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I was wrong about the U.S. election. Hillary Clinton won only 1.5 million more votes than Donald Trump, when she needed to win more. Trump won the presidency based on the rules of the current contest, despite the outdated and anti-democratic impact of the electoral college. The slim margin means that any single factor could have changed the result. Her message could have been better. More young people could have voted. The media could have been more fair and honest. But the U.S. system has coughed up this result, and Korea and Northeast Asia will have to live with it.
There was only a slim possibility that a Clinton administration would return to productive policies and resume denuclearization, arms control and peninsula development. Now we will never know. Under the Trump administration, that possibility has evaporated. People who will now take offices in the White House, State Department and intelligence services will probably make Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld look wise and level-headed in comparison. Although he is an outsider to the Washington political world, Trump has allied himself with the Republican Party. His victory as a Republican has swept to power the group least able to make progress in this region. And that power will be great, since it includes the House, Senate, and White House.
It is tempting to imagine that Trump can bring his outsider viewpoint, his businessman pragmatism, and his desire to shake up the Washington establishment to bear when dealing with North Korea. Some very thoughtful people are proposing this or hoping for it now. This high-stakes mind-game with a narcissistic personality is riveting in a psychological sense, but it probably won't end well. Nothing would be more welcome to progressive expert communities in Seoul and Washington than a smart change from "strategic patience" and the "pivot," and I would join them. But the chances of that happening are terribly thin, and are shrinking by the day. Not only is a new approach to North Korea unlikely, but both the Iran nuclear deal and new relations with Cuba are in danger of unravelling. Watching these three diplomatic issues — and providing friendly advice — should be the top job of South Korea's Washington team in coming weeks and months.
Trump promised impossible changes, blamed convenient scapegoats, and lied his way to victory in this election. His policy ignorance cannot be balanced by appointing a few good people, because his team is already pushing out moderate conservatives. The experience of the George Bush years should remind us of where the heart of the Republican Party is on questions of the two Koreas. Since then, Republicans have been joined by many Democrats and by President Obama in embracing bad analysis and counterproductive initiatives. The sheer institutional commitment of multiple issue, congressional and power centers, now going on for 15 years, will make radical change by a leader inexperienced in policy and government bureaucracy almost impossible.
This may be sadly familiar to South Koreans, as they consider nine years of incompetent, ideological, and corrupt governments in Seoul. In the wake of the Choi Soo-sil scandal and the exposure of President Park Geun-hye's broken policy structure, it's useful to remember the cost to any country of electing unprepared leaders. Trump makes all others look like Henry Kissinger or Sun Tzu in comparison, but Barack Obama was also not ready for major aspects of the presidency, including the dynamics of Northeast Asia and U.S. strategy toward the Koreas. This has become clearer as his term ends, and the cost of his innocence and arrogance can now begin to be tallied. But at least at home Obama was a democrat and a uniter. In contrast, President Park is neither. She is therefore somewhat like Trump, and they should get along very well for the rest of Park's term.
Surely the U.S. alliance will not be weakened. Military and economic cooperation will be relatively unaffected. And Korea's web of relationships will be undiminished. President Park's government, while losing public support, would have one message for Trump. The democratic opposition would have a very different message, if it could meet the president-elect. Hanging over these days is the question of what role Korean leaders think is appropriate for a modern middle power democracy in this neighborhood. What values and interests should they hold up when maintaining the Korea-U.S. alliance? These questions will not be answered convincingly until there is more stable and capable leadership in Seoul.
But inter-Korean relations remain — as they have been for at least 30 years — the primary, most important external work of Korean governments. Without tending to that relationship, in ways that we now know can lead to cooperation and lower tension, it will not be possible for South Korea to deepen and strengthen its young democracy, bring power relationships among China, Japan, Russia and the Koreas into better balance, or play a leading role in the region.
In doing the essential work of addressing the South-North relationship, therefore, South Korea will be very much on its own for the next four years, and maybe longer. Although diplomacy has been paralyzed since the U.S. reversed course under George Bush, the Trump years may contain even more danger for security and stability than any time in the past 20 years. The National Assembly will almost surely have to take up some authority parallel with the Blue House in order to prevent any deterioration.
President Park has been particularly bad at grasping opportunities for strategic advantages with North Korea. In this she has been matched by Barack Obama, which may be a clue to their good relationship. Now with the addition of the Trump election in the U.S., the current Choi scandal, and the resulting power vacuum in the Korean government, has made Korea more vulnerable. It is too early to judge the strength of the divided democratic forces in the Assembly and among the public, but progressives have a shot at regaining the presidency at the end of next year. How they act until then will demonstrate whether they are ready to govern again.
Stephen Costello is a producer of AsiaEast, a web and broadcast-based policy roundtable focused on security, development and politics in Northeast Asia. He writes from Washington, D.C. He can be reached at scost55@gmail.com.
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