Korea's East Asia options

By Stephen Costello

The wheels are turning so that groundwork for a “pivot to diplomacy” is beginning in East Asia. That is not easy to see right now, as both the U.S. and South Korean administrations fumble for their footing in the rhetoric and policy debates that are so important to each. Those debates are important for East Asia’s direction over the next months and years, because they could determine whether there is continued military confrontation, insecurity and an arms race or instead increased diplomacy, greater security, and economic development.

It is difficult to see this pivot in view of the early public positions of the US, South Korea, China and North Korea. Each seems to be reinforcing a previous uncompromising position. This is particularly true of South Korea’s new President, who must know that the THAAD deployment and the drive for increased sanctions on North Korea are counterproductive, and will prevent the new policy initiatives he was elected to pursue. If the candlelight activists return to the streets again, their signs may read “Freeze Sanctions,” “Switch THAAD Off,” and “Reduce Military Exercises.” That may be what President Moon is waiting for.

However he intends to switch to his central policies, Moon will have more flexibility to do so, and more support from other interested countries, than ever before. Importantly, the new team in Seoul is less encumbered than any of its predecessors, including that of the progressive Kim Dae-jung and Roh Moo-hyun administrations.

And the differences are important. In the only previous conservative-to-progressive switch of power and interests in modern Korea, DJ was burdened by several complicating factors. Among them was the Asian Financial crisis, which was the logical result of South Korea’s own brand of “crony capitalism.” Kim also led a coalition government, including the conservative Kim Jung-pil and the industrialist Park Tae-jun, which was required to contain the blow-back from conservative forces after their first ever loss of power. Kim also had only three, rather than five years to accomplish a long list of reforms. At the end of his third year in power the US election of George Bush abruptly ended support from Korea’s only ally for Kim’s key policy initiatives toward the US and North Korea. Those setbacks, in turn, limited his ability to push through many domestic reforms. To this day it is amazing what that government achieved in such a short time.

Roh Moo-hyun was elected during that radical reversal and re-definition of US interests in Northeast Asia. He never had a chance to advance the progressive goals of engagement, denuclearization and development with North Korea and modernization of the Korea-US alliance. He was destined to work hard simply to maintain each, and in doing that he did exceptionally well.

The next two conservative administrations were more interested in the old anti-communist and anti-diplomacy policies, and their alignment with the US, than they were in the engagement and denuclearization goals of the progressives. This was in line with their greatly reduced ambitions, which were incremental and domestically focused.

Finally, President Moon does not face the radical and relatively unchallenged rejection of engagement from the US that Kim and Roh faced. It is true that President Trump and his increasingly extreme Republican Party allies embrace the same ideological and irrelevant view of the Northeast Asia region. But they are not emboldened by the 9/11 terrorist attacks as Bush was, and they are not staffed with experienced government ministers, as Bush and Obama were. Those sixteen years of US rejection of the Clinton administration’s successful 1990s multilateral structural engagement and denuclearization are now over.

In its place, Moon faces a US ally that has a long record of failing to define and collaborate to achieve common goals with South Korea. Additionally, the US administration will be unable to hire top bureaucrats and experts in Asia, and give them authority to develop policies, because their internal fights and contradictions will continue. They are also helplessly allied with the most extreme Republican Party in memory, which opposes diplomacy in general, and is actively undermining the US-Iran and US-Cuba deals of the Obama administration. This loss of institutional and structural policy-making capability, along with the steady drain of American soft power around the globe, means that the US has become an extremely weak player in this region, and it is getting weaker. President Trump’s recent visit to Europe and the Mid-East are evidence of this.

The US decline in power, which may not last beyond Trump’s first four years, coincides with the particular background of the Moon government, and the decisive public shift to the progressives that has occurred after the failure of the Park Geun-hye government and snap election in Korea. The ability – and rather the necessity – for South Korea to resume its ambitious goals and take on the leading role it shared with the US at the end of the 1990s, is therefore greater than ever.

The Korean government’s strategic outreach and coalition-building among fellow middle powers like Germany and France, Australia and Japan, has long been a logical modernization of Korea’s foreign policy. The Norwegian countries have always been involved and helpful in the region. Now that outreach is doubly necessary, as the US steps back and Korea steps forward. This can be combined with new approaches to neighbors China, Russia and North Korea to make full use of Seoul’s geographic, military, economic and soft-power capabilities.

After the Moon administration is fully staffed, we will find out how they intend to make use of this new flexibility, and if they have learned valuable lessons from the experiences of Presidents DJ, Roh, MB and Park. In particular, they have signaled a return to an economic strategy – rather than a pressure/coercive strategy – to achieve security, denuclearization and infrastructure development.

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.