GMF - The German Marshall Fund of the United States - Strengthening Transatlantic Cooperation

Is the U.S. alliance with the Republic of Korea (ROK) stuck in the past? A comparison with many of Washington’s other relationships with Asian powers might make it seem so. Despite uncertainties arising from Japan’s new domestic political constellation, the U.S.- Japan alliance has transformed beyond recognition over the past 15 years as the two countries used their partnership as a framework to promote Japan’s evolutionary “normalization” as a great power. From attempting to constrain Indian power in the 1990s through technological and other sanctions, the United States in the 2000s has invested systematically in propelling India’s geopolitical rise as an Asian balancer and global player. The U.S.-Australia alliance has been modernized, and Washington has forged qualitatively closer relations with Indonesia and Vietnam, Southeast Asia’s key swing states. By contrast, the U.S.-South Korea alliance has not been similarly transformed; it remains in some ways frozen by the continuing conflict on the Korean peninsula.

Perhaps it could not be otherwise. The threat the U.S.-Japan and U.S.-Australia alliances were forged to contain—the Soviet Union—is long gone, and with it the source of tension between America and the tacitly Soviet-allied India of Jawaharlal Nehru and Indira Gandhi. Vietnam, once a battlefield for American soldiers who relied on the U.S. alliances with Thailand and the Philippines for rear-area support, is now anxious to preserve an American forward presence in Asia to countervail China. Indonesia, once home to archetypical Asian strongman General Suharto, is now a flourishing democracy, creating a values-based foundation for closer ties to Washington, including a new congruence of outlook on issues like Burma that once divided the two countries. By contrast, North Korea’s regime and armed forces remain an existential threat to South Korea; the primary purpose of Seoul’s Cold War-era alliance with Washington endures.

South Korea itself, however, has changed beyond all recognition. The country that once possessed a smaller economy and less capable armed forces than North Korea has become the world’s 10th largest economy and a pacesetter for the Asian renaissance that is transforming the international system. Once ruled by strongmen whose power base rested with the security services—as in North Korea—South Korea now boasts a consolidated and flourishing democracy, bolstered by several peaceful transfers of political power between parties, making it a model for its region. South Korean soldiers have deployed far beyond the peninsula, including to Iraq and Afghanistan, and South Korean ships patrol international waters as part of the Proliferation Security Initiative coalition. South Korea is a member of the Group of 20, the world’s economic and financial steering committee that has replaced the once exclusively Western (and Japanese) club of the G-7. Americans and Chinese drive South Korean cars, watch South Korean high-definition televisions, and use laptops powered by South Korean microchips. South Korea is unquestionably one of Asia’s leading economic and political success stories.

As South Korea has changed, so too has Asia. China is poised to surpass Japan as the world’s second-largest economy at market rates. China, India, and Vietnam have ranked among the world’s fastest-growing economies during the first decade of this century. Japan has undergone a political revolution with the ascension to power of the Democratic Party, calling into question the future of a Liberal Democratic Party that had ruled nearly without interruption for over five decades. On the other side of the regional balance sheet, North Korea now possesses nuclear weapons and advanced long- range missiles and has proliferated their underlying technologies to the Middle East and South Asia. China has pursued an aggressive and sustained military buildup focused on power-projection capabilities that calls into serious question both its intentions and the ability of the United States and its allies to maintain a regional balance that deters aggression.

The transformed regional and global environments, like South Korea’s transformed political and economic outlook, call for a new U.S.-South Korea alliance for the new century. This is true both with respect to managing the danger from North Korea but, as importantly, to shape the evolution of the Asian regional system as it moves beyond an exclusive reliance on America’s Cold War hub-andspokes alliance system as the foundation for regional security. To understand both the continuing importance of the U.S.-ROK alliance and the urgency of updating it to better manage security order in 21st century Asia, this chapter seeks to frame the alliance in its wider context and analyze its interaction with the broader catalysts of regional change.

The first section of the chapter examines the nature and role of American power as a foundational source of the regional order in which South Korea’s post-World War 2 development has been nested. The second section analyzes key trends in Asia that are transforming the regional order and their implications for the Republic of Korea. The third section outlines different scenarios for Asia’s future regional order to create the context for a fourth section assessing why South Korea is better off with a strong and healthy U.S. alliance in light of any anticipated pathway for Asia’s regional evolution. The fifth section outlines specific policy initiatives to strengthen the U.S.-South Korea alliance to position both countries to thrive and prosper in an Asia-Pacific century.

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