US, Korea: The thaw begins
By Denis Burke for ISN
Speculation about the implications of Barack Obama’s presidency for Northeast Asia is rife, but in the case of South Korea, the upcoming inauguration is just the latest in a series of changes in the US-South Korea security alliance.
The alliance has seen some dark days over the last decade. South Korean President Roh Moo-hyun and US President George W Bush’s approaches to North Korea were starkly at odds, causing growing rifts between Washington and Seoul.
In the years between Madeline Albright’s visit to Pyongyang and the first North Korean nuclear test it was difficult to find anything optimistic about Korea’s situation. Korean popular opinion of the presence of American forces on the peninsula also took a battering following a number of incidents involving US servicemen.
And South Korea has not been alone in weighing its ties with the US. The geopolitics of Northeast Asia have shifted since the turn of the new millennium. China has become a global economic juggernaut, North Korea has tested nuclear weapons and the US has been weakened and overstretched by its operations in Afghanistan and Iraq. Both Tokyo and Seoul have had reason to wonder if these shifts were leading to strategic abandonment by Washington.
Bush’s hard-line approach and Roh’s pronounced efforts at rapprochement left Washington feeling that South Korea was being too indulgent with the North, and left Seoul feeling that Korean entanglement in US military action was a very real possibility. Daniel Sneider also mentions in his September 2007 article external pageU.S. & ROK Policy Options, Strategic Abandonment that Roh’s appeals to Korean nationalism did not help ties with the US.
But it seems that this icy period of the half-century-old alliance has begun a rapid thaw.
In 2007, Washington adopted a new strategy coupling North Korean nuclear disarmament with the normalization of relations with the US. Not only has this approach seen North Korea removed from the list of state sponsors of terror but, more widely, it has seen genuine efforts to engage Pyongyang at the negotiating table.
Sneider goes on to say that “U.S. favorability has risen significantly in Korea - from 46 percent in 2003 to 58 percent in 2007.”
Along with the revised 2007 American policy on North Korea, efforts are underway to make the US-South Korean military relationship more equal, as well as to move US troops off of garrisons on some of Seoul’s most valuable real estate.
Obama will inherit a more sympathetic, America-friendly relationship with South Korea. But more importantly, the approach of South Korea’s new president, Lee Myung Bak, to North Korea and attitudes towards the cross-Pacific alliance is just what Washington needs. The greatly more conservative Lee’s election marks a return to a more tried and tested South Korean approach to their northern neighbor.
In an external pageinterview with The New York Times in April, Lee “unequivocally stressed the importance of maintaining United States troops on the Korean Peninsula and said the two countries shared objectives in their policies toward North Korea.” Lee is determined to engage the North on a give and take basis and he will likely find a sympathetic ally in President Obama.
“There has been a symbolic improvement between South Korea and the United States since President Lee took office, who pronounced the restoration of the alliance with the United States was the top diplomatic priority of his administration” said Tong Kim, Adjunct Professor at the US Korea Institute, “the old 'damage' has been repaired, but it remains to be seen whether new damage will be inflicted in the course of coordinating their positions on North Korea.”
Tim Savage, of the external pageNautilus Institute, echoed these reservations: “There is also a lot of fear that if Obama pushes ahead with engagement with North Korea while inter-Korean relations remain stalemated, South Korea will end up being isolated in the process. But there's a disagreement over whether that means the US should slow down or that the Lee administration should take a more proactive approach.”
Although the security dynamic in Northeast Asia has changed significantly since Bush came to the White House, it seems that the US-South Korea security alliance is reverting to an earlier, more forward-looking position. The role of the US as a stabilizing force in the region is hardly disputable, and the incumbent South Korean administration seems to understand that quite well.
It is too early to celebrate renewed Korean-American friendship, but the alliance is robust, healthy and, under Lee’s watch, regaining popular Korean support. As Daniel Sneider wrote, “this [change of leadership in South Korea and the US] will create a moment to counter the drift toward strategic abandonment.”