America's Commitment to South Korea: The First Decade of the Nixon Doctrine (review)

BOOK REVIEWS79 administrations during the post-War period. Policy on such matters as troop reduction and human rights, for example, has yoyoed during the Carter and Reagan years in particular, and in general has been marked by sudden twists and turns. Unaccustomed to the impact of a democratic cacophony over domestic or foreign policy, Koreans often have been baffled and annoyed, not to mention immeasurably hurt, by the zigzag course of American policy toward their country . As Patterson and Conroy put it, "Many Koreans think it terribly ironic and inconsistent for the United States to divide the [country in 1945], then . . . refuse to train and equip South Korean troops (unlike the Soviets in North Korea), and withdraw its troops and phase out its commitment to South Korea—then get reinvolved when the North attacked the South and modernize the South Korean forces (under Eisenhower, Kennedy, Johnson, and Nixon), then cause anxiety about the reliability of the American commitment (under Carter) and, finally, reassert a firm pledge for the security of their country (under Reagan)." (pp. 10-11) Herein lies the ultimate asymmetry between the two allies—between the democratic process and its unpredictable foreign policy, as represented by America, and the authoritarian system and its neatly "efficient" foreign policy, as represented by South Korea. Only when the political process of the latter comes to reflect true democratic values will the foreign policies of the two allies begin to reflect a true bilateralism and trustworthiness. If the Lee-Patterson book provokes this kind of thinking among many readers, then it will have also performed a public service, not just an educational one. As good as this book is, it is not free from its own moments of vacuous musings. For example, at the end of an otherwise fine essay, Yur-Bok Lee offers this utterly inane speculation: "As it turned out, the empire of Japan became strong and modernized, whereas the kingdom of Korea become absorbed by Japan. Thus Emperor Meiji became a winner while Emperor Kojong became a loser—the point being that it is very easy to praise a winner and criticize a loser. One wonders what would have happened if King Kojong had been the emperor of Japan and Meiji the ruler of Korea, or if Korea were located where Japan is and Japan where Korea is. " (P- 45) One also may wonder what the history of the world would have been if the United States and the Soviet Union had been cast in reverse roles, but does our understanding of history get any help from such meaningless speculation? Vipan Chandra Wheaton College America's Commitment to South Korea: The First Decade ofthe Nixon Doctrine, by Nam Joo-Hong. London and New York: Cambridge University Press, 1986. x, 218 pp. Index. $34.50. The focus of Nam's book, a revision of his doctoral thesis submitted to the London School of Economics, is United States security policy in Asia in the 80BOOK REVIEWS 1970s as it relates to Korea. His main argument is that America's commitment to defend South Korea has changed, over timé, from a policy of "unlimited containment" of communism to a "limited" posture. The Nixon Doctrine's disengagement policy, enunciated in Guam in July 1969, asked allies to assume primary responsibility for part of their own defense, thereby excluding automatic U.S. participation in wars between Asian powers. It had a sanguine effect on the subsequent development of United States-Korean alliance relations , particularly in terms of the Carter administration's policy of troop withdrawal from Korea, first announced in 1977 but abandoned by 1979. In discussing the turbulent years of U.S.-Korean relations, Nam's approach is basically historical, in that he traces the "genesis" and the origin of U.S. involvement in Korea and the evolution of its security policy from the end of World War II through the end of the 1970s. He characterizes the U.S. role in Korea in the 1945-53 era, which determined subsequent U.S. security policy in Korea, in terms of three theses: the United States (a) as a liberator of the Korean people from Japan's colonial rule (1910-1945); (b) as a...