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In Search of Hegemonic Diplomacy Bush’s Policy chapter six Dashing President Clinton’s hopes that his Republican successor, George W. Bush, would continue his carefully crafted policies of constructive engagement with North Korea and close cooperation with South Korea, the incoming Bush administration was inclined to change both the philosophical foundations and the substantive direction of the U.S. approach toward the Korean Peninsula. In terms of foreign policy priorities and specific methods for their implementation, the transition from Clinton to Bush was as pronounced as that from Carter to Reagan. Initially driven by a realist paradigm and coercive posture, the Bush administration deliberately sought to distance itself from President Clinton’s liberal tendencies in foreign affairs— his emphasis on the primacy of democratic peace, human rights, and diplomatic accommodation—and instead articulated a new set of strategic concepts and doctrines that directly confronted the aggressive and irresponsible behavior of “rogue states.” The United States now sought an assertive position of hegemonic global leadership rather than offering concessions and compromises to such countries. President George W. Bush and his lieutenants criticized the basic assumptions and actual record of Clinton’s engagement policy toward North Korea and believed that, with respect to North Korea’s tactics of blackmail and brinkmanship, the Clinton administration had used tactics of “appeasement” and succumbed to “extortion.”1 In the process of shifting his foreign policy priorities, President Bush met with cognitive dissonance and policy cleavages in his dealings with Presidents Kim Dae Jung and Roh Moo Hyun, both of whom pursued a liberal “sunshine policy” seeking a period of peaceful coexistence, mutual reconciliation, and economic cooperation with North Korea. In spite of frequent exchanges and consultations with his South Korean and Japanese counterparts, Bush was less than successful in developing a genuine sense of trilateral cooperation. This was particularly apparent when it came to managing a host of new troublesome developments, such as the trauma of September 11, 2001, the threat of international terrorism, the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction (WMDs), the war in Iraq, North Korean nuclear programs, and the status of U.S. troops stationed in South Korea and Japan. While the United States pursued a multilateral approach toward North Korean nuclear issues and promoted the Three-Party Talks (the United States, North Korea, and China) and the Six-Party Talks (the United States, North Korea, South Korea, China, Japan, and Russia) in 2003 and 2005, the growing wave of anti-American sentiment in South Korea, together with the expansion of South Korea’s economic and diplomatic capabilities, the unfolding of inter-Korean rapprochement, and the ascendancy of Chinese power and influence—all of this in fact undermined the traditional framework of alliance cohesion and diplomatic coalition between Washington and Seoul and prompted a fundamental restructuring of the U.S. military presence in Korea. This profound military transformation was based less on the concepts of containment, deterrence, and isolation than on the Rumsfeld Doctrine, which stressed the advantages of advanced technology, rapid mobility, and strategic flexibility. Hence agonizing reassessment and an uncertain trajectory came to characterize the outline of U.S. policy toward the Korean Peninsula under President Bush. bush’s new doctrines Since President Bush, unlike his two predecessors George H. W. Bush and Bill Clinton, had little interest or experience in foreign affairs prior to his inauguration, he tended to rely heavily on his aides, such as Condoleezza Rice, a specialist in Russia , in articulating and implementing his diplomatic and military policies. Almost a year before Bush’s election, Rice had openly criticized the “Wilsonian thought” and “multilateral solutions” in Clinton’s foreign policy and unabashedly advanced political realism as the foundation of Bush’s international outlook. She identified Bush’s key priorities: “to ensure that America’s military can deter war, project power, and fight in defense of its interests if deterrence fails” and “to deal decisively with the threat of rogue regimes and hostile powers, which is increasingly taking the forms of the potential for terrorism and the development of weapons of mass destruction.” And she lambasted North Korea: “The regime of Kim Jong Il is so opaque that it is difficult to know its motivations, other than that they are malign. But North Korea also lives outside of the international system. Like East Germany, North Korea is the i n s e a r c h o f h e g e m o n i c d i p l o...

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