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The U.S. and its fading alliance in East Asia

P.S. Suryanarayana

UNITED STATES Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld has told successive annual sessions of the Shangri-La Dialogue in Singapore that night-time satellite imagery shows North Korea in near-total darkness and its southern ethnic neighbour in bright light. Mr. Rumsfeld's illustrative theme, of course, is that South Korea, a long-time U.S. ally, is prosperous, whilst its northern neighbour grovels in poverty that has been made worse by the pursuit of a programme of making and deploying expensive nuclear weapons.

Now, the question is whether Mr. Rumsfeld finds himself in the dark over the extent of erosion that has occurred in the Cold War-era military alliance that the U.S. still has with South Korea. Instructive in this regard is a series of punch-lines South Korean President Roh Moo-hyun recently delivered to drive home his country's urge to break free of the U.S. embrace. At the heart of such political dissent is South Korea's desire to befriend its northern neighbour by acting in their common interest and also independently of the U.S.

Outlining his new policy towards the U.S., Mr. Roh said: "Some say it is time that the U.S. should treat South Korea as a sovereign state. ... South Korea is the only country which does not have wartime operational control of its [own] troops. The world's eleventh biggest economy, also its sixth biggest military power, does not have wartime control. ... The wartime operational control is the core of self-defence, and self-defence is the core of a self-reliant country. When we have wartime control, we also can take the initiative in military talks with North Korea to ease tension and build up military confidence measures on the peninsula."

These comments are reflective of a desire that the U.S. should no longer breathe down South Korea's neck.

Shortly after the outbreak of the 1950-53 Korean War, which the U.S. waged to try and roll back the wave of socialism and communism in East Asia, South Korea, as a new-born American ally then, placed its troops under the wartime control of the United Nations Command (UNC).

With the U.S. heading the UNC, the effective wartime control over South Korean troops went into Washington's hands from then on. The Korean war, which actually crystallised the political division of the peninsula into the northern and southern states, ended in an armistice accord as different from a peace treaty. China, which went to North Korea's assistance, and the U.S. were the principal adversaries of that war, shorn of the diplomatic cover of the U.N. that Washington had clothed itself in.

China's emergence

And, in the five decades since that war, China has emerged as America's potential peer-competitor in areas as diverse as military know-how and space exploration, at one level, and science and technology for basic human development, at another.

However, North Korea, known officially as the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK), has during this period emerged as a vastly weakened economy with a powerful military machine.

An image of this kind has come to define the DPRK, in the absence of free access to its domain and in the context of ongoing efforts by China and South Korea to bolster the North's economy through massive doses of aid.

In contrast, South Korea has certainly become an economic powerhouse, despite long periods of autocratic governance in Seoul. Many South Koreans now tend to regard such autocracy as a thing of the past in their political life.

However, it is hard to dispute the fact that South Koreans, like indeed their Japanese neighbours, have derived an enormous economic dividend from Washington's decades-long practice of treating Seoul as a military protectorate.

Without being unduly burdened by security concerns, the South Koreans have had the political space to develop their economy in recent decades. This aspect encourages Mr. Rumsfeld to gloat over South Korea's brightness, seen as a gift of U.S. benefaction. Surely, he chooses to be oblivious to the depth of the changed feelings of the South Koreans towards the U.S. at this time.

At the fundamental political level, two factors have gone against the U.S. in South Korea in recent years.

First, Seoul's rising self-confidence as an economic powerhouse has only devalued, in its own eyes, the long-term importance of the U.S. military establishment's big-brotherly protective arm.

This applies equally to the U.S. nuclear umbrella over Seoul. And, it is in this domain of nuclear armament politics that the second and more potent cultural factor has come into play against Washington's military presence in South Korea.

Resurgent nationalism

There is some recognition in South Korea that nuclear weapons are an inherently destabilising state asset. But, sizable sections of South Koreans, buoyed by economic progress in recent years, have come to accept nationalism as a worthwhile pursuit in politics as in social life.

This should explain the recent resurgence in Seoul's nationalism, which had first suffered a blow under the Japanese occupation of the Korean peninsula before and during the Second World War. Later, during the period that Seoul came under an intense U.S. tutelage after the Korean War, the people of South Korea could not regain pristine nationalism.

And, in a gradual process, the U.S., or more precisely, the U.S. military personnel on South Korean territory, came to be hated by the local people. This process was hastened by the high-handed attitude of the U.S. military personnel on the ground and by Washington's constant demonisation of the DPRK, widely seen by the South Koreans as an ethnic neighbour they would like to reunite with.

Not unacceptably bothersome to the South Korean people, therefore, is the DPRK's nuclear weapons programme, which the U.S., as the self-styled high priest of non-proliferation, wants to end.

While it cannot be reasoned out that official South Korea is tolerant of the DPRK's nuclear weapons programme, the fact, as Mr. Roh has pointed out, is that Seoul would like to deal, on its own terms, with Pyongyang.

Robert Sutter, a U.S. intelligence-officer-turned-foreign-policy-expert, had recently pointed out that Seoul often viewed its alliance with the U.S. as an asset that made China take South Korea seriously.

However, as authoritative Chinese sources say, the reunification of the two Koreas may result in a new and stronger entity and Seoul does not fail to notice Washington's interest in exploiting the North Korean nuclear issue so as to prolong its military "occupation" in East Asia.

In these circumstances, Mr. Roh's latest call, still opposed by some conservatives at home, is likely to deter the U.S. from seeking to create an East Asian "concert of nations," inclusive of South Korea and Japan, that could face the "challenge" of the now-ascendant China.

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