Reprint from China's Political Economy (Singapore: World Scientific Publishing Co. Pte. Ltd. and Singapore UP Pte. Ltd., 1998).

The Korean-American alliance has kept the peace on the Korean peninsula for forty-five years since its inception in 1953. Now that a gradual process for Korean unification has gotten under way as indicated by the beginning of the Four-Party Talks and North-South dialogues, it is important to reexamine the origins and evolution of this alliance in order that its future challenges in the changing strategic environment in the Asia Pacific region can be met.

In addressing this issue, we must examine the alliance’s origins in the Cold War and the Korean War, for the alliance was established to deter another war after the Korean War was halted in an armistice. In tracing its evolution, we must explain how the shifting strategic environment and the allies’ responses have affected its transformation by analyzing the impact of such important events as the Vietnam War, the Sino-Soviet dispute and the Nixon Doctrine, the Reagan and Bush years, the end of the Cold War and North Korea’s nuclear challenge, the prospects for unification, and regional rivalry between major powers. Finally, we should speculate on the future of the Korean-American alliance after the unification of Korea. It is difficult to ascertain the Korean perspective on these questions. Hence it should be made clear at the outset that what follows is only one Korean perspective as I see it in light of the available material.

Published as part of the "America's Alliances with Japan and Korea in a Changing Northeast Asia" Research Project.

Reprint from The Pacific Review (Vol. 8, No. 2).

What can be said about the social and cultural characteristics of the Asian region as a whole? Are there, for example, traditional similarities that unify the region—something one might label “Asian culture”? Various scholars have seen an Asian-ness in such things as the way authority has been understood in the region 1 or, even more typically, they point to the Confucian heritage common to China and the nations on its periphery as a unifying characteristic. 2 At least one contemporary Asian leader, Mahathir Mohamad, prime minister of Malaysia, has argued for the legitimacy of a distinctly Asian approach to politics and society, one that is at odds with what he infers is a Western cultural hegemony in such matters. 3 Others, certainly the majority of scholars, have expressed skepticism with any interpretive framework that has attempted to embrace the entire region in cultural terms. Are there other ways to think of cultural connections that are not based in traditions or in religious, linguistic, historical, or other origins? Or is the initial question itself misplaced?

In comparison with the postwar decades from 1945 to 1990, East Asian prospects for peaceful stability and economic growth have never been better. The Cold War confrontation between the Soviet Union and the United States has ended. The arms race that flooded the Pacific region with Soviet and U.S. nuclear weapons systems has been replaced by a gradual phasing out of tactical and intermediate missiles. The navies of the two superpowers are diminishing, albeit involuntary on Russia’s part. Moscow’s alliances with Pyongyang and Hanoi now exist only on paper. Washington’s bases in the Philippines were closed by mutual agreement.