Rethinking Obama pivot to Asia

By Stephen Costello

North Korea’s fifth nuclear test on Friday can be understood as a celebration of sorts on the state’s national day. The Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK) was founded on 9 September 1948. It also may be push-back against what they see as continued US and South Korean preparation for ending the Kim Jung Un regime. But it can also be read as a parting shot for President Obama as he prepares to leave office in 5 months. Assessments of his policies toward this region are emerging, and will inevitably have to deal with the contradictions and erroneous assessments that underpin the past eight years of US policy.

The linkage of American policy toward the Korean Peninsula, and toward North Korea in particular, with the much-debated Obama administration policy of Pivoting to East Asia, has rarely been considered. Missing, too, has been an appreciation of the politics, realism and effectiveness in Seoul, Tokyo, Beijing and Washington, despite the fact that political considerations, ideology and ability are central to policy.

A confusing list of reasons has been at the heart of the Pivot from its announcement in 2011. The US is said to be showing leadership of rule-making and rule-sustaining in the region, in opposition to new efforts by China to change the system. It is also trying to engage China on the range of issues, both global and regional, where their interests overlap, such as climate change. And US policy is also directed at linking and strengthening the military capabilities of countries in the region so that they could resist bullying by China.

Certainly it has been welcome for the Obama team to pivot away from the Bush administration’s approach to the region, which was too centered on anti-terror concerns and betrayed the excessive unilateralism and arrogance that had so defined the Bush/Cheney/Rumsfeld worldview. Obama’s new embrace of regional fora, from ASEAN to the ARF, was smart and overdue. The unpredicted turn of Chinese leaders to increased nationalism, aggression and authoritarianism had to be confronted as well. The long-term mix of policies to deal with this will be at the heart of US policy in Northeast Asia for decades.

But it has seemed from the beginning that the Pivot was based on shaky expectations and a thin understanding of how countries in the region would react to it. As former White House/NSC Director for Asia Ken Lieberthal wrote just after the policy was launched, “The notion that the United States will shape the major outcomes in the region because countries there will welcome clear American leadership misunderstands [the] more complicated calculations around the region.”

The Trans Pacific Partnership, for instance, may contain some good tariff-lowering aspects, as well as some higher-standard labor practices. But its non-trade parts are often not in the interests of the public, either in Asia or the US. Even Obama administration officials describe the TPP as more a symbolic challenge to Chinese leadership than as a multilateral advance in trade rules.

Obama’s greatest mistake was in policy toward North Korea, and its impact on US relations with South Korea, Japan and China. In working with China, both before and after the Xi Jin Ping presidency, Obama and his team proclaimed both to be engaging on common interests and refusing to do the main work that would accomplish this. At the center of the new US policy was an unresolved contradiction between following the Clinton administration’s provisionally successful and smartly ambitious deals to denuclearize the DPRK and increase North-South Korean common interests, or embracing the counter-productive and failing efforts by the Bush administration to sanction and isolate the North into submission.

Their choice to double down on the Bush approach has crippled the Pivot, making it unnecessarily difficult, if not impossible.

The Chinese had embraced the Clinton Agreed Framework and President Kim Dae Jung’s North-South engagement efforts. This made sense, since the DPRK’s nuclear and missile programs would be contained if not ended, the North’s economy would slowly be integrated with the South, leading to development where there had been only poverty since the 1980s, and the border could see thriving trade. Although security issues would have to be addressed if the North and South continued to cooperate, they paled in comparison to the advantages a denuclearized and developing peninsula held for China.

The view from Japan was similar. Prime Minister Koizumi’s visit to North Korea in September 2002 to attempt a breakthrough in relations was late, and was opposed by the Bush administration. But it was a recognition that a pacified North Korea, needing everything to accelerate development, was greatly in Japan’s interest, far more so any lingering worry about the power of a possible, future united Korean peninsula.

South Korea would be the biggest winner if Clinton and Kim policies continued. Although the South Korean conservatives had retaken the Blue House after a decade of progressive policy, society was divided in 2009, and the appeal of North-South engagement continued to be central to policy choices. The fact that Obama would have to cajole President Lee Myung Bak should not have made much difference. Clinton had had to persuade President Kim Young Sam, a far more difficult task than Obama’s.

By rejecting these long-term and strategic interests, Obama set his administration on a hopeless mission.

The Chinese were endlessly and publically criticized for not stopping the North Korean nuclear programs. In an assessment that most media have never questioned, pundits asserted China had the most leverage over the DPRK’s weapons. In fact, the US has for twenty years had the most leverage. The vision of a more stable and developing Northeast Asia was ignored in favor of a Bush administration fantasy. Professor Stephen Walt of Harvard recently listed “Rogue nuclear nations” as one of the top myths that should be abandoned, noting that leaders in such states have well-developed instincts for self-preservation, among other reasons to avoid hyping threats.

China’s military expansion will have to be managed. East Asian nations will have to decide how to maintain both security and independence between the US and China. But when the next US President takes office, she will have to choose to either remember the basic reasons for working the North Korean dilemma, with its difficulties and opportunities, or continue on a dangerous and escalating trajectory that she cannot control.

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.