Korean needs attention from the U.S.
Young Kim
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The Next Hot Spot
By Nick Eberstadt and Richard J. Ellings
The Bush administration´s comprehensive, top-level review of U.S.
policy toward the Korean peninsula (currently under way, and slated
for conclusion this summer) could hardly be taking place at a more
opportune moment. A number of decisions about Korean affairs by the
previous American foreign policy team fairly cry out for scrutiny. No
less important, because the security environment in Northeast Asia is
in the midst of profound change, developments in the Korean peninsula
may soon present Washington with great new dangers or new
opportunities. Such contingencies require serious long-range thinking
by responsible policy-makers.
In the not-so-distant past, Korea was akin to an anvil upon which the
Great Powers of the Pacific China, Japan, Russia and the United States
wielded their hammers to forge world history, often to tragic effect.
(Between 1880 and 1955, recall, three Great Power wars were fought on
Korean soil.) Today, by contrast, Korea looks increasingly positioned
to act deliberately or inadvertently as a driver of international
events.
On the immediate horizon, North Korea´s quest to develop an arsenal of
nuclear, biological and chemical weapons and the ballistic missile
systems to target distant countries with these deadly devices
threatens to alter the security calculus that has maintained stability
and peace in the North Pacific region for the past five decades.
But still greater Korean challenges to international peace and
stability may also lie in store. Divided Korea´s two-state structure
is under steadily mounting internal pressures, due to South Korea´s
successes and systemic North Korean failures. Indefinite continuation
of the now-familiar two-state arrangement in the Korean peninsula is
no longer a foregone conclusion. Clearly, termination of that
arrangement could entail terrible upheavals, with repercussions
reverberating well beyond the confines of the Korean peninsula. Coping
with radical change in Korea, and devising a new architecture for
peace and prosperity in a very different Korea from the one we know
today, may be urgent tasks confronting the Pacific powers and the
international community in the uncertain years ahead.
Are we up to the task? There probably has been no previous period in
modern history when animosities between all of the great powers of the
Pacific were as attenuated as they are today or when the international
structure of security and economic relations so encouraged national
advance through commercial cooperation and international economic
integration among them. At the same time, however, challenges to
peace, stability and prosperity could easily arise in the decades
ahead as a result of tensions or failures within the region´s
post-Cold War order. Globalization does not forestall the possibility
of international conflict even major conflicts between major economic
actors. History is replete with examples of national directorates that
made fatefully bad choices when better options were available to them.
Coping with dramatic change in Korea will require not only planning in
Washington, but cooperation wherever possible with other powers. The
United States and China, for example, do not have identical views on
the Korea issue but have basic interests in common; hence, cooperation
has been possible on key matters. The possibilities for future
cooperation in Korea, however, will depend crucially upon the overall
tenor of relations between the two governments which is to say that
tensions between Washington and Beijing over seemingly unrelated
issues could seriously limit the prospects for constructive
Sino-American cooperation in the Korean peninsula.
Post-communist Moscow, for its part, has been something less than a
consummate promoter of its own diplomatic advantage in the region.
Russia now suffers marginalization not just in Korea but in the entire
East Asian diplomatic arena and much of the explanation for this
predicament lies in the conduct of Russian foreign policy itself.
Russian security interests are arguably consonant with both close
cooperation with the United States, Japan and South Korea, and with
American leadership in the regional security structure but it may be
incumbent upon American statesmen to persuade their Russian
counterparts of the fact, so as to prevent resentful sentiment from
standing in the way of mutually beneficial cooperation.
Then there is Japan a great Pacific power in its own right, and the
United States´ most important partner in East Asia. Japan is an
economic colossus with vital concerns next door but remarkably little
leeway for independent action, given its historical legacy, its
postwar polity, and the narrow international channel that contemporary
Japanese policy-makers wish to navigate. Paradoxically, American
policy may prove key to enlightened promotion of Japanese national
interests for some time to come.
In Washington and elsewhere, policy-makers and strategists seem to be
more comfortable positing a continuation of the Korea status quo than
contemplating what alternative Korean futures might portend for
national interests. The factors accounting for a lack of forward
thinking about Korea at this relatively calm juncture in world affairs
are entirely understandable. To explain the phenomenon, however, is
not to excuse it. Policy-makers are always at a disadvantage when they
are taken by surprise by the rush of events. Given Korea´s importance
in contemporary world affairs, and some of the plausible problems that
the peninsula could face in the not-distant future, the costs of
Korean "surprises" for inadequately prepared governments with
interests in the region at stake could prove to be especially high.
Nick Eberstadt holds the Henry Wendt chair at the American Enterprise
Institute. Richard J. Ellings is president of the National Bureau of
Asian Research.