With Friends Like These (Pt. 2)
Via Robert, there is finally confirmation for something I’ve long suspected — the South Korean government brings anti-Americanism to the bargaining table and uses it as a negotiating tool:
Hong Seong-tae, a sociology professor at Sangji University, said, “The anti-American sentiment, voluntarily created by citizens, helps South Korea increase its negotiating power in its relations with the U.S.
In fact, Trade Minister Kim Jong-hoon said, “Whenever the negotiations were at risk of failing, I produced a picture of the candlelight demonstrations.
In a self-congratulatory statement, the government gave itself 90 points out of 100 to its handling of the additional round of negotiations with the United States that resulted in new sanitary rules for beef imports.
In the end, the anger sparked by the candles, rather than appearing as a flash in the pan with the South Korean government kowtowing to the United States, has enabled the country to revise some of the terms of the deal. [The Hankyoreh; emphasis mine]
As I said, I’ve long suspected the same in the case of SOFA and cost-sharing negotiations, so I’m not sure why I find this so infuriating. Maybe it’s simply the fact that we put up with this. Maybe it’s the fact that I’m not sure who is governing South Korea, or whether South Korea is even governable above a basic roads-and-utilities level.
Speaking of cost-sharing, GI Korea links to South Korea’s latest creative scheme for sharing an even smaller portion of the cost of its own defense while sucking even more dollars out of the wallets of American taxpayers:
South Korea will likely start paying its share of the cost of maintaining U.S. troops here in goods rather than cash, officials said Friday, in an apparent move to limit Washington’s use of the money to pay for the ongoing relocation of frontline U.S. bases here. [Yonhap]
Another obvious purpose for this would be to channel USFK’s procurement toward preferred Korean vendors instead of the lowest bidder or U.S. manufacturers. This way, South Korea can capture even more of the “downsteam” economic benefits of USFK from what would otherwise be U.S. government contractors, some of which would be American.
The United States has long used part of the fund provided by Seoul to pay for the southward relocation of its frontline bases in what many South Koreans view as a diversion of the funds intended to pay for the cost of maintaining the U.S. forces in Korea. [Yonhap]
I’m not an expert on government contracting or procurement law, but I’d love to see what the GAO thinks of that. Personally, I like GI Korea’s suggestion about how to respond to this.
This is more evidence that, from the perspective of U.S. interests, South Korea is more parasite than ally. Personally, I’ve given up on the idea of a “conservative” government repairing an alliance that neither America nor Korea has needed for at least a decade. What U.S. interests does our expensive and strategically risky military commitment to South Korea really advance? We get along well enough with Chile, Singapore, Nigeria, and Moldova without stationing troops there.