South Korea at the Crossroads: Autonomy and Alliance in an Era of Rival Powers by Scott A. Snyder (review)

As the Korean Peninsula transitions from stark tension to detente in 2018, we have a need for a clear explanation of the path on which we find ourselves. The Council on Foreign Relations' Scott Snyder delivers a crucial text at a critical time, providing us insight into the pressures and prospects that concern Seoul policy makers. China's mounting influence and North Korea's rapidly expanding nuclear and missile capabilities condition South Korea's prospects in challenging ways. Reliance on and flux in the South Korea–United States relationship necessarily reinforce, yet at some points challenge, Seoul's options. In the end, it is its American ally that best suits South Korea's interest.

Korea's story historically has been one of survival and resilience as it faces external threats from the surrounding great powers, Snyder points out in his preface. He couches South Korea's strategic choices atop a geopolitical fault line. China's rise and questions about US durability are the greatest conditioners today. It is a time for smart strategic choices—smart diplomacy, in the Obama-era lexicon—as South Korea sees intensifying regional rivalries among its neighbors and international engagement on efforts to stem North Korea's challenges. Seoul must stake its claim lest it fall victim to great power rivalries, as seen in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. South Korea does so today while moving forward on prospects for enhanced inter-Korean relations—with its security and prosperity on the line.

South Korea must balance the domestic-international push-pull, in its modern history balancing parochialism and internationalism. Early on, Snyder lays a framework for South Korea's foreign policy orientations over time, from poles of outwardly oriented internationalism to inwardly oriented parochialism, and from its alliance with the United States to autonomy, with cooperative security an alternative and inclination since the end of the Cold War. The conflict between and among those orientations begins under the authoritarian leaderships of Rhee Syngman and Park Chung Hee (with Chun Doo-hwan to follow), which were parochial and alliance-dependent or focused. Although Rhee challenged the Americans too, Park adopted a less confrontational approach as he prioritized modernization. US economic assistance and military assistance held mighty sway. Park thought support for the United States in Vietnam useful, "even essential," as Snyder points out (21). Fear of abandonment generated US support during the Vietnam era, yet over time, with the evolution of its concerns, South Korea grew its international contacts and indigenous capabilities.

As its economy modernized, South Korea moved further toward the international orientations of the democratic-era leaders. The struggle inherent in aspirations for autonomy and reliance on the alliance create a tension that remains—and which will grow with 2018's lean toward a peace regime and questions of the durability of US troops on the Peninsula.

As a professor of international relations, I find Snyder's modern diplomatic history both fluid and useful in the classroom. He describes 1960s foreign policy highlights—support in Vietnam, normalization of relations with Japan—and the inter-Korean detente of the 1970s, with Park's Yushin Constitution strengthening his control at home against US pressure. Park secretly pursued nuclear weapons in his pursuit of a more independent security approach and as a counter to the prospect of US force reductions. Chun abandoned the program and reaffirmed the alliance in his quest for legitimacy, which saw the Reagan White House welcome him as its first visiting president, despite concerns of the US human rights community.

In the 1980s, Chun's and successor Roh Taewoo's Nordpolitik aimed at normalization with the Soviets and Chinese to pressure Pyongyang. Throughout South Korea's authoritarian rule, the Cold War international political context had constrained the scope of Seoul's foreign policy given its dependence on the United States for its prosperity and security (51). Despite quelling...