It seems as though President Roh has been romancing North Korea and things have been getting chummy. Roh was in Washington recently for a most unceremonious meeting with President Bush, and the long marriage between America and South Korea did not appear to be ending happily. Mr. Higham, of the aforementioned blog, has excerpts from an essay in The Asia Times by an American scholar, Dr. Sung-Yoon Lee, on the situation. Here are further snips from the original:South Korean President Roh Moo-hyun’s summit with President George W Bush on[last] Thursday is likely to go down in the annals of US-South Korea relations as an epoch-making event, but not quite in the way one might think. It may be the swan song of the US-South Korea alliance.
[…]
On its face, Roh’s meeting with Bush was a routine, even forgettable exercise in ordinary summit diplomacy. The two men had already enjoyed five cordial if unmemorable meetings since Roh’s inauguration in 2003, and neither side issued a press-stopping communiqué out of the scheduled hour-long conversation followed by an obligatory luncheon.
Nonetheless, Roh’s visit may inadvertently prove to be a defining moment for the US-South Korea alliance, presaging its sunset, for beneath the public smiles and handshakes between the two leaders and optimistic-sounding but inscrutable pronouncements, such as seeking a “joint comprehensive approach” to restarting the six-party talks, unmistakably flowed an undercurrent of unfriendly distrust.
The alliance has proved to be one of the most successful and durable in the world. But today Roh wishes to destroy its time-tested dynamics by wresting away from the United States wartime operational control of the two countries’ armed forces, the result of which will be the complete and virtually irreversible dismantlement of the US-ROK (Republic of Korea) Combined Forces Command.
This will set the stage, at the cost of broader US interests in Northeast Asia and to the detriment of South Korea’s security, for the withdrawal of US troops from Korea.
[…]
President Roh believes he has little to lose by insisting on the transfer of wartime operational control, which he pointedly defined recently as the “essence of sovereignty for any nation.”
Hmm…It may also be that having a 600 pound radioactive gorilla on your borders does even more to “define” sovereignty. Roh may be caught between a rock and a hard place, and one of those is spelled e-l-e-c-t-i-o-n-s:
President Roh has proved to be different from his predecessors. During his three and a half years in office, Roh has followed through on his words with actions. True to his rhetoric, “So what if I am anti-US?” or “Yes, my anti-US stance has been good to me,” Roh has unflinchingly and systematically aided the enemy of the United States — and incontrovertibly the main enemy of the US Forces in Korea (USFK) — the totalitarian North Korean state that is bent on increasing its arsenal of weapons of mass destruction (WMD).
As Dr. Lee observed, Bush is aware of the pitfalls here:
Keeping in mind that the issue is a potential trap for instigating anti-US demonstrations leading up to South Korea’s presidential election in December next year, Bush simply intoned that the matter should not become “a political issue”. Bush even deftly took a page out of the communist playbook of a “hardliner/softliner” smokescreen, and simply told his guest that South Korea should take up the matter with Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld.
It remains to be seen what the Democrats do with this turn of events. While the bell is tolling, they may be spinning this for all it’s worth as yet another Bush failure.
Whatever. Roh has his own plans and we have other allies in the area. Personally, those base closings appeal to my isolationist heart. Now, let’s see what we can safely remove from Germany and transfer to Eastern Europe.
As for Bush’s “failure,” if the man parted the Red Sea, his enemies would bash him for failing to keep the water in place.
While all the hopeful primary candidates for 2008 are lining up, chomping at the bit, Bush probably has a secret calendar on which he marks off the days left till he gets to walk across the lawn and climb into the helicopter in January, 2009. Unlike his predecessor, he has a real life awaiting him, far from the Beltway.
12 comments:
If South Korea wants to join hands with a famine and pay for their millions of starving northern cousins, God Bless 'em.
(To come out of this 50 plus year folly with something other than a former ally gone wobbly, if not mad, can't we at least make a pre-emptive backroom deal with China and have them "buy" South Korea from us in return for all of our intellectual property they have stolen over the past 20 years? In other words, tell China we will leave the peninsula... making both the delusional South Koreans and the mercenary Chicoms happy... say for a cool for 1 trillion dollars, US? If we're going to be asked to leave, anyway, let's make it pay.)
FWIW probably the best general Korean commentry comes from the Marmot's Hole including this very good IHT article. The current Korean government needs to be taken at its word and left alone to do what it will. When it collapses the next government may be more sane.
I'd boycott South Korea, except where could I get my suits drycleaned?
:-)
Gratitude is an unnatural emotion for individuals or countries - it's foolish to expect it.
The obligation of gratitude breeds resentment and ultimately, hatred. The US policy of assuming the security burdens of the entire world for an indefinite period after WWII was based on unrealistic expectations about the future. We should be looking at dismantling or radically altering all those asymmetric alliances. In particular, the huge US troop presence in Germany is absurd.
