Macron option for Korea

France's President Emmanuel Macron, second from left, and Germany's Chancellor Angela Merkel, look at U.S. President Donald Trump and Turkey's President Recep Tayyip Erdogan during a "family" photo at the NATO summit at the Grove hotel in Watford, northeast of London, Dec. 4. AFP-Yonhap

By Oh Young-jin

Korea may need a touch of Emmanuel Macron in reshaping its most important alliance with the United States.

The French president is calling for a change to the Europe-U.S. alliance to meet changing conditions, best epitomized by what he calls Europe's reclamation of security sovereignty.

The Macron call comes as U.S. President Donald Trump presses NATO countries to meet the pledge of spending 2 percent of their gross domestic product (GDP) on defense. NATO, the post-World War II military alliance across the Atlantic, was set up against threats of the Soviet Union in the Cold War era.

Macron's logic goes that NATO has outlived its original purpose ― he famously called the organization "brain dead" ― now that the Soviet Union has been dissolved, its successor Russia being reduced to a shadow of its former self.

So the French leader wants to reach out to Russia in a prelude to Europe having less dependence on the U.S. and engage the world in a way that fits the continent's best interests.

Other European members are reluctant to follow Macron's lead, being unsure what alternative there would be for the U.S. as a security partner and how to cope with a potential security vacuum created by U.S. disengagement. But it may be only a matter of time before the Macron proposal becomes a European consensus.

Korea, too, is under pressure from the U.S. to contribute more to the upkeep of U.S. troops stationed here. The Trump administration wants Korea to pay five times the current contribution, to $5 billion annually. Some U.S. experts dismiss the figure as unrealistic, while Walter Sharp, a former commander of U.S. Forces Korea, called on Trump to stop cheapening the alliance to gain "a few dollars" (of course, $5 billion is not just a few bucks).

Trump mocks Korea for being a freeloader, piggybacking on U.S. taxpayers. This hurts Koreans' pride and gives fodder to dormant anti-American sentiment that waits to flare up.

Korea also is undergoing soul-searching about the future of the alliance, raising wild wishes to have its own nuclear program. But U.S. pressure for Korea's greater contribution is only one of the fundamental reasons.

First, North Korea's threat has changed in nature and gravity. It is true that it has finessed its nuclear weapons and long-distance delivery system. The irony is that these powerful weapons are more for display than use.

Up until the 1980s, the North had posed an existential threat to the South as countries of the world, still divided into free and communist blocs, competed with each other and constantly searched for an outlet to cool tensions between the U.S. and Soviet Union. Nuclear or not, the North is one of the few remaining aberrations left unresolved by the end of the Cold War.

Second, the Soviet Union, leader of the communist bloc, where the North belonged, no longer exists, and gone with it is much of its ideology. China has leapt from a backward-looking most populous nation of the world to a global economic sensation, rivaling the U.S. Along with it comes its shift of interest.

It wants to maintain the status quo on the balance of power on the peninsula to continue its economic growth while the North remains as a buffer against U.S. influence. A disruption in the status quo means chaos ― millions of North Koreans spilling over the border into China's northeast and the country exposed to the risk of direct contact with the U.S. military presence.

China and North Korea may appear as old comrades in arms, fighting the Japanese Imperial army and battling the U.S. military, with Xi Jinping and Kim Jong-un in a huddle together. But looks may be deceiving, with the two having quite different thoughts behind their smiling faces ― Xi about stability and Kim about survival and more.

Macron is trying to do what others dare not.

What are the choices for Korea? No. 1: Korea, sandwiched between big powers, its fate at their mercy, can resign itself to whatever comes its way. No. 2: It can, a la Macron, take a chance as an opportunity and press on.

It is a red pill or blue pill moment like in "The Matrix" ― each has its own merit: the first promises stability and the second is a chance for change. We as a nation have consistently taken the first choice or, when the second is taken, given up on it at the last moment. This time, we should take ownership of our fate ― the choice of Macron ― and press on until we clearly see what the future has in store.

Oh Young-jin (foolsdie@gmail.com, foolsdie5@koreatimes.co.kr) is digital managing editor of The Korea Times.

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