Don’t Leave! You Need Us!

Someone at the Korea Herald is getting huffy about an idea that’s gaining currency in Washington–U.S. disengagement from Korea. Now, I have plenty of reservations about the idea in its more extreme form (more on that below), but reactions like this one are only going to persuade Americans that disengagement is long overdue:

Although chances are slim that policymakers in Washington would pay serious attention to such an unconventional idea, it is a little annoying to notice that even some knowledgeable circles in the U.S. harbor many misconceptions about the nature of the alliance between the two countries and Koreans’ attitude about it.

First, the proponent of U.S. disengagement from here seems to believe that anti-Americanism is rampant across the Republic of Korea and is being further intensified as Koreans determine the American military presence is the biggest obstacle to the reunification with North Korea, supposedly their strongest aspiration. This observation is wrong as it amplifies the chants of a Hanchongnyon student group as the general voice of contemporary Koreans.

My congratulations to the writer for managing to be simultaneously arrogant and needy, which is no small accomplishment. Yes, it’s the old “we’re not really anti-American” argument again. In surrebuttal, I offer:

Exhibit A, anecdotal evidence

Exhibit B, statistical and empirical evidence

If this is only Hangchonryon, then by all means point me to the the gratitude of the silent majority which I somehow managed not to see during my four years of service with the Army in Korea. And as I never grow tired of pointing out, the essential racism and anti-Americanism were just as universal when Clinton was president as it was after Bush was elected. The piece continues:

The broad middle section consists of rational people who wisely believe that the U.S. presence is necessary for their security, economy and for bargaining with the North for future reunification. Most of them also know that the necessity is mutual.

Mutual? We can get everything we currently get from South Korea elsewhere. We can get semiconductors from Malaysia, cars from Japan, ships from Maine, and snotty ingratitude from France. Nor is Korea the linchpin of a global struggle to dominate East Asia. Indeed, Chinese absorption of South Korea might mean that China inherits all the problems we have in Korea now. Like Hong Kong, it might become another uppity poison pill for Beijing. America–as I heard a senior aide to the House International Relations Committee tell a room full of shocked Koreans last year–doesn’t need South Korea.

Frankly, North Korea in possession of nukes would scarcely upset us if the North Koreans hoarded them for themselves, since they would probably never dare to use them. We’d be content to contain North Korea and let its society decay. Our security interest in the region is preventing North Korean proliferation to terrorists. Unfortunately, disengagement alone won’t accomplish that. That’s why we need to move a step further, toward malignant disengagement–moving our forces out of harm’s way while we strangle and subvert the North Korean regime’s economic and political weaknesses.

Second, it seems the disengagement theorists feel it hardest to understand why South Koreans would take such a soft stand toward North Korea to the extent that it could undermine U.S. diplomatic and economic pressure on Pyongyang. Seoul’s economic initiatives over the past several years have been primarily aimed at preventing war on the peninsula. They have restored a sense of national identity and general sympathy toward the North as economic disparity further widened.

It ought to be self-evident by now that feeding the beast has made it more dangerous. War is far more likely now that it would have been had Clinton bombed Yongbyon back in ’93. As for the author’s emotional attachment to the North Koreans–by which he means general sympathy to the government and as much distance as possible from the people–it’s a great deflation of the popular myth that nations have interests but not friends. South Korea has neither, because it has let emotions (national identity–in other words, racial identity politics, from which America is excluded by definition and in practice) to dictate its definition of its interests. And when you become emotionally attached to a sociopathic mass murderer because he has mom’s eyes, your friends tend to back away from you. I’d bet it was the same with Ted Bundy, too.

Quick exit of U.S. forces from South Korea and unilateral U.S. withdrawal from the multilateral talks to resolve the North Korean nuclear problem, as one of the disengagement proponents called for, will give freedom to Pyongyang for its trading of the nuclear material it supposedly possess, whether plutonium or highly enriched uranium, with whichever clients willing to pay. Meanwhile, the United States would still not be free to take military action, which would be allowed when a North Korean missile carrying a nuclear warhead flies across the Pacific or the Korean Demilitarized Zone.

Here the author’s goal for the USFK is clearly revealed. He wants us within artillery range so that we can’t assess the risks of a strike to protect our own country without losing troops. He wants American soldiers to be hostages to South Korean interests, including–as the author admits–its economic interests in the North. You can almost hear him hope that North Korean missiles can range U.S. territory. And he’d tell us that this is an ally? Someone explain to me what the common interests and values are here.