The Korea Program is part of the Walter H. Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center.
Shorenstein APARC
Stanford University
Encina Hall E301
Stanford, CA 94305-6055
Kyung Joon Oh served as Senior Executive Vice President of Pantech Group and the president of Pantech Capital. He holds a BA in Business Administration and an MBA from Yonsei University in Korea.
With the collapse of Soviet Union and a lack of internal energy resources, North Korea has been in economic hardships since early 1990s. Chung will discuss how the shortage of electric power has affected not only the operations of factories but the daily lives of North Koreans. He will also examine how North Korea has attempted to rehabilitate its energy sector internally and in external relations with neighboring countries as well as in the Six-Party Talks.
Lee will evaluate North Korean nuclear technology based on his analysis of North Korea’s National Science and Technology Development Plan and of its historical background. He
will examine the priorities in disabling of North Korea’s nuclear capacity.
Joon Young Chung is a reporter at Yonhap News, a Korean news wire service, and has worked in various departments including the national desk, business desk and the North Korea desk for the past 14 years. Recently he has covered Inter-Korean Dialogue and the Six-Party Talks.
Choongeun Lee is a Research Fellow at the Science & Technology Policy Institute (STEPI) in Korea. Before joining STEPI, he worked at the Yanbian University of Science & Technology, Chinese Academy of Science, and Peking University in China. He received his B.A. and Ph.D. in engineering from Seoul National University in Korea, and Ph.D. in education from Beijing Normal University in China.
Daniel and Nancy Okimoto Conference Room
Shorenstein APARC
Stanford University
Encina Hall E301
Stanford, CA 94305-6055
Joon Young Chung is a reporter at Yonhap News, a Korean news wire service, and has worked in various departments including the national desk, business desk and the North Korea desk for the past 14 years. Recently he has covered Inter-Korean dialogue and the Six-Party talks.
Shorenstein APARC
Encina Hall, Room E301
Stanford University
Stanford, CA 94305-6055
Choongeun Lee is a Research Fellow at the Science & Technology Policy Institute(STEPI, Korea). Before joining STEPI, he worked at the Yanbian University of Science & Technology, Chinese Academy of Science, and Peking University in China. He received his B.A. and Ph. D in engineering from Seoul National University in Korea, and Ph.D. in education from Beijing Normal University in China.
His research has concentrated on science and technology systems (S&T) and policy of North Korea, China, and other transition countries. His recent publications include Linking strategy of military and civil innovation system based on recent change in security posture on Korean peninsula (2007, STEPI), Education and S&T System in North Korea (2006, Kyongin Publishing Co.), Nuclear Bomb and Technology in North Korea (2005, Itreebook), The S&T System and Policy of North Korea (2005, Hanulbooks), The S&T Cooperation of North Korea-China and its Implication (2005, North Korean Studies Review).
Stanford, Calif. - The visit this week of South Korea's new president, Lee Myung Bak, offers a rare opportunity to put the American-Korean relationship back on a more solid footing. President Lee, who won a decisive victory in last December's election, has expressed views on the security alliance, a bilateral free trade agreement, and policy toward North Korea that are thoroughly compatible with US interests. And Mr. Lee's authority was bolstered by his party's substantial victory in legislative elections April 9.
The question is whether Washington is poised to take advantage of this convergence of views.
For the past eight years, a major perception gap between Seoul and Washington has been painfully evident. Our governments often worked at cross-purposes in the six-party talks to denuclearize North Korea. Progressive governments in South Korea encouraged peaceful coexistence with the North through a pattern of unreciprocated engagement. For much of that time, the Bush administration sought to isolate and pressure Pyongyang into relinquishing its nuclear ambitions, and it made little effort to conceal its hopes for a regime change in Pyongyang.