Having traveled to S. Korea, I'd say let them go. Dan M has great points. I would suggest that once US leaves S. Korea, they won't be able to keep back the hoards of refugees because they will be backed by the leaders of the North. And China wants it all anyway. Like Profitsbeard's idea - let China pay and forgive our trade debt plus throw in an extra trillion.
I respect the ROK forces though. Unlike us, they didn't take any prisoners. When it comes to fighting and rules of engagement, the ROK forces as well as the Turks aren't bothered by "humane" treatment and certainly not about the rights to be lavished on rusty-knife wielding terrorists. As for their women and children, good luck.
THe US would not have shouldered security for "the whole world" as you put it except the Josef Stalin planned to go to war...........Berlin 1948 was the first test to see if the USA could stay the course - NATO was created 1949
Korea was the second course 1951 - that war had Soviet pilots in Chinese-marked planes. That war ended with Stalin's death/murder in 1953.
The US had a simple choice post-1945 - Remain or Retreat.
Now it needs to weave the same kind of global web the British Empire built in its heyday - and not the kind of flimsy treaty organisations like CENTO (The Baghdad Pact) or SEATO...........it needs to accept more parity with Japan linking closer to India and Australia without the USA trying to be top-dog in the arrangement.
The constant imperative for the US to have the ultimate say leaves it with the ultimate bills.........the scale of the challenge is too great today.
Imagine if Britain could have reached agreement with Germany in 1890 whenHaldane and Joseph Chamberlain tried to negotiate alliances, there would have been a very powerful Western Europe ranged against the Russian Empire
Roh is looking to get re-elected and building up (further)anti-American sentiment is a good approach.
However, I do think the nukes have a whole lot to do with it...esp. when one considers the insanity of those holding the nukes.
We should form a new relationship with a rejeuvenated Japan, and should bring in Australia and India into that new relationship.
Japan is a nation with the most advanced case of the demographic decline that afflicts most advanced countries. It is also a country whose wartime past and vaguely war-embracing present make a more explicit alliance with it radioactive to much of the public in China and Korea, and perhaps in the Philippines, Vietnam, and other places in that part of the world. Their recent deployment in Iraq indicates that they want to ramp up their military profile, but whether they have the means (beyond technological ones, in which they obviously excel), and whether they are the right horse to bet on in that part of the world is a very open question.
Yeah, Seoul can say so long to the US, but then everybody in Asia can say hey to a nuclear armed Japan. That's coming anyway, but I suppose the Koreans and Chinese between them want to speed that event up.
Watch the Imperial Japanese Navy...er, excuse me the "Japan Maritime Self Defense Force." The new era will be well and truly under way when it builds its first carrier. Can't decide if it will be called "Akagi" or "Hosho."
Baron
In the Larger picture.
China considers Korea, Japan, Taiwan, and the Philippines as the First Ring. They do not like our presence there, the see it as their lake. Korea, Japan and Taiwan can take care of themselves with our support in the background. The Philippines can’t. All these countries are doing the “Autonomy Thing” and at least publicly have major groups that want the US out, though most of them know the US is preferable to China. I think they would really like us off the front line but committed to support them in a crisis. While it is described as other things the US under Bush has been pulling back from the first ring to the Second Ring, with a major build up on Guam but also reaffirming our commitments to defend them.
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We have been pulling troops out of Korea to go to Iraq and not returning them. Except for the Nuclear Trigger we do not have much leverage there, but such troops as we have there are very exposed.
The changing political/military situation makes our troops presence more and more a liability than an asset to us.
Also with troops in Korea but not enough to call the shots, to protect our troops we might have to let S Korea dictate a larger policy in the area to our disadvantage
We could make them counter offer. They have the command; we provide and control the nuclear trigger but mostly pull our. Our ground commitment would be a division or so of prepositioned equipment. This lines up well with the current DOD objective of basing as much troops as possible in the US as a general reserve for where they are needed.
It might be the best thing to take his proposal, accompanied with a pull back, saying that our policy has been a success, S Korea is able to take care of itself to the point that we do not need troops on sight.
Or calling the guys bluff might make him more amenable.
This, if handled correctly could come to our advantage.
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A less likely possibility
I don’t know if the Chinese would buy it but we could offer them a deal.
1. China close down Kim Il Sung and his nukes
2. Reunification
3. US Pull out
4. Korean neutrality, with a cap on the size of it’s armed forces. Large enough that China could not invade easily; to small for Korea to attack China. The net defense savings go help pay reunification.
Since the it is official S Korean policy that they want reunification they would have to accept a fait accoply
I think this would help stabilize the NW pacific area for a few decades or more. Japan, Russia and China would not want to start any problems without Korea on their side; Korea could do well playing all ends against the middle. A vital area would be stable with a minimum investment on our part.
Dan, I entirely agree with you, and have been saying the same things for years.
And we should make sure we don't get caught holding the bill when the DMZ finally opens. Let them and the 'world community' pay for it.
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