Gee, it seems like nerves are getting fried over at the State Department. Let’s start with Assistant Secretary of State Christopher Hill. Is it just me, or does he seem a bit irritated lately? I guess dealing with the North Koreans (or not dealing with them, as the case may be) can do that to a man. Anyway, visiting Seoul on Monday, Hill seemed less than enthusiastic about the prospects of the newly reconvened intra-Korean talks (Chosun Ilbo, JoongAng Ilbo):
Asked by a reporter whether he thought the meeting between the two Koreas was a good signal for the six-party talks, Mr. Hill said, “I am tired of looking at signals and reading tea leaves. I’ll just be pleased when we have a date to start.”
But before meeting in Seoul with Ban Ki-moon, South Korea’s foreign minister, Mr. Hill said, “Of course if it can help the six-party process, it will be very good. But we just don’t know.”
I feel your pain, my brother. He also made it clear that intra-Korean talks or not, the clock was a’ tickin’:
Expressing hope the talks between South and North officials would lift chances for a resumption in the nuclear talks, Mr. Ban told Mr. Hill that the meeting between the two Koreas would serve “to make a breakthrough in the stalled South and North relationship.”
Mr. Ban also said that the talks would “create a favorable atmosphere for our common effort in resolving the North Korean nuclear issue.”
Mr. Hill responded saying the impasse in the disarmament talks could not go on indefinitely. “We are doing everything to get this six-party process going, but that does not mean we are not going to look eventually at other options because we have to.”
I’m sure that went over well. But Mr. Hill’s apparently bad kibun didn’t stop there. In Wednesday’s New York Times, the good diplomat got a little miffy, no doubt due to being asked about President Roh Moo-hyun’s “Northeast Asian balancer” concept for the umpteenth time:
Mr. Hill, looking annoyed at the mention of Mr. Roh’s “balancing role,” said he believed that South Korea would stick to its alliance.
“I would think if I were a South Korean,” Mr. Hill said, “there is logic to saying that we’re in a neighborhood that in the past - in the past, maybe not now - has certainly qualified as a high-crime neighborhood. You know, a lot of invasions, a lot of battles, even, at times through the centuries, wars of annihilation - serious stuff, especially on the peninsula.
“If I were a South Korean looking into the future, I would be saying to myself, ‘I want a special relationship with a distant power.’ “
Good explanation, BTW, although I wouldn’t necessarily describe Northeast Asia of the early 21st century a “high-crime neighborhood,” as potentially dangerous as it may or may not be.
Mr. Hill wasn’t the only State Department official mixing it up. In a Chosun Ilbo/CSIS-sponsored seminar in Washington, Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary for East Asian and Pacific Affairs Evans Revere stressed the need for Seoul to come to grips with USFK “strategic flexibility”:
During a seminar titled “Prospects for U.S. Policy toward the Korean Peninsula - in the Second Bush Administration”, co-sponsored by the Chosun Ilbo in Washington on Wednesday, U.S. Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary for East Asian and Pacific Affairs Evans Revere said strategic flexibility was not a one-way street since it would also in an emergency allow the U.S. to move forces from elsewhere in the region to the Korean Peninsula to honor its security commitments. That suggests Korea would be well advised to embrace the concept.
This seemed to spook the Chosun, of course. And for good reason:
Revere is a Korean affairs official who knows the position of the Korean government on this matter well, yet he insisted publicly that Korea needs to accept the altered role for the USFK. Thus if the Korean government’s position really is at loggerheads accord with U.S. views, serious problems could arise, one scenario being that the U.S. could review the need for a military presence on the Korean Peninsula if it clashes with Washington’s strategic needs. Some predict even more extreme results if the matter is not sorted out.
It’s interesting, BTW, that the issue of “strategic flexibility” has come up once again. Yesterday, it was revealed that everyone’s favorite Cheong Wa Dae deputy chief, Lee Jong-seok, came under Cheong Wa Dae investigation to determine if he mishandled negotiations with the United States concerning, strangely enough, strategic flexibility (see also Chosun Ilbo, Dong-A Ilbo).