When Washington decided to move its military headquarters out of Seoul in 2003, many Korean officials suspected that the Americans were just eager to get troops out of North Korean artillery range. President Roh Moo Hyun at times seemed interested in carving out a role as a balance wheel between the major powers in Northeast Asia. Meanwhile, the US was preoccupied by problems in the Middle East, and some American officials wondered if the US-Republic of Korea (ROK) alliance could long survive when one party dismissed the North Korean threat while the other viewed it as increasingly menacing.
Now comes Lee, a former mayor of Seoul and Hyundai construction executive with a reputation for tough-minded, pragmatic conservatism, eager to correct what he described as the misguided priorities of past ROK administrations. In a recent meeting with New Beginnings, a group of American policy experts on Korea, Lee appeared determined to accord priority to the alliance with the United States, exact a measure of reciprocity from the North, forestall major economic concessions to the North until it abandons its nuclear activities, and design a more ambitious global role for his country.
Surely Washington welcomes Lee's priorities. The tougher question is whether it can work effectively with him to translate shared aims into concrete results. This will pose three particular challenges.
First, on the nuclear issue, undeniably, bilateral talks with Pyongyang can facilitate diplomatic progress. There are dangers as well. Disconnects with the Japanese have deepened, and their officials occasionally complain about American "betrayals" in the discussions with Pyongyang. The North has consistently sought to use the negotiations to split the US and its allies. Success in the talks requires coordinated diplomacy between the US and the North's neighbors – especially with South Korea. In the past it often appeared that South Korean presidents worried less about Pyongyang's nuclear activities than Washington's possible reactions to them.
Today, there is the danger that South Korean conservatives may fear that Washington will ultimately acquiesce in North Korea's nascent nuclear status. No attempt to contain, let alone eliminate, the North Korean nuclear program can succeed unless the US and ROK governments work closely together. This will require a higher standard of candor and mutual trust in bilateral consultations than has been typical in recent years.
Second, the ratification of the Korea-US free-trade agreement (FTA) is a vital piece of unfinished business. Lee appears prepared to resume imports of US beef (halted due to mad cow disease concerns), essential to moving the FTA forward in Congress. Unfortunately, the Democratic presidential contenders are pandering to special interests on trade issues in a way they will probably later regret. Both sides have strategic and commercial interests at stake. The US stands to gain much more in increased exports from the FTA, while the Koreans hope that liberalizing foreign access to their economy will make them more competitive. So there is much to gain by nailing down this deal. A failure to complete it would be a significant strategic setback for our partnership.
Third, there is the question as to whether our political cycles will again diverge. For the past eight years, the US has been led by one of its most conservative administrations, while South Korea was headed by its most liberal president. Missteps were, perhaps, inevitable. And they have persisted, even though some effective work was done behind the scenes to forge cooperative arrangements on trade and force-deployment issues.
Lee's election signifies a conservative swing in South Korea's politics, while polls suggest the US may be moving in the opposite direction. Thus, a felicitous convergence of US and ROK official perspectives could prove fleeting. Yet the interests we share in expanded commerce, in modernizing our alliance, and in approaching the North with a joint strategy for "denuclearization" are compelling. They transcend partisan politics. They serve our respective national interests. The time to capitalize on them is now.
New York and Stanford, CA., Jan. 10, 2008 -- With South Koreans having elected a new president last month and Americans going to the polls in November to choose a new leader, Stanford University's Walter H. Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center and the New York-based Korea Society today announced the formation of a non-partisan group of distinguished American former senior officials and experts to study ways to strengthen the alliance between the two countries.
The New Beginnings' study group will gather at the end of the month at Stanford University to discuss and analyze the implications of the Korean election for alliance relations. The group will then proceed to Seoul in early February for meetings with South Korean President-elect Lee Myung-bak and his top aides, as well as other leading figures in Korean business, academic, media and policy circles. Based on these meetings, the group will prepare a report in March on their findings and recommendations to present to American policymakers, including those from the leading U.S. presidential campaigns.
