness and mutual distrust. These divisions, unmitigated by multilateral structures, have long served as the rationale for the projection of U.S. power in the region. The U.S. army has traditionally attempted to preserve the balance of power in East Asia by constraining its allies and containing its adversaries. To maintain security, the United States asserts preponderant power. Although the U.S. government claims neutrality because it, unlike countries in the region, has no territorial ambitions, it is in fact the asymmetric capabilities of the Pentagon – including massive nuclear and naval superiority – that empowers the United States as a broker in the region. In the last four years, in East Asia as in the world at large, the United States has moved from preserving such asymmetries of power to exploiting them. This trend is part of the larger move from containment to rollback. The Clinton administration exerted its influence to contain the Taliban and Saddam Hussein's Iraq ; the Bush administration used massive military force to remove these regimes. In East Asia , the Bush administration flirted with this same transformation by downgrading China from “strategic partner” to “strategic adversary” and elevating “regime change” in North Korea as a priority. That the United States did not act in East Asia as it did in Central Asia and the Middle East speaks to the limits of U.S. military power and the military force more generally than any moderation of philosophy among the administration ideologists. Regional Asymmetries The contributors in this volume explain in greater detail the range of asymmetries that lie at the heart of the current conflicts between the United States and the two Koreas . In the military sphere, for instance, the United States can boast of an enormous military superiority over North Korea in terms of nuclear capability as well as conventional forces. North Korea 's acknowledgement of this imbalance in part propelled its decision to pursue its own nuclear deterrent while at the same time attempting to negotiate a security guarantee from the United States . As Jae-Jung Suh suggests, though, even the South Korean military – separate from U.S. forces – is superior in quality to North Korea, making this military asymmetry all the more profound. The current negotiations between the United States and North Korea over the latter's nuclear program, as Charles Armstrong argues in his contribution, also reflect the general power imbalance between the two countries. The Bush administration has been largely inflexible in its stance, confident that this imbalance will resolve itself eventually with a dramatic change in North Korea 's negotiating position or in the collapse of the regime itself. Karin Lee and Adam Miles note that Congress has encouraged this inflexibility, first by challenging the terms of the 1994 Agreed Framework and then by attempting to push other issues onto the negotiating table that are likely to make a security agreement less likely. The military imbalance applies not only to the northern half of the peninsula. The United States maintains a role in South Korea 's military operations unparalleled elsewhere in the world. Perceptions of this power imbalance as well as real changes in the internal balance of power in South Korean society, as Katharine Moon points out, have led a range of civic organizations – and now the South Korean government itself – to demand greater equality in alliance relations. The United States has also used its asymmetrical power, Martin Hart-Landsberg argues, to push South Korea to adopt a range of reforms to open its economy to foreign investment and ownership. The United States treats South Korea as a second-rate partner, despite its first-rate economy and growing military power. Considered by the CIA to be roughly equal in economic strength in 1975, North and South Korea have moved further and further apart in recent years.(1) South Korea has become one of the top dozen economies in the world, while North Korea has fallen to the level of Haiti . This economic imbalance is accentuated by a political asymmetry. While North Korea remains a dictatorship, South Korea has not only become democratic but has a civil society unmatched in the world for its vibrancy. Moreover, there is a subtly growing divide on the issue of nationalism, as North Korea adheres strictly to an ethnic definition while a new civic nationalism has begun to take root in the South. Gi-Wook Shin and Paul Chang write that the United States has misread nationalism on the Korean peninsula, with troubling consequences. For the region as a whole, the Cold War balance of power is breaking down as Japan pursues a “normal” military and China advances a more assertive diplomacy. The replacement of this old balance of power is very much a central question in Samuel Kim's contribution. China 's evolving foreign policy doctrine, which is increasingly cooperative in nature, points to a potentially stronger role for multilateralism in the region. But much depends on how the U.S. responds to China 's initiatives, defuses the current conflict with North Korea , and handles the concerns and ambitions of its regional allies. The Way Ahead Personalities, in part, drive U.S. politics. The personal animosity that George W. Bush has expressed toward Kim Jong Il, similar to his feelings toward Saddam Hussein, may well make rapprochement very difficult. The departure of Colin Powell from the State Department, along with moderates like Richard Armitage, throws into question the whole balance of power within the administration between hardliners and proponents of engagement. Condoleeza Rice, the new secretary of state, for several years argued against a “cookie cutter” policy toward Iraq and North Korea , and promoted negotiations with the latter. But she is also well-known for her hard-line approach on security matters. Although Congress is more firmly in Republican hands after the 2004 elections, there are many Republican voices in support of engagement with North Korea . The most intriguing of these voices has been Curt Weldon (R-PA), an otherwise hawkish member of the House Armed Services Committee. Perhaps in emulation of Jimmy Carter's actions to avert war during the first nuclear crisis in 1993-4, Weldon has traveled to North Korea in an effort to find some formula for an agreement. If he and others can forge a bipartisan consensus around engagement, then the administration will feel some pressure to become more flexible at the negotiating table. The Pentagon can be a key ally in this process. Overextended in Iraq and Afghanistan , the U.S. military is also acutely aware of the horrific consequences of war in the region and wary of what might happen, for instance to North Korea 's weapons of mass destruction, should the country collapse. If U.S. citizens can be mobilized to press their representatives to support such bipartisanism founded on conservative “balance of power” arguments and if allies in the region manage to get across their own concerns about the economic and humanitarian consequences of conflict, then the next four years will not be as grim as a simple extrapolation from the previous four years might suggest. The United States faces an important crossroads in dealing with the Korean peninsula and, by extension, East Asia . Along one path lies increased conflict – diplomatic, economic, and even military. Along another path lies heightened cooperation and mutual benefit that arise from a greater equality in relations. The contributors in this volume hope that their essays can illuminate this latter path. (1) Per capita South Korean GNP surpassed North Korean per capita GNP sometime in the mid-1970s. United States Central Intelligence Agency, Korea : The Economic Race Between North and South (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1978). |
