LA Times on the Declining US-ROK Alliance

A long an interesting article in the LA Times this week (free registration required) on the decline of the U.S.-Korean alliance. The article was written by several reporters, including OFK favorite Barbara Demick, and suffers from the contradictory biases of several of them as a result. It begins by accusing the United States of neglecting the alliance, only later getting around to the point that the current Korean government has profited from popular hostility to the United States.

Fallout from the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq also rippled through South Korea. A January 2004 poll by Seoul-based Research & Research indicated that South Koreans considered the United States a greater threat than North Korea.

Hang Sung Joo, acting president of Korea University in Seoul and a former foreign
minister, spoke of an easing of U.S.-South Korean tensions in the two years
since Roh won election on an anti-American-flavored platform, but he said he remained unsure about the alliance’s future.”It will be several years before we know whether it will survive and thrive, or will get worse,” he said in an interview.

Although South Korea is the third-largest contributor of military forces to the U.S.-led military coalition in Iraq, some Koreans complain they are unappreciated and that Washington has consistently underplayed their contribution. Seoul’s plan to withdraw one-third of its 3,200 troops from Iraq was made public in November while Bush was in South Korea for an annual summit of Asia-Pacific nations. The news not only caught American officials by surprise, but also seemed timed to inflict maximum embarrassment on Bush.

In fact, I don’t exactly disagree with either point, except for the part about “the administration” neglecting the alliance. The alliance is in trouble because of the people the Koreans elected to office. The Koreans elected these people to office because the North Koreans outcompeted us in the battle to influence Korean public opinion in the schools, universities, and press rooms. The United States lost that battle because for at least two decades, U.S. diplomats failed to identify rising anti-Americanism and react to it effectively. That, however, is not what the article is saying.

I’ll close the post with this quote, speculating on just what the U.S. has in mind:

Officials in Seoul have expressed their distaste for a decades-old arrangement that puts South Korean troops under the command of a U.S. general during times of war, and Pentagon officials seem more than willing to make changes in the future. In fact, Pentagon officials say they look forward to the day when Seoul’s military can assume a larger role on the Korean peninsula, and insist that the South is “pushing on an open door” when it demands more control over its own security.

“We’ve been clear that we are ready to move as rapidly as the Koreans want to, but have insisted that if they desire to take the leading position in the alliance, they must put the capabilities in place required to assume that role,” Deputy Undersecretary of Defense Richard Lawless said in an interview.

It is unclear to what extent the U.S. actions are determined by the need to stay ahead of increasingly anti-American public opinion in South Korea or whether the moves are driven more by other factors, including a simple desire to create distance from a difficult ally.”Part of me thinks [the Americans are] doing this to show the South Koreans they need us,” said Kurt Campbell, a top Asia specialist at the Pentagon during the Clinton administration who is now at the Washington-based Center for Strategic and International Studies. Another reason, he said, “is that we need forces elsewhere. A third is that they’ve just had it with the South Koreans.”

I suspect that the U.S. would like to rebuild the relationship with the South Korean public, hence the public diplomacy campaign. I hope, however, that this campaign goes along with a more up-to-date and sensible view of the costs and benefits of having tens of thousands of our service members in Korea. Removing the bulk of them would go far to dispel the unhinged myth of Korea as a U.S. colony. On the other hand, if the South Koreans can’t be budged from their adherence to North Korea, nothwithstanding the horrors is inflicts on its own people and the threat it poses to the United States (not to mention South Korea) the price of rebuilding that relationship may be too high.

Read the whole thing. Ht The Nomad.