Korea Society President Evans J.R. Revere and Stanford University Professor Gi-Wook Shin said group members believe that U.S.-South Korean relations are critically important to the United States' role in East Asia and that the inauguration of new administrations in both the U.S. and South Korea offers a unique opportunity to create "new beginnings" in the alliance relationship.
They also noted that the two presidential elections coincide with a critical phase in multinational talks to end North Korea's nuclear weapons programs and that close U.S.-South Korean cooperation is essential to successful diplomacy in dealing with North Korea.
Shin and Revere said that the Bush and Roh Moo-hyun administrations, after initial policy differences over North Korea especially, had recently significantly improved their cooperation, but that the two countries could do much more to strengthen bilateral relations.
Shin and Revere said they regarded the study project as a continuing collaborative effort by their two institutions. After issuing the report in March, they intend to continue to meet with U.S. and South Korean policymakers and other leaders. They plan to update the report and recommendations after the U.S. presidential election.
Study group members are:
On October 11, the Stanford Board of Trustees approved the appointment of Shorenstein APARC's Director, Gi-Wook Shin, as the Tong Yang, Korea Foundation, and Korea Stanford Alumni Chair of Korean Studies.
An endowment was established in 1999 through the donations of alumnus Jae-Hyun Hyun, the Korea Foundation, and KSA, to enable the university to recruit a social science scholar whose work focuses on Korea from the perspective of contemporary policy issues. In addition to broadening Stanford's teaching and research programs in Asian studies, the holder of this chair is expected to conduct research on the political economy of Korea, trade and finance, security relations, politics, or other topics of importance to understanding Korea in the context of today's world.
When Professor Shin left UCLA to come to Stanford, he left the largest Korean studies program in the nation. With true entrepreneurial spirit, he has built an impressive and dynamic Korean studies program. It hosts luncheon seminars, workshops, and conferences, and has sponsored many Korean scholars, government officials, and business leaders who spend time at Stanford as visiting scholars. It also supports an active research program. Stanford is steadily becoming a world-class center for contemporary Korean studies.
-- Coit D. Blacker, Director FSI
In 2005, Dr. Shin was appointed Director of the Walter H. Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center at FSI. Since becoming director of the center, Shin has been laying a strong and dynamic foundation for interdisciplinary research, training, and outreach, both through his leadership of the Korean Studies Program and his efforts to bring focus to the center's wide-ranging affiliation of Asia-related projects, programs, and initiatives.
About the Donors:
Jae-Hyun Hyun received his MBA from Stanford in 1981. He is the chairman of Tong Yang Group, a diversified business conglomerate of Korea. The Tong Yang Group, which originally built its foundation as a manufacturer of cement and confectionery goods, is a fully integrated financial services group that offers virtually every financial service available in Korea, such as securities, merchant banking, life insurance, mutual funds, credit cards, venture capital, and asset management. Prior to joining Tong Yang, Mr. Hyun served as a public prosecutor at the city of Pusan's Public Prosecutor's Office. He has four children; three have attended Stanford (Jenny '99, Richard '03 and Tina '05).
The Korea Foundation was established in 1991 to promote an understanding of Korea throughout the world and to enhance international goodwill and friendship through a multitude of international exchange programs. The foundation promotes interest in Korea by supporting Korean studies at universities, research institutions, and libraries. The foundation also provides Korean studies materials to individuals and organizations, and provides scholarships for foreign scholars, students, and experts.
The Korea Stanford Alumni (KSA) Association, a group of dedicated Stanford alumni who have returned to Korea, hosts various events for its more than 500 registered members.
Shorenstein APARC
Stanford University
Encina Hall E301
Stanford, CA 94305-6055
Joon Young Chung is a reporter at Yonhap News, a Korean news wire service, and has worked in various departments including the national desk, business desk and the North Korea desk for the past 14 years. Recently he has covered Inter-Korean dialogue and the Six-Party talks.