State Department men weren’t the only ones taking shots. Rep. Jim Leach, the Kansas Republican who also serves as chairman of the House East Asia Pacific Subcommittee, also warned Korea about the implications of its “balancer role”:
U.S. House Representative and Chairman of the East Asia Pacific Subcommittee Jim Leach said it would be unwise for Korea to thoughtlessly toss aside its alliance with the United States at the beginning of the 21st century after it played such a decisive role in its political and economic security in the 20th. While it might bring short-term political benefits to put some distance between Seoul and Washington in the name of independence, in the long-term the policy was questionable, he said. Leach said a healthy alliance did not diminish but strengthen the sovereignty of both partners.
According to the Munhwa Ilbo (Korean), he also said, “Korea needs to ask itself whether there is a nation other than the U.S. that would come it its aid in the event of an emergency in Korea.”
Pretty heady stuff, most of it coming in a single 24-hour period. Just to jot down a couple of thoughts on the matters raised, I fully understand where Seoul is coming from in terms of its less-than-enthusiastic embrace of USFK “strategic flexibility,” at least where it involves conflicts in Northeast Asia. After all, U.S. bases are located on Korean territory. The problem, of course, is that if the U.S. is unable to utilize the considerable military assets deployed in Korea in other nearby conflict zones, why keep them in Korea?
This question segues into the whole “Northeast Asian balancer” debate. Again, the Roh administration’s conception — whatever that may be — may not necessarily be without reason. But it essentially postulates that while the U.S. is committed to come to Korea’s aid — to the tune of 690,000 U.S. troops — in the event of an emergency on the Korean Peninsula, South Korea reserves the right to play neutral if the U.S. becomes embroiled in another conflict — Taiwan, for example — in Northeast Asia. Interesting, but Seoul has yet to make it clear why this should be worth Washington’s while. This shouldn’t come as a surprise, as Cheong Wa Dae has yet to go on record explaining what exactly the “Northeast Asian balancer” role would entail (which I’d imagine is the cause of much of the apparent U.S. exasperation), other than to say it would be based on the Korea-U.S. alliance. Andy over at the Flying Yangban did a pretty good job explaining why this is ludicrous. In fact, the only way I could see something like that working is if Seoul decides to be an active partner of the U.S. in out of theater operations, such as Iraq, in return for U.S. security commitments in theater.
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A little bit of everything from the good old Marmot today: Playboy models and the future of Korea-US relations! These should keep the new comments coming in for a while….
You know, Roh is reminding more and more of Glen Clark, a former premier of British Columbia.
Clark was a charismatic politician with a trade union background, representing the left-wing New Democratic Party. He made a number of incredibly rash, bold decisions during his short term in officedecisions that were popular with many constituents in the short-term, but ill-advised and ultimately damaging to the province’s economy and reputation in the long term.
In the end, he was forced to resign over a scandal that was incredibly petty by anyone’s standards (the owner of a construction firm built a sundeck on the back of his house, allegedly in return for a favour); but he was so unpopular by this point, resigning was better than sticking it out. (An RCMP investigation didn’t help.)
In the long run, he inflicted serious damage on his own party, and his populist stands on various issues detracted from whatever laudable policies his party could have represented while in government.
…All’s well that ends well, though, since upon resigning, Clark was offered a senior management job by Jimmy Pattison, a wealthy businessman and longstanding opponent of the NDP.
If the Roh administration really believes in its own rhetoric of “balance” I fail to see why they just don’t send the US packing and invite the Chinese in.
20,000 or so PRC troops along the DMZ would serve equally well (if not better) as a deterrent to war between the North and the South, vs. the US presence. The North could hardly object openly to such “assistance” by its fraternal brothers in “protecting” it against the South could it?
Particularly if the Chinese were lightly armed and if the current Security Council could be persuaded the resurrect the “UN” mission originally voted in 1950 (now just a facade maintained by the US and ROK if I’m not mistaken, as the UN itself stopped budgeting for this decades ago (?)).
It’s not like the mainland is short of troops or anything. And ROK could offer to foot the bill for the troops on “generous” terms, making it a possible profit center for the PRC! The danger of war on the peninsula would be reduced immensely; seems like a “win-win” all around, especially for Americans like me who are infinitely weary of our “allies” and their carping and posturing.
I’m just not into “master-slave”, “client states”, “maintaining a foothold in Asia to threaten the heart of China”, or whatever other geopolitical/ poly sci class balderdash gets propagated here periodically. And neither is the rest of the American public, taken as a whole.
No US troops will ever move into North Korea in any meaningful amount, no matter what happens there in the future (short of some catastrophic nuclear war scenario). In that respect the Chinese Communist counterattack of Nov-Dec 1950 was a turning point in history.
