Korea, China and the US — An Alternative View

In his CenterMovement.org essays of May 6 and June 3, Stephen Erickson has laid out thoughtful challenges to current US policy toward Korea and China and a series of bold initiatives to take policy in a different direction.  The essays are extraordinarily opportune, given the current North-South crisis in Korea and the North’s continuing nuclear-weapons program.  What follow are an alternative analysis of the issues and some alternative proposals.

The Broad Context: “Cold War anachronism” is probably not the most accurate way to describe the US presence in the Republic of Korea (hereinafter South Korea).  While the main front of the Cold War ended in August 1991 with the defeat of the hard-line Communist coup in the Soviet Union, Communist totalitarianism continues to rule in China, North Korea, Laos, and to a considerable extent in Vietnam.  Human rights and political and religious freedoms are as repressed in these countries as they were twenty years ago (though Vietnam has significantly relaxed its anti-religious policies).  The Chinese Party-military-police regime welcomes foreign capital and the opportunity to increase its cash reserves by selling massive quantities of low-cost products abroad, but this greater economic openness has had minimal impact on how it treats its people or on its determination to maintain a system as repressive as the one in North Korea.

Even apart from the nuclear issue, much is at stake in the ongoing Korean crisis:  for South Korea, its independence and the rights and freedoms of its people; for the other countries of East Asia, a climate of peace with sufficient regional stability to permit normal economic, social and political development; and for the US, all of the foregoing plus continued confidence in the reliability of US commitments to our allies and friends in the Pacific Basin, and the contribution this in turn makes to US and global security.

The Role of US Troops: Our military presence in South Korea is the main reason war has not broken out during the fifty-seven years since the armistice, in very much the way that our long presence, together with the UK and France, protected West Berlin.  In both cases the vastly outnumbered defenders successfully deterred an attack, despite severe pressures and periodic threats of annihilation.  Does anyone really think that the two million West Berliners would have remained free for a week if the Allies had removed their few brigades to West Germany?  If North Korea has long had in place sufficient forces to seize Seoul and send the South Korean government fleeing, a la 1950, the physical presence of the US “tripwire” is the only credible explanation for why it has refrained from doing so.

Withdrawing our forces offshore and offering instead assurances of future help would be a clear statement that our security commitment to South Korea is no longer what it was, despite our alliance.  One cannot effectively defend an ally against a massive land invasion solely with ships and remote airbases.  And we tried partial withdrawal a few years ago: in an effort to defuse tensions and after consultation with South Korea, we reduced troop strength by 25% and repositioned our forces within the country.  This move has obviously not helped to moderate the North’s policies.

And, as noted above, by staying in Korea we reassure not only South Korea but also our other allies in Asia that we will keep our commitments.

Nuclear Matters: North Korea’s nuclear-weapons programs further impede the process of working toward a stable modus vivendi between the two Koreas.  They add a new tension-heightening factor, lending support to those in the US who advocate air and ground military strikes to destroy the North Korean facilities.  This is not the optimal solution for South Korea or for us, and it increases the incentive to explore as wide a range as possible of other pathways to the goal of a non-nuclear North Korea.  In the off-and-on Six-Party Talks, we have on occasion persuaded the North Korean regime to slow down or temporarily suspend parts of its nuclear program.  But it has not sustained these positive steps, ditched the program, or restored IAEA controls.

Searching for a different approach, Stephen Erickson proposes a “grand bargain” — that we offer China a gradual but eventually complete US military withdrawal from South Korea as a bargaining tool if China will guarantee to prevent North Korea from attacking the South.

