B.S. Stands for ‘Bovine Spongiform’

At this time a year ago, I thought by now that I’d be writing about the restoration of an alliance that Roh Moo Hyun had just about managed to destroy.  Although I’ve long felt that  a large  U.S. military presence in South Korea was an anachronism no longer justifed by any North Korean threat, I saw benefits to having  a healthy military, diplomatic, and economic alliance between South Korea and the United States.  Also, I think it would be nice if my wife  would give  me  a  round-trip ticket to  Pattaya (Happy Father’s  Day!).   On balance, I’m enough of a realist to  realize that neither  occurrence seems  likely at this point.   

As you’ve probably already  guessed, this epiphany devolves from the sensational revelations, courtesy of crashtest.com, of the imminent danger posed by riding in a Korean car.  Did you know that  you could  be riding in  a Hyundai, a Kia, or one of those Daewoo death traps … and just, well,  die?  Poof!   Assuming I remember this correctly — if you only knew how drunk I am at this moment —  a Minot, North  Dakota grad student has theorized that  the springy bumper shocks in Korean cars and the uniquely gelatinous consistency of a neuron structure  influenced by schools that  teach  critical thinking skills makes Americans uniquely vulnerable to brain injuries after accidents in Korean cars.  Ditto those tumor-germinating cellphones they make over there, which would also destroy the traditional bucolic ways of life of Motorola assembly line workers if we let them flood our markets. 

Of course,  every nation has an  absolute right to refuse to import goods that  objective scientific study concludes to  pose  a statistically insignificant risk while simultaneously increasing imports of another product that will definitely kill you.   And if you question the logic in that,  you have  shown disrespect for  my Han. 

Anyway, I’m demanding the renegotiation of the FTA provsions on Korean cars.  The  corporate capitalist robber barons  in Seoul  may argue that  acceding to  my demands  would give Korea something less than full access to U.S. markets, meaning that this  wouldn’t really be  “free” trade, and that once again, Korea would be treated as something less (or more) than an equal.  As of today, Korea has managed to negotiate a draft  “free” trade agreement that excludes  American rice,  maintains non-tariff barriers on  U.S. automobiles,  and will end up severely restricting all  U.S. beef imports not purchased by the trunkload at the South Post PX,  for the subsequent re-sale in market stalls  and kalbi restaurants  across Korea.  (Just as there are no Unitarians in foxholes, and there are no Upton Sinclairs on the black market.)   The U.S. Chamber of Commerce notes (p.12) that Korea will only gradually phase out restrictions on U.S. agricultural products over 10-18 years, and reserves the right to impose market-protection “safeguards” for up to 24 years.  If this doesn’t sound like completely free trade, just wait until the renegotiations are over. 

When it’s all said and done, trade between the United States and Korea  may be less free after the FTA fails  (which it will) than it was  before the idea was even proposed.  It will descend into endless ad hoc side agreements that will end up resembling  our trade relations with Japan.  Here, the cynics among you will  probably feel some cruel compulsion to  point out  that Japan has no FTA  with the United States, but I’d only respond that at least Japan has the honor of being treated as an equal. 

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There are broader conclusions I draw from this.  The first of these is that South Korean auto manufacturers must be doing this as some kind of inhuman experiment on American drivers. 

But there is another, even broader conclusion I’m drawing here:   Korea’s visceral hostility to everything American  isn’t a phase, and Roh wasn’t a mere  symptom of such a phase.  The relationship’s flaw — the reliance of each nation on different facts and basic rules of logic — is probably fatal,  regardless of which party is in power in either country.  Now that  South Koreans are so secure in their  freedom to loathe us,  in what way is it premature for us to declare victory and draw up a timetable to withdraw USFK?   Many failing  relationships  have been downsized to friendships by adults who said,  “We can still be friends,” or, “I still like you, but I think we should see other people.”  On the other hand, I don’t know any that were saved by pregnancy, although I’m sure plenty were extended into prolonged  abuse and  custody  battles  that way.