The Walter H. Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center at Stanford University, in cooperation with the Center for the Pacific Rim and its Kiriyama Chair for Pacific Rim Studies at University of San Francisco, is pleased to present an international conference on "Public Diplomacy, Counterpublics, and the Asia Pacific."
The conference challenges the dominance of U.S.-centric and state-centered conceptions of "public diplomacy" to better understand and practice this resurgent component of world affairs. The complex, shifting contours of our globalizing world demand a broader -- comparative, multi-track, and ethical -- perspective on public diplomacy and its importance today.
A new perspective must take into account public diplomacy initiatives emanating from various places throughout the world. (We begin by "mapping" public diplomacy initiatives originating in the Asia Pacific.)
It must capture the significance of not only state-sponsored programs tightly linked to foreign policy, but also private activities involving a wide range of actors and arenas (i.e., NGOs, international business, media old and new, pop culture) that perhaps more subtly but no less profoundly impact national interests and world affairs.
Ultimately, a new perspective must comprehend that public diplomacy can be more than an instrumental quest for "soft power." A pathway toward robust people-to-people interactions, public diplomacy in its myriad forms can help achieve reconciliation -- the overcoming of historical injustices and other troubling conflicts in our post-9/11 world.
A primary objective of the conference is to discuss and refine papers for a book manuscript (to be considered for publication via a new series of Stanford University Press and the Brookings Institution). The conference/book will cover the following four issue areas: (1) historical and conceptual perspectives; (2) country/region surveys examining significant public diplomacy institutions and initiatives throughout the Asia Pacific; (3) case studies of transnational, multi-track diplomatic efforts driven by civil societies; and (4) case studies of public diplomacy by marginalized groups and in emerging public spheres (e.g. "the blogosphere.")
Conference panels -- at Stanford the morning of April 19 and at USF all day April 20 -- will be in colloquium format for presenters to discuss their research. Limited spaces will be available for observers, and a reservation is required.
The first public talk is on April 18 (5:45-7:00 p.m.) at the University of San Francisco. Shorenstein APARC's Michael Armacost will be speaking on "Japanese Power and Its Public Faces." You can find more details about this event on the USF Center for the Pacific Rim website.
The second public talk is on April 19 (12:15-1:55 p.m.) at Shorenstein APARC. Stephen Linton, Ph.D. (Chairman, Eugene Bell Foundation; Associate, Korea Institute, Harvard University) will give a talk titled "Treating Tuberculosis in North Korea: Toward US-DPRK Reconciliation." Lunch will be served so an RSVP is required. You may reserve a seat by clicking the link to Dr. Linton's lecture.
The conference keynote address is on April (5:45-7:00 p.m.) at the University of San Francisco. Dr. Stephen Linton will deliver a talk titled "Treating Tuberculosis in North Korea: NGO Humanitarian Assistance as Public Diplomacy." The keynote address is free and open to the public. RSVP recommended. Please call the USF Center for the Pacific Rim Events RSVP Line at (415) 422-6828.
More information about this conference and the panel sessions can be found on the website for the USF Center for the Pacific Rim.
This conference is co-sponsored by The Asia Society Northern California; The Japan Society of Northern California; Business for Diplomatic Action; Center for International Security and Cooperation at Stanford University; and the Taiwan Democracy Program in the Center on Democracy Development, and the Rule of Law at Stanford University.
Philippines Conference Room and the Okimoto Conference Room in Encina Hall. Some sessions will be held at the University of San Francisco.
Dr. Linton was born in Philadelphia in 1950 and grew up in Korea, where his father was a third generation Presbyterian missionary. He is a visiting associate of the Korea Institute, Harvard University, for 2006-07. Linton is currently Chairman of The Eugene Bell Foundation, a not-for-profit organization that provides humanitarian aid to North Korea.
Dr. Linton's talk will focus on the Eugene Bell Foundation and its programs. Named for Rev. Eugene Bell, Lintonn's great-grandfather and a missionary who arrived in Korea in 1895, the Foundation serves as a conduit for a wide spectrum of business, governmental, religious and social organizations as well as individuals who are interested in promoting programs that benefit the sick and suffering of North Korea.
