The ROK-U.S. Alliance: Where Is It Headed?

Abstract

Key Points For half a century, the alliance between the Republic of Korea and the United States has focused on the threat posed by North Korea. But today, as South Korea moves toward reconciliation with the North on the basis of a strong and credible deterrence, a new approach is required to guide the future of the alliance. South Korea and the United States need a strategic plan that defines shared objectives and the means for achieving them. This plan would identify possible problems that could occur en route to these objectives and suggest how to avert them, plus what the two countries would need to do if the problems were to happen anyway. A strategic plan would help guide the current discussions on the future of the alliance. It would give direction to the alliance and provide both Korean and American audiences with a clearer vision of why we maintain an alliance and what we gain from it. Such a plan might have helped avert the current nuclear weapons crisis with North Korea; now, it is needed to resolve the crisis. It should identify a mutually agreeable approach to propose to North Korea as part of multilateral discussions, an approach agreed to by the other regional players. Developing such a plan will not be easy because Seoul and Washington do not view some critical issues in the same manner. But the effort to describe and explain these differences may resolve some of them and prepare the way for adjusting the U.S. military presence in Korea and creating a peace regime on the Korean Peninsula. ********** The National Security Strategy of the United States of America (September 2002) provides an important framework from which to examine the current crisis on the Korean Peninsula and other challenges in Northeast Asia. With its focus on terrorism and weapons of mass destruction (WMD), this strategy is concerned with North Korea as much as, if not more than, any other state. In particular, North Korea poses a unique set of challenges in regard to WMD. North Korea stands in sharp contrast to the Republic of Korea (ROK) on issues such as human rights, democracy, and market economies. The National Security Strategy suggests that the United States should revitalize its alliance with South Korea, while encouraging North Korea to transform its political and economic system. Yet South Korea and the United States are currently having some difficulties in developing a consensus on how to approach Pyongyang, and appear to have no clear plan to operationalize the strategy to deal with North Korea. At issue are increasing ROK pride coupled with economic and other successes, the North Korean nuclear weapons development program, and the U.S.-led war on global terrorism. As South Korea and the United States are marking the 50th anniversary of the signing of the Mutual Defense Treaty, internal and external confusion lingers and a crisis looms, caused by Pyongyang's nuclear weapons program and the political repercussions of Operation Iraqi Freedom. In Europe, due to varying national interests, some countries opposed military action by America and Britain against Iraq. While South Korea and Japan supported coalition forces in Iraq, there are concerns in both countries over future preventive military actions by the United States. But the focus of the security debate in Northeast Asia continues to be Pyongyang's nuclear weapons development. Sensitive differences in American and South Korean assessments of and predictions about these clandestine nuclear programs, coupled with concern about the dangers of war, have led to broad debate on the series of North Korean actions and even some claims that the United States is responsible for this crisis. Nationalist anti-American sentiments seen among some South Korean media and citizens, and reactive anti-Korean sentiments in the United States that are often exaggerated by some American media reports, have led to an eruption of demands for reductions and relocations of U. …