With the fraying of the military alliance, the idea behind the FTA  wasn’t unlike the “strategy” of  saving a bad marriage  through pregnancy, only on an international scale.  The problem with  any strategy based on impulse and emotion is that it  has  a low potential for success in either application  if the  interpersonal compatability is lacking.  Just as not all  nations on friendly terms  need  to exchange  trade benefits, not all friends need exchange  benefits of other kinds.  And of course, an agreement to share benefits in no way implies an agreed assessment of the risk of  disease, bovine or otherwise.  And that’s all I have to say about that.

The particular flaw in the application of this impulse to the FTA  was  its built-in dependence on  the oxymoronic concept of Korean statesmanship.  Korean politicians don’t lead the frenzied masses; the frenzied masses lead them, and unfortunately,  the frenzied masses hate us.  This is where defenders of the alliance  will  insist  that the frenzied masses really  love us —  our movies, our colleges, our sportswear, and  our country (for women, especially during the third trimester, and for men, especially  right after high school graduation).  Of course, the fact that I’m right doesn’t mean that defenders of the alliance can’t also be right.  But such bipolar relationships are no more stable on a national level than they are on a personal one.  Whether by calculated design (the move of HQ, Eighth U.S. Army) or through  ordinary incompetence (Condi’s probably unintended but nonethless ill-advised slight in Foreign Affairs), the alliance is dissolving.  And up to a point, that’s an entirely good thing, because America has far too many boots in Korea for its own strategic, financial, and political good.

Long ago, I questioned in detail the vital U.S. interests that are at stake in South Korea, which may depend on how you define “vital,” which in turn may depend on which country you’re from.  Today,  the main threats to South Korea  don’t include  a North Korean invasion; they do include a North Korean WMD attack,  rising Chinese influence South of the DMZ, chaos in North Korea,  and Chinese designs on the North.   The DMZ  is no longer a dam holding back a red tide.  North Korea, a  promiscuous proliferator to  active sponsors  of terrorism,  probably poses more of a threat to America than it did in 1950,  but  a large U.S. troop presence isn’t an effective deterrent or response  to that threat.  Our presence in Korea does, however,  place an inviting target within easy reach of the North Koreans, thus limiting our own ability to deter them.   

A U.S. presence in South Korea  may deter Chinese domination of Korea to a limited  degree, but such a development probably  wouldn’t threaten vital U.S. interests.   Once  Kim Jong Il finally goes man-tits up, North Korea will  be a blighted, dope-addled apocalyptic landscape, afflicted by madness and  disease, awash in weapons large and small, and inculcated with xenophobic hatred.  It may actually advance America’s strategic interests to see China wade into that; it might even create  some delicious opportunities for America to create mischief for China and undermine its regime in the eyes of its people.  Furthermore, China probably isn’t interested in invading South Korea when it’s succeeding at achieving its strategic goals with semi-soft power.   (Incidentally, does anyone know whether President Lee has actually rescinded his predecessor’s effective declaration that South Korea is a neutral country?  Just wondering.)

America’s  immediate  vital interest, then, isn’t in South Korea, it’s in North Korea  today — specifically, preventing North Korean WMD proliferation, a matter about which America seems stunningly cavalier these days, and about which South Korea and China  have never seemed to care much at all.  And here, America’s presence in the South holds our policymakers in thrall to South Korean interests, which conflict with our own more often than not.  At the same time, a partnership with an emotionally unstable partner carries great risks for America (think: Battle of Tokdo). 

Nor has South Korea has been a reliable ally in America’s hour of need.  The 3,000 soldiers South Korea sent  to Iraq never ventured beyond the concrete barricades behind which they sat in the secure, Kurdish-controlled area of Irbil.  Whatever good this did was more than offset by the millions in ransom the South Korean government paid to the Taliban. 