The success of such a strategy would depend on China’s actual medium- and long-term objectives and intentions.  How much do we really know, and not know, about these fundamental matters?   Based on what we do know, we can infer that China would be happy to see the US military leave South Korea, because any US retreat in the region opens an opportunity to expand China’s influence.  Japan cannot fill that vacuum in Korea because of its World War II history, and Russia doesn’t seem interested, so the way would be clear for Beijing.   Beyond this, however, we don’t really know a lot about China’s intentions and plans because except for certain aforementioned economic practices, China is not an open society.   Reliable, objective information on matters relevant to understanding non-economic Chinese objectives and policies is very difficult to obtain.  There is no consensus on these subjects among scholars in the West, many of whom bring to their work an understanding based on birth or long residence in China. Making a major policy concession on a matter vital to the US and its allies in East Asia with this level of uncertainty is a risk we should not be willing to undertake.  A decision to pursue the grand bargain would assume that once the US has left Korea, China would invest the resources needed to stand in the way of a North Korean attack on the South.  There is no evidence to support this assumption; and if China were to intervene to halt a North Korean invasion already begun, it would in effect be intervening on the side of the South, which is unthinkable.

Also, the grand bargain would not require China to denuclearize the North unless the South went nuclear.   If the North invaded, it might also use nuclear weapons, if it has any at the time, whether or not the South also possessed its own – thus piling nightmare upon nightmare.   But, to step back a moment, does China really want to denuclearize North Korea, and could it bring this off short of using force against the latter, whether or not the South goes nuclear?   If the Chinese actually support a nuclear-free peninsula, as they suggest they do, why didn’t China stop Pyongyang’s nuclear-weapons program fifteen or ten or even five years ago?  Either they don’t want to or they can’t, and both explanations undercut a key foundation of the proposed grand bargain.  One might think that the Chinese would want to be helpful to the US on Korea, because of the vast economic benefits they derive from our bilateral relationship, but there is scant public evidence of such helpfulness.  Does this decidedly unsupportive attitude provide any confidence that an assurance by Beijing would be honored in practice?   In such circumstances, the best decision is to hold on to the positions of strength we now have and to move cautiously through the darkness.

Possible Alternative Approaches:  At present, there is no realistic alternative to maintaining the US military presence in South Korea and continuing the Six-Party talks and accompanying shuttle diplomacy.  Fortunately, these activities are far from futile; rather, they are essential and promising, and may yield breakthroughs.  But we should still explore additional options.

Complicating the search for alternatives is the absence in East Asia of any regional security organization like NATO, the EU, the OSCE, the OAS or the African Union.  There is no regional structure within which to assemble an international peacekeeping force that could take the place of the US military presence.  The UN Security Council and the General Assembly (under the Uniting for Peace procedure) can establish such a force. China might be persuaded to support a UN peacekeeping force in the right circumstances.  Another possibility is a non-UN multilateral peacekeeping force, not under the command authority of the UN Secretary General but nevertheless authorized by the Security Council or the General Assembly.  Either option would be far better for South Korea and for us than trusting China to police the peninsula benevolently by itself.

On the nuclear issue, the UN system offers several negotiating forums in addition to the Security Council, including the (permanent) Conference on Disarmament and the IAEA.  In addition, UN-mandated sanctions can be further strengthened; while sanctions alone can almost never bring about a solution to an international problem, they are often an effective ingredient of a coordinated and sustained strategy.

Asia’s principal regional organization, the Association of South East Asian Nations (ASEAN), does not have an official role in regional security – and neither of the Koreas is a member.  However, both have participated in various ASEAN-organized meetings, including the annual ASEAN Regional Forum, which includes China, both Koreas, and the US, Russia and Japan.  Another format, the ASEAN + 3, which includes China, South Korea and Japan, meets to discuss economic issues but obviously provides yet another venue for informal contacts on other topics of common concern.

Finally, think-tank gatherings such as those organized by the International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS) and the MacArthur Foundation have become important locations for informal discussion of new initiatives.   The IISS annual “Shangri-La Conference” on Asia, for instance, attracts the participation of ministerial-level officials, this year including US Defense Secretary Gates.   A solution to the Korean problem may just emerge from one of these meetings or from an ASEAN forum; if the ping-pong diplomacy of the 1970s could lead to something big, then so might something like this.

With the stakes so high and solid information on Beijing’s intentions and strategy so sparse, the options outlined above provide more prudent and more promising approaches than the proposal for a “grand bargain” with China.