A Good Week for Lee Myung-Bak, But What America Gained Isn’t So Clear

On balance, Lee Myung Bak seems to having a pretty good week — at least better than last week’s failure to secure a serious response to the Cheonan incident abroad or even at home. This week, Lee has already won a three-year delay in the dissolution of the U.S.-ROK Combined Forces Command, a/k/a OpCon transfer. He also secured a commitment by President Obama to push for an FTA that had faced strong opposition from some American labor unions and Max Baucus, the patron saint of cattle ranchers in God’s country (if you must know, it begins at the Rockies and ends where the eastern bank of the Missouri River cedes to the flat, glacial topography beyond).

Lawmakers from Obama’s Democratic party who had campaigned against the deal appear ready to approve it. “The president’s announcement of a concrete plan to move the Korea agreement forward is great news for America’s economy,” said Democratic Senator Max Baucus, head of the powerful Senate Finance Committee. He called it “the most commercially significant trade agreement in more than a decade.”

“But I’ve long held serious concerns about the unscientific barriers Korea has erected against American beef — barriers that must be removed. I intend to work with both the administration and Korea to craft a plan to fully open Korea’s market to safe and delicious American beef,” he said. [AFP]

You tell ’em, Max.

Readers will recall that I wasn’t initially a big fan of the FTA, either. For one thing, an FTA is supposed to be an inducement to better relations, yes, but also a reward to governments that behave like allies, which Roh Moo Hyun’s certainly did not. I was and am incensed by the idea of rewarding Roh’s anti-American ex-president and his anti-American party with an FTA for their valiant effort to unilaterally moot South Korea’s alliance with the United States, keep North Korea safe for human rights atrocities and proliferation, and demonize the American government and its soldiers. For another, the FTA annex regarding those “outward processing zones” clearly referred to North Korea’s Kaesong Industrial Park, and a stealth FTA for Kim Jong Il was more than I could stand (though not more than I could believe possible in the waning years of the Bush Administration). Today, Kaesong’s decline is sufficiently advanced that its death is pretty much assured, and I’m much less worried about this concern than I was in 2008. And while I won’t call Lee Myung Bak a true ally until he sends a brigade to forcibly repossess the ransom Roh paid to the Taliban, I at least credit him for slowing the rate at which South Korea undermines American economic pressure on North Korea. And if that sounds like faint praise, then it is.

As for delaying the OpCon transfer date, I share Robert’s disappointment and don’t have much to add to his thoughts, except to emphasize that South Korean opcon is fundamentally about a strong South Korea, though it’s also about tailoring U.S. force commitments to suit our own risk-reward calculations and national security priorities. Like Robert, I also hope we got something in return for all of these concessions, because I don’t think extending the opcon transfer will do anything to heal what’s fundamentally unhealthy about the alliance — the wide gap between how the two nations perceive their own interests and values.

If and when the U.S. and ROK governments finally realize that our fundamental problem with North Korea is with the identity and character of those who run the place, we’ll have a much more effective policy together than separately. It is the realization of this truth, the determination to act on it, and the creativity and vision to see how that can best unite the interests of the two nations. A strong alliance between America and South Korea can no more be built on the presence of thousands of American soldiers in Korea than it can on the absence of any significant Korean forces from Afghanistan.