A Troubled Peace: U.S. Policy and the Two Koreas

7. Prospects

Prospects chapter seven Once, in a discussion of the complexities of international relations, George F. Kennan suggested that there was not only “nothing final in point of time, nothing not vulnerable to the law of change,” but also “nothing absolute in itself.”1 He added: “There is no friendship without some element of antagonism; no enmity without some rudimentary community of interests; no benevolent intervention which is not also in part an injury; no act of recalcitrance, no seeming evil, from which—as Shakespeare put it—some ‘soul of goodness’ may not be distilled.” This astute observation is, mutatis mutandis, just as applicable to the sixty-year record of U.S. relations with the Korean Peninsula. Indeed, nothing in this relationship has been absolute, final, or static. It has continued, but it has also been subject to the “law of change” and the vagaries of fluidity. Friendship, enmity, antagonism, injury, intervention, recalcitrance , evil, common interest, and even the “soul of goodness” have all been part of America’s complicated interactions with South Korea and North Korea. continuity and change As far as the goals of U.S. policy toward Korea are concerned, I am impressed by the remarkable degree of continuity since the end of the Korean War. In NSC 170/1 (“U.S. Objectives and Courses of Action in Korea,” November 1953), the Mutual Defense Treaty with South Korea, and a number of bilateral joint statements, the United States consistently upheld its primary interest in maintaining an effective containment system against North Korea and also articulated its secondary interests— to cultivate cooperative relations between Washington and Seoul, to assist economic development and commercial activities in South Korea, to support relaxation of tensions between both Koreas, and to bring about the unification of Korea with a free, independent, and representative government friendly toward the United States. Although the United States did not regard promoting human rights and liberal democracy as a central goal of its policy toward South Korea, it nonetheless encouraged the process of political liberalization as much as it could, both for its intrinsic merits and for the sake of enhancing the legitimacy, stability, and acceptability of the South Korean government, especially in the eyes of the U.S. Congress and attentive American groups. Yet whenever there was an actual or imagined conflict between protecting South Korea against possible North Korean aggression and promoting human rights and democratic principles, the United States by and large chose its commitment to protect South Korean national security. What is especially notable, however, is the extent to which the United States has adapted the relative priorities and nuances of its goals to the changing conditions in America, in the Korean Peninsula, and in the global and regional systems. While the paramount importance of containment and deterrence has been a largely constant factor in their alliance system, the United States and South Korea at times diverged in their perceptions of threats and military preparedness. For instance, their disagreement over the appropriate number and locations of U.S. troops stationed in South Korea manifested itself during several administrations. Guided by the Guam Doctrine, President Nixon unilaterally decided to withdraw one of the two U.S. army divisions from South Korea. Later on, in the context of the “Vietnam Syndrome” and President Park’s violations of human rights, President Carter announced a plan to withdraw the remaining U.S. ground forces from South Korea, but he was eventually persuaded not to carry out his plan. The George W. Bush administration, too, modi fied its intention to lower the U.S. military profile in South Korea mainly because of the threat of North Korean nuclear armament. Most recently, the two allies became engaged in difficult negotiations to reduce the number of U.S. troops by a third, to relocate the Second Infantry Division south of the Han River, and to move the Yongsan Garrison away from Seoul by 2008. The structure of the bilateral alliance is headed toward a sweeping change in the next few years. In order to achieve its goals in Korea, the United States used several methods and tactics to exert its influence over South Korea’s domestic and foreign policies. Most prevalent among them was a system of economic reward and punishment. So long as South Korea substantially depended on America’s economic assistance and commercial cooperation throughout the 1950s and the early part of the 1960s, it was difficult for Presidents Rhee and Park to...