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Today, for the second time in five years, South Korea’s government  has ceded the streets and the national discourse  to the  mob, which has now turned violent, and which is turning increasingly anti-American.  What’s especially disturbing about  this is its unreasoned unpredictability —  the suddenness with which emotion erupts as wispy either from the streets to  paralyze or seize the reigns of national power.  The reaction to the 2002 traffic accident certainly seemed irrational enough  (must-read link), but two girls did die; the tragedy was at least real.  This year, lacking a real grievance, the mob invented one.  Or, more accurately, the Korean media invented one,  which infected the mob so quickly that there was neither time nor desire to ask whether any of this was grounded in facts or logic.  The natural reaction is to look upon such scenes and conclude, “There is no pleasing these people,” or guessing what will set them off next.

I’ve argued before that trying too hard to please the Korean Street  at least as wrong an approach as being genuinely callous, and this comment provides some support for  my theory.  All  of America’s deference and sacrifice of interests to appease North  Korea, including a major policy shift  — just in time for an equal and opposite shift in South Korea —  didn’t wipe the targets off our backs.   Nor did  any number of American apologies for the slights and  misdeeds of individuals buy us  any measurable good will.  For that matter,  hordes of  Chinese students running riot in Seoul and North Korean abductions of South Korean citizens couldn’t earn the Korean Street’s ill will.  We’ve had sixty years to break this emotional  code, and our finest diplomatic minds not only don’t know how to predict outbreaks of this malady, they’re powerless to respond when their statements are garbled in translation to exploit it.  Trying to predict South Korea’s psychological demographics only leads to parody.

Admittedly, I’m ambivalent about  developments  that only reinforce views of the alliance I’ve held since my DEROS date back  in 2002.  A smaller alliance  would be  cheaper, less strategically risky for America, and less emotionally destabilizing for South Koreans.  Who knows?  Maybe when Korea and America put some distance between them, South Korea will cease to be one of the most anti-American nations outside the irredeemable pit of wackiness known as the Middle East (not that I’d bet on it). 

Ultimately, I think, the alliance is failing because the few friends we have in Korea  won’t stand up for us.  Two successive Korean presidents have already ceded the national conversation to  threepenny demagogues.  Roh’s best efforts (or so it would seem) to poison the deal were foiled by a last-minute round of masochistic U.S. concessions, with the opening of Korea’s beef market being one of America’s few negotiated  successes.  President Lee was poised to inherit a deal so favorable that the U.S. Congress was aghast.  Then, just as Lee was about to get the deal finalized and ratified by the National Assembly, his electorate was struck by another of its bipolar episodes, largely because of one demonstrably mendacious media report that Lee and his cabinet — so far as I can tell — never seriously attempted to de-bunk.  It didn’t  matter that mad cow would be asymptomatic on most of the protestors anyway. 

You see, by now, my second layer of ambivalence:  frankly, I’m hoping the protestors succeed in killing this deal, not  just because I oppose the deal  on human rights grounds or because I think it’s a bad deal for America, and  not just despite the fact that the protestors are fools, but because they’re fools:  whiney, spoiled, self-absorbed, bovine spongiform fools.  Fools have been far too powerful and (so says my cynical side) useful in the making of Korea’s national policies, particularly in its dealings with America.  Must America stand in loco parentis perpetua  for  a nation that’s had ample opportunity to grow up?  Isn’t it time for some national  Darwinism?  Ultimately, a  country will  get the economy, national defense, and government  it deserves.   The last decade has been  a continuous cycle of Korean rage  and American  apology designed to cushion South Korea’s government from the consequences of incompetent statecraft at every level.  (I’m less inclined than Robert to extend this costly generosity to a Korean government that talks like an ally until it really needs to.)   Ironically, most of the Korean Street’s demands have been packaged as demands for greater respect and independence from America.  But respect and dependency don’t coexist well. 

Maybe we should make a little less effort to shield South Koreans from the inevitable consequences of bovine spongiform thinking.