Page 3 of 3 US learning hard Korean
truths By John Feffer
region, China would benefit from a US
shift in emphasis from bilateralism to
multilateralism.
If the six-party talks
continue to move forward, so will discussions to
set up a regional peace and security mechanism.
But don't expect it to have any real power. The US
is still too wedded to Cold War alliances and
structures to go the extra step to
embrace real multilateralism
in the region.
What Washington really
wants Except for its nuclear program, the
US could not care less about North Korea. It is
deeply ambivalent about Korean reunification. And
it is not enthusiastic about a regional peace
mechanism that might compete with or undercut
traditional bilateral alliances. It's easy enough
to determine what the US doesn't want in and
around the Korean Peninsula. Figuring out what it
does want, however, is a little more complicated.
First, the United States' major
preoccupation in East Asia is with China and how
to manage the strange relationship of
"congagement" - engagement plus containment - that
has marked the bilateral relationship since
president George H W Bush changed his mind about
the "butchers of Beijing" in the early 1990s.
George W Bush has proved even more pragmatic than
his father.
China has become an important
counter-terrorism ally, a key partner for
resolving the nuclear dispute with North Korea,
and a linchpin of the US economy through its
purchase of Treasury bonds and provider of goods
for American consumers. The Pentagon issues
reports on the threat of China's military
modernization.
The State Department
worries about competition with China for influence
in Africa and Latin America. But this is no Cold
War rivalry. The bonds connecting the two
countries are greater than anything that ever
linked the United States and the Soviet Union,
even during the glory days of detente.
Many Washington pundits gunning for
positions in the next Democratic administration,
whenever that might be, have accused the current
administration of fatally ignoring - or worse,
abetting - China's rise. Of course the Middle East
has been the consuming focus of the Bush
administration. But enough residual anti-communism
and Cold War geopoliticking have remained to push
the administration to adopt several precautionary
measures.
It has upgraded its military
relationship with Japan (and encouraged Japan to
upgrade its own military). It has secured a
strategic partnership with India through a nuclear
deal. And it has boosted Australia to the status
of a junior partner in strategic missile defense.
This is the oldest game in geopolitics. China is
trying to control the Eurasian landmass -
particularly through its renewed partnerships with
Russia and the Central Asian countries - and the
US is playing the role of maritime power
surrounding China on all sides.
At the
same time, the Bush administration has also
advanced the concept of strategic flexibility in
military doctrine to deal with unexpected threats
(terrorism) and to move troops and personnel
quickly to a hot spot if necessary (for instance,
from Korea to the Taiwan Strait). With anti-bases
movements in all of its allies in the region, the
US also needs strategic flexibility to deal with
the unpredictable consequences of democratic
decisions, namely national parliaments passing
resolutions that kick US troops out of their
countries.
Finally, the US is trying to
keep its hand in East Asia economically. This is
the most important economic region of the world,
and the administration of president Bill Clinton
created the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation
forum to keep the United States anchored in the
region. The Bush administration prefers the
bilateral approach. China has become the largest
trade partner for both Japan and South Korea. The
US response: a free-trade deal with South Korea.
North Korea is truly small potatoes in all
of this. It doesn't figure prominently in any of
the US strategic objectives, such as containing
China or remaining engaged economically in the
region. Its economy is a mere whisper, its
military a mere shadow of its former self. The
six-party talks are a testament to the political
power of a nuclear weapon. North Korea's nuclear
program is the single criterion for membership at
the negotiating table.
Different beds,
different dreams The most important
implication of North Korea's relative
insignificance in the US strategic assessment of
East Asia is the disabling asymmetry of intentions
between the two primary negotiators. The US is
focused on a single goal: getting rid of its
adversary's nuclear program.
North Korea,
on the other hand, is interested in a
relationship: diplomatic ties followed by expanded
trade and technical exchange. The US is simply not
interested in a special relationship similar to
what prevailed between Beijing and Washington
after the opening of the 1970s. It is not just
that North Korea is reluctant to give up what the
US wants it to forgo. It wants what the US is very
reluctant to provide. Pyongyang and Washington are
in entirely different beds having entirely
different dreams.
This asymmetry extends
to US-South Korean relations. The two countries
have a very different view of North Korea. Seoul
can't help but have some kind of relationship with
Pyongyang. The conservatives, who are leading in
the polls for the December presidential elections,
now largely embrace the same politics of
engagement with the North as practiced by Kim
Dae-jung and his successor Roh Moo-hyun. There is
now consensus across the political spectrum over
the main components, such as the Gaesong
industrial zone, cultural and scientific
exchanges, and gradual political rapprochement.
The DMZ that divides North and South Korea
is still a significant division. It separates
large armies, powerful artillery positions, and
different economic and political ideologies. But
the upcoming inter-Korean summit will highlight
all that has changed in bilateral relations over
the past decade. The DMZ is no longer the fearsome
obstacle it once was, and the two Koreas are
groping their way toward peace rather than
stumbling toward war.
The more difficult
obstacle may well be that which divides the US and
the different parts of the Korean Peninsula. The
two Koreas are united by national interest and a
sense of historical inevitability. The US and
North Korea have so little in common that a
successful resolution of the six-party talks may
prove ultimately elusive. As for the growing
divide between the two allies, Washington and
Seoul, it can only be hoped that the dissolution
of the alliance, when it comes, will be amicable.
Washington certainly doesn't want the
negotiations with Pyongyang to fail, leaving North
Korea with its nuclear program. Nor does
Washington want its alliance with Seoul to fall
apart. But the hard truths at the core of US
policy toward the region - a lack of interest in
North Korea beyond its nukes, an ambivalence
toward Korean reunification, a skepticism toward
robust regional structures - are so at odds with
Korean political sensibilities that they may well
yield these results. As that great geopolitical
thinker Mick Jagger once said, "You can't always
get what you want."
John Feffer
is co-director of Foreign Policy In Focus at the
Institute for Policy Studies (www.ips-dc.org).
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