The Death of an Alliance, Part III

Today, it’s the Brookings Institution . . . in the Washington Times, meaning that we’re not merely facing the death of the alliance, but the Apocalypse. For those of you from outside the Beltway, Brookings is a left-of-center foreign policy think tank that’s been supportive of negotiations with North Korea, often in the face of evidence that those negotiations have bought us little. Jack Pritchard has a job there, which might normally settle the matter. Author Richard Halloran, however, has been more realistic than most of his colleagues in the past. Today, he’s gone a step further:

South Korea is fast approaching a critical decision as to whether to try to revive its troubled alliance with the United States or dissolve their joint security treaty, expel American forces from the peninsula and seek an alliance with China.

. . . .
A year ago, Lee Chung-min, a scholar at Yonsei University in Seoul, articulated the issue: “The question for South Korea in the beginning of the 21st century is whether it should strive to prolong, strengthen and modernize its maritime alliance with the United States or strive to seek ‘strategic accommodation’ with its traditional, pre-20th-century patron, China.” South Korea, he said, must take “a long and hard look at its core security option and attendant consequences for at least the next two or three decades.” In the conference here, a Korean scholar, who could not be identified under the rules of the meeting in order to encourage candor, posed the same question: “Who constitutes South Korea’s natural ally — a democratic America or an Asian China?”

The participants expanded on many causes for the widening U.S.-Korean divide, which could just as well have been summarized as a small and dwindling set of common interests and values:

In arguing that the alliance was in danger of collapsing, speakers variously pointed to large anti-American demonstrations, the anti-American rhetoric of President Roh Moo-hyun and comments by South Korean leaders that their country might not fight alongside Americans to repel a North Korean attack. Similarly, when the United States asked South Korea to send 12,500 troops to Iraq to support the counterinsurgency there, President Roh grudgingly sent 3,500. Several speakers said Mr. Roh ignored the advice of South Korea’s military leaders on this and other issues. Other speakers mentioned polls showing that South Koreans consider the United States to be more of a threat than North Korea, contentions that the division of Korea into North and South was the fault of Washington and a rash of articles in the Korean press critical of American policies.

Both the idea of a U.S. withdrawal (which I favor, in regard to ground forces) and even complete disengagement from Korea (which doesn’t address North Korean proliferation) appear to have gained currency among what might have been considered hard-core boosters of diplomacy:

One American participant suggested that the United States should disengage itself from the Korean Peninsula because of North Korean refusal to give up nuclear ambitions and South Korean anti-Americanism. Seoul and Pyongyang then could settle their disputes between themselves. No South Korean government official or scholar objected. The Americans, however, were divided. Some contended that withdrawal was a “nutty” idea that would encourage North Korea to subvert South Korea and cause political turmoil as Asians saw the United States abandoning them. Other American participants thought it was a good idea. One said there was “no reason to keep American forces in Korea,” while South Korea is able to defend itself and those troops are needed elsewhere. Suggesting that the Americans in South Korea are being held hostage, he concluded: “Let my people go.”

Well, I guess it’s unanimous, then. But to me, this was the nugget of wisdom that stuck:

One Korean participant offered perhaps the most incisive assessment of his country’s attitude: “South Koreans fight over what they hate, not over what they stand for.”