Hiroshima, Trump and Hillary

By Stephen Costello

What should Koreans take from the current campaigns for president in the US? Perhaps more helpfully, how can they avoid the easy and distracting points that are repeatedly made, and find instead the points that are relevant to their lives and Korea’s future?

This is hard. There’s a great deal of noise. But it can be done. Let’s try.

Donald Trump may manage to trick even larger numbers of voters into thinking that his version of Republican policy is better than past Republicans, but that’s doubtful. He will most likely lose to Hillary Clinton. Big time, as Dick Cheney once said. For Koreans, it is more important to note the implosion of the Republican Party, the lack of a Democratic Party foreign policy, and the implications of this for US policy toward northeast Asia.

It’s revealing that many Republican leaders, and in particular foreign policy professionals, say they are shocked, SHOCKED, at the reckless, unilateral and counterproductive plans of Mr. Trump. Someone should ask them if they were shocked at the worldviews and actions of George W. Bush. Oops, many of them were members of that administration. Were they shocked at the plans of the Mitt Romney/Paul Ryan campaign? Or those of the John McCain/Sarah Palin campaign?Somehow they were OK with those plans. On Thursday Speaker Paul Ryan endorsed Mr. Trump, insuring that the party will go down together.So the drama of Donald Trump is the story of the self-destruction of the Republican Party, ongoing for at least 35 years.

Part of that party’s worldview has been an objection to diplomacy and deal-making. A Republican president overturned the Agreed Framework of 1994, which had stopped North Korea’s nuclear production and its missile development and exports. Now the DPRK has a nuclear arsenal and multiple missiles. Republicans are opposed to the P5+1 deal capping and rolling back Iran’s nuclear program. They are opposed to the US diplomatic opening to Cuba.They can be expected to oppose any future diplomacy with North Korea, regardless of potential arms reduction, denuclearization or humanitarian relief.

Democrats, too have opposed some of these initiatives. In particular the ranking Democrat on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Robert Menendez, opposed the Iran and Cuba deals. New York Senator Chuck Schumer opposed the Iran deal. Although some Democrats still remember what an effective foreign policy looks like, many do not. Looking from Korea then, no one should count on Democrats, either, to support serious denuclearization, diplomacy and arms reduction in the Korean neighborhood.

Which brings us to Hiroshima, Japan, and President Obama’s visit to Peace Park. Good words were said. Soothed feelings and uplifted spirits are important. But the unstated messages were just too loud and clear to be forgotten. Obama may not have noticed how his visit played into specific political, religious and ideological narratives advanced by Prime Minister Shinzo Abe. But many did. Dreux Richard wrote on the New York Times OpEd page last week that Obama’s visit may “help remilitarize the world’s wealthiest, most populous pacifist country.” His article was titled “Why Obama is Shinzo Abe’s Enabler.” And Mr. Dreux is not alone. Most observations of how President Obama’s visit will be used are less concerned with Japan’s return to militarism, and more concerned with the health of its democracy and the loss of its pacifist role.

Two other glaring contributions to the expansion of nuclear weaponry serve to complicate and undercut many of the aspirational words said in Hiroshima. One is Obama’s embrace of an upgrade of all US nuclear weapons, assuming no reduction in numbers, and costing $50 billion per year for at least ten years. The other is the apparent decision, taken before he entered the White House in January 2009, to ignore the achievements of previous US and Korean policies and instead attempt to pressure and coerce North Korea to surrender or collapse. The result of embracing the counterproductive policies of the Bush group has been North Korea’s production and testing of multiple nuclear weapons on Obama’s watch. Both were clear decisions where alternatives were available. Neither choice was forced. It’s hard to reconcile them with abstract hopes for weapons reduction.

For Koreans, the narrative of the US president’s willful support for a leader who revises history, moves to control textbooks, stifles the press, and rolls back democracy resonates also. There is no Hiroshima here, but visits, words and actions have a similar impact on the domestic audience. In Korea, US support since 2001 for coercion over diplomacy, and its eagerness to exaggerate the North Korean threat, have placed it squarely on one side of the political/social divides that linger since the Korean War.

Bill Clinton (1992-2000) and Kim Dae Jung (1998-2003) both made mistakes. But they found common cause on North Korea and nonproliferation issues. The lessons of their policies become more relevant with each passing day, but they are long gone from power. Since then, the US and ROK have had Bush, Lee, Obama and Park. They share key aspects of their approach to North and South Korea, so let’s call them BLOP. There is no indication that Hillary Clinton would change this ongoing dynamic. Two of her top advisors, Jake Sullivan and Wendy Sherman, recently confirmed this. The BLOP approach would most likely continue if she is elected.

What do we really want to know from Ms. Clinton? Well, what has she learned about the Korea challenge from Bill Clinton’s efforts during 1992-2000? What has she learned from Bush’s disastrous destruction of Bill’s work, and his helping to create a nuclear state where none existed before? What has she learned from Obama’s embrace of, and doubling-down on, the Bush view of Korea?

How does she see the Korea issue’s impact on the US relationship with China? How about their impact on nuclear non-proliferation on the Peninsula, the region or the globe? What would it mean if serious talks and discussions began between the US and DPRK, or between South and North? What are the most important impacts on the Korea issues from the Iran-P5+1 Agreement? Surely she can do better on this question than former Deputy Secretary of State Wendy Sherman recently did at CSIS.

The bottom line seems to be this: The US is unlikely to help South Korea return to productive interaction with North Korea. Although the most destructive policies of George W. Bush have ended, they have been replaced in northeast Asia with abandonment of, and even opposition to, effective denuclearization toward the DPRK, support for anti-democratic domestic forces, and an expectation of submission to a US exaggerated-threat approach.

In this environment, If the next South Korean leader develops sound plans and takes responsibility for guiding new initiatives, he or she should be able to drag the US along to participate, but only with a great deal of preparation and help. A learn-on-the-job presidency should not be an option for Korea in 2017.

Obama seems not to have appreciated how central to global and regional denuclearization the North Korean challenge is. Nor has its impact on the viability of the legal nonproliferation framework moved him to act. The China-centric and sanctions-centric approaches so far signaled by Hillary Clinton’s advisors should cause great concern in northeast Asia.Her speech Thursday in San Diego only increased such worries. Will the next South Korean leaders know how to face this challenge and turn it to Korea’s ― and America’s ―advantage, or will they follow disastrous policies into the worst Korean crisis in a generation?

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.