Since 1995, the Foundation strives primarily to bring medical treatment facilities in North Korea together with donors as partners in a combined effort to fight deadly diseases such as tuberculosis (TB). In 2005, the North Korean ministry of Public Health officially asked the Foundation to expand its work to include support programs for local hospitals. The Foundation currently coordinates the delivery of TB medication, diagnostic equipment, and supplies to one third of the North Korean population and approximately forty North Korean treatment facilities (hospitals and care centers).
Dr. Linton's credentials include: thirty years of teaching and research on Korea, twenty years of travel to North Korea (over fifty trips since 1979), and ten years of humanitarian aid work in North Korea. Dr. Linton received a Bachelor of Arts degree from Yonsei University in Seoul, Korea, a Masters of Divinity from Korea Theological Seminary, and a Masters of Philosophy and a Ph.D. in Korean Studies from Columbia University.
This public lecture is part of the conference "Public Diplomacy, Counterpublics, and the Asia Pacific." This conference is co-sponsored by The Asia Society Northern California; The Japan Society of Northern California; Business for Diplomatic Action; Center for International Security and Cooperation at Stanford University; and the Taiwan Democracy Program in the Center on Democracy Development, and the Rule of Law at Stanford University.
Philippines Conference Room
Korea's "Chaebol" business groups built densely knitted equity crossholding ties during the 1980s and 1990s, which allowed the owner's family to exercise enormous control rights greatly exceeding their cash flow rights. This defining characteristic of "Chaebol" once made them look invincible, totally protected from outside attacks. However, the unprecedented takeover crises of Korea's best-known "Chaebol" such as Hyundai and SK force us to reconsider the traditional wisdom.
What explains the crises? In his talk, Dr. Chang will track the changes in the "Chaebol" equity network since 1997 and argue that the takeover crises are the result of constraints on the dynamics of hierarchically organized networks by the opening up of the financial market, changing state-business relations, and family circumstances.
Dukjin Chang is an assistant professor in the Sociology Department at Seoul National University. He is currently a visiting professor in the Department of Sociology at Harvard University. He received his PhD from the University of Chicago in 1999. He has written extensively on Chaebol business groups and social networks in the cyberspace.
Philippines Conference Room
The alliance between the Republic of Korea and the United States has been facing new pressures in recent months. Leaders in Washington and Seoul are visibly out of synch in their response to the escalatory actions of North Korea, beginning with the July 4 missile tests and leading to the October 9 nuclear explosion. South Korean leaders seem more concerned with the danger that Washington may instigate conflict than they are with North Korea's profoundly provocative acts. American officials increasingly see Seoul as irrelevant to any possible solution to the problem. Officials on both sides valiantly try to find areas of agreement and to paper over differences. If attempts to restart the six-party talks on North Korea falter again, it is likely this divide will resurface.
There is a tendency on both sides of the Pacific to overdraw a portrait of an alliance on the verge of collapse. Crises in the U.S.-ROK alliance are hardly new. As I have written elsewhere, there never was a "golden age" in our alliance that was free from tension. Korean discomfort with an alliance founded on dependency and American unease with Korean nationalism has been a constant since the early days of this relationship. Clashes over how to respond to North Korea have been a staple of the alliance since its earliest days.
Korean-American relations today are much deeper than at the inception of this alliance. Our interests are intertwined on many fronts, not least as major players in the global economic and trading system. We share fundamental values as democratic societies, built on the rule of law and the free flow of ideas. There is a large, and growing, contact between our two peoples, from trade and tourism to immigration.
The current situation is worrisome however because it threatens the security system that lies at the foundation of the alliance. Though our interests are now far broader, the U.S.-ROK alliance remains military in nature. The founding document of this alliance was the
Mutual Defense Treaty signed on October 1, 1953, following the conclusion of the armistice pact to halt the Korean War. That treaty has been significantly modified only once - 28 years ago in response to American plans to withdraw its ground forces from Korea - to create the Korea-U.S. Combined Forces Command (CFC).