On the other hand it’s highly likely that the Chinese will have to intervene in NorK someday, so why not implicitly acknowledge this by all concerned (except of course DPRK) and begin preparation for it now? An eventual (and inevitable) NorK collapse scenario would be a lot safer for the US and Japan if the US were physically gone from the peninsula (or so it seems to me).
Not wanting the US to have “flexibility” in Korea is understandable–nobody wants a bullseye painted on their back. But Roh’s balancer bullshit is exposed here, because he wants Korea to be the region’s mediator (actually, who knows what he wants) with absolutely no leverage to back it up–whereas the US presence here would deliver exactly that.
I keep wondering if it’ll eventually come out that Roh’s government really is seeking to end the alliance (I doubt it, actually, cause how stupid can these guys be). At the same time, I would be pleased to hear it from Roh’s team or from Bush’s that further disengagement were in the works. It seems that Roh is trying to have his cake and eat it, by cosying up to the Chinese and the Norks while still having the country’s security guaranteed by the US. That way if anything happens, the US will always be there to protect or at the very least, to hand over truckloads of cash to clean up the mess.
Curious wrote:
e on another thread, ?€œthreat fatigue.?€?
Hey, that was me! I’m being quoted. Or, not quoted.
For decades, South Korea was one of the most staunchly Anticommunist countries on earth. I think many South Koreans are just ready to try a new solution to an old problem.
I think that many South Koreans (and I’m not saying I agree) feel that for forty+ years they had a hard-line approach and nothing happened, except that North Koreans starved, North Korea remained belligerent, North Korea retained a strong military, and North Korea got nukes.
So it would appear the hard-line approach isn’t solving anything. Let’s try something different. Let’s be the bigger man and smother them with kindness.
But smothering is not instantaneous, and the victim tends to kick and twitch, and this is where we are right now.
And nobody is completely unaware of the threat from up north: nationwide air raid drills are still held once a month, and are serious business indeed. I was in the middle of one. Even in the middle of busy cities, traffic just stops. Nobody moves. It?€™s eerie. There is a veneer of ?€œnonchalance?€? (as someone called it on another thread), but everyone is keenly aware of what?€™s involved.
Hey, that’s me again!
I remember when the 1994 crisis occurred, reporters were here from all over, practically expecting war to break out at any minute. One talked about how tensions were so high that the ROK decided to start doing air raid drills.
Started?! No, they had never stopped.
Again, I say, the situation for many South Korean citizens: threat fatigue.
But, and this is important, if a threat really does raise itself, people will be all over it.
That said, I have no better idea what to make of the ?€œbalancer policy?€? than anyone else, and I?€™m not sure Roh?€™s spin on things is really helping things.
I think he just wants to be a mediator. He made clear he doesn’t want to break off the US military alliance. He just wants Korea’s contribution to being a host at cocktail parties between rivaling sides where a grand and wonderful compromise can be reached. He wants the kind of Nobel Prize T.R. got in 1905.
In defense of Dr. No, his greatest legacy will be, “he wasn’t a Korean conservative.”
If all you had was sewage water to drink for the past 50 years and someone offers you urine to drink, you might jump up at the chance too.
Someone wrote on another thread, “threat fatigue.”
For decades, South Korea was one of the most staunchly Anticommunist countries on earth. I think many South Koreans are just ready to try a new solution to an old problem.
And nobody is completely unaware of the threat from up north: nationwide air raid drills are still held once a month, and are serious business indeed. I was in the middle of one. Even in the middle of busy cities, traffic just stops. Nobody moves. It’s eerie. There is a veneer of “nonchalance” (as someone called it on another thread), but everyone is keenly aware of what’s involved.
That said, I have no better idea what to make of the “balancer policy” than anyone else, and I’m not sure Roh’s spin on things is really helping things.
“I?€™m not sure Roh?€™s spin on things is really helping things.”
That was a diplomatic way of putting it. Based on what I said at the beginning of this thread, I’d have to say “I’m quite sure Roh’s spin on things is not helping matters.”
Sorry, credit where credit is due. I knew you wrote “threat fatigue,” but forgot ’twas you who came up with “nonchalant/ce,” too.
Well, it’s more for coining “threat fatigue” that I want to be remembered. I’m going to write a blog piece on it.
Definitely there is a lot to be said for it. And “threat fatigue” would be a very catchy title indeed!