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

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.

This discussion focuses on U.S.-Japan and U.S.-Korea relations and how the two interact. The U.S.-Japan review of the 1978 Defense Guidelines also will be considered, in terms of what it does and does not entail and in terms of its application to the security of the Korean peninsula and, more broadly, Asia.

An underlying theme of this presentation is that the U.S.-Japan and U.S.-Korea relationships can survive and prosper only if the United States, Japan, and Korea share some degree of confluence of views on relations with China. There are common objectives in Northeast Asia shared not only by the United States, Japan, and Korea, but by China, Russia, and perhaps even North Korea. Many of these objectives concern the Korean peninsula, where all of the powers want stability and no one wants to see war. From a theoretical viewpoint, everyone is looking toward a "soft landing" and eventual peaceful reunification. Sometimes the visceral South Korean view seems to differ, and some of the Republic of Korea's policies may be in contradiction with the stated desirable outcome; this may cause tension in the U.S.-Korea alliance in the future.

The desire for a soft landing does not mean that the major powers are pushing to hasten reunification. Ironically, the country least anxious to see it, namely China, is the one least often accused of trying to prolong separation of the two Koreas. South Koreans accuse Japan of trying to keep Korea divided, and whenever the United States talks with North Korea, it is similarly charged. That is not the policy direction of either Japan or the United States; in fact, the Koreans seem not to need help from the outside to be hostile to each other.

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

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.