The two militaries have a vital legacy of decades of combined command, training and war planning. American military forces in significant numbers have remained in place to help defend South Korea from potential aggression from the North. South Korean troops have deployed abroad numerous times in support of American foreign policy goals, including currently in Iraq and Afghanistan.
This foundation of security is not only essential to this alliance but is the very definition of the nature of alliances in general, as distinct from other forms of cooperation and partnership in international relations.
"Alliances are binding, durable security commitments between two or more nations," Dr. Elizabeth Sherwood-Randall, a Stanford scholar and former Clinton administration senior defense official, wrote recently. "The critical ingredients of a meaningful alliance are the shared recognition of common threats and a pledge to take action to counter them. To forge agreement, an alliance requires ongoing policy consultations that continually set expectations for allied behavior."
Alliances can survive a redefinition of the common threat that faces them but not the absence of a threat. Nor can alliances endure if there is not a clear sense of the mutual obligations the partners have to each other, from mutual defense to joint actions against a perceived danger. "At a minimum," Sherwood-Randall says, "allies are expected to take into consideration the perspectives and interests of their partners as they make foreign and defense policy choices."
By this definition, the U.S.-ROK alliance is in need of a profound re-examination.
The 'shared recognition' of a common threat from North Korea that was at the core of the alliance is badly tattered. As a consequence, there is no real agreement on what actions are needed to counter that threat.
There is a troubling lack of will on both sides to engage in policy consultations that involve an understanding of the interests and views of both sides, much less setting clear expectations for allied behavior. Major decisions such as the phasing out of the CFC have been made without adequate discussion.
Americans and Koreans need, in effect, to re-imagine our alliance. We should do so with the understanding that there is still substantial popular support for this alliance, despite conventional wisdom to the contrary. The problems of alliance support may lie more in policy-making elites in both countries than in the general public. That suggests that a concerted effort to reinvigorate the alliance will find public backing.
The results of the Chicago Council on Global Affairs 2006 multinational survey of public opinion show ongoing strong support for the American military presence in South Korea. Some 62 percent of Koreans believe U.S. troop levels are either about right or too few; some 52 percent of Americans share that view. A slightly larger percentage of Americans - 42 percent compared to 36 percent of Koreans - think there are too many U.S. troops. Along the same vein, 65 percent of Americans and 84 percent of Koreans favor the U.S. providing military forces, together with other countries, in a United Nations-sponsored effort to turn back a North Korean attack.
The crack in the alliance comes over the perception of threat from North Korea.
While some 79 percent of Koreans feel at least "a bit" threatened by the possibility of North Korea becoming a nuclear power, only 30 percent say they are "very" threatened. Fewer Koreans feel the peninsula will be a source of conflict than the number of Americans. More significantly, nuclear proliferation is viewed as a critical threat by 69 percent of Americans, compared to only half of Koreans (interestingly, Chinese are even less concerned about this danger).
The opinion poll was conducted before the nuclear test so it is difficult to judge the impact of that event. These survey results do clearly indicate however that while the security alliance still has support, there is an urgent need for deep discussion, at all levels, about the nature of the threat.
The crisis that faced the NATO alliance in the wake of the end of the Cold War has some instructive value for Koreans and Americans today. At the beginning of 1990, I was sent by my newspaper, the Christian Science Monitor, from Tokyo, where I had been covering Japan and Korea since the mid-1980s, to Moscow. The Berlin Wall had fallen a few months earlier and the prospect of the end of a half-century of Cold War in Europe was in the air. However, I dont believe anyone, certainly not myself, anticipated the astounding pace or scale of change that took place within just two years.
Within less than a year, in October of 1990, West and East Germany were reunited.
The once-mighty Soviet empire in Eastern Europe disintegrated almost overnight. By July of 1991, the Warsaw Pact had come to an end. Perhaps most astounding of all - not least to officials of the administration of George H.W. Bush - the Soviet Union fell abruptly apart in December 1991.
These tectonic events triggered a debate about the future of the NATO alliance that had provided security to Europe since it was founded in April of 1949. Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev somewhat famously - and perhaps apocryphally - anticipated this debate. "We are going to do something terrible to you," he is said to have told Ronald Reagan. "We are going to deprive you of an enemy."
In those early days, the very continued existence of NATO was under active discussion. The Soviet leadership called for the creation of entirely new "pan-European" security structures that would replace both NATO and the Warsaw Pact. Some in Europe favored the European Union as a new vehicle for both economic integration of the former
Soviet empire into Europe, along with creating new European security forces that would supplant NATO's integrated command.
A more cautionary view argued for retaining NATO without change as a hedge against the revival of Russia as a military threat or the failure of democratic and market transformation in the former Soviet Union. American policymakers opted instead for the ambitious aim of expanding NATO membership to absorb, step by step, the former Soviet empire, including the newly freed western republics of the Soviet Union.
Along with expansion, the United States pushed NATO to redefine the "enemy." Americans argued that new threats to stability and security from ethnic conflict - and international terrorism - compelled NATO to "go out of area or out of business." NATO did so first in the Balkans, in Bosnia and Kosovo, though reluctantly. The alliance has moved even farther beyond Europe to Afghanistan, where NATO commands the international security forces. This draws upon the invaluable investment made in joint military command and operations that are the foundation of the alliance.
Certainly NATO's transformation is far from complete. As was evident at the most recent NATO summit in Riga, considerable differences of opinion remain between many European states and the United States over the mission of NATO. Europeans tend to still see NATO as an essentially defensive alliance, protecting the "euro-Atlantic" region against outside aggression, with an unspoken role as a hedge against uncertainties in Russia. They are resistant to continued American pressure for expansion - including a new U.S. proposal to move toward global partnership with countries such as Japan, South Korea and Australia.
But the reinvention of NATO after the Cold War provides some evidence that even when the nature of the threat has changed, security alliances can preserve a sense of common purpose.
A re-imagined U.S.-ROK alliance could draw from the NATO experience by including the following elements:
HEDGE - The alliance remains crucial as a 'hedge' against North Korean aggression, even if the dangers of an attack are considered significantly reduced. If North Korea retains its nuclear capability, that hedge will need to expand to include a shared doctrine of containment and deterrence, including making clear that the U.S. will retaliate against use of nuclear weapons, no matter where it takes place. Strategically the alliance is also a 'hedge' against Chinese ambitions to dominate East Asia and a guarantor of the existing balance of power;
EXPANSION - The alliance can reassert its vitality as the basis, along with the
U.S.-Japan security alliance, of an expanded multilateral security structure for
Northeast Asia;
NEW MISSIONS - The alliance should take on new missions, most importantly to participate in military and non-military counter-proliferation operations;
OUT OF AREA - A re-imagined alliance might formalize an "out of area" role, elevating the deployments of peacekeeping and other forces to Iraq and Afghanistan into more systematic joint global operations between the two militaries. In this regard, the participation of South Korea in a program of global partnership with NATO, most importantly in the area of joint training, merits serious discussion.
There is another alternative: South Korea and the United States can chose to bring their alliance to a close. If we cannot agree on the common threats that face us, this alliance cannot endure. What we should not do is to allow the alliance to drift from inattention into a deeper crisis that would only benefit our adversaries.
(This article is based on a presentation by the author to the 1st ROK-U.S. West Coast
Strategic Forum held in Seoul on Dec. 11-12, 2006).
This article appeared on the website of the Maureen and Mike Mansfield Foundation.
Reprinted with permission from the Maureen and Mike Mansfield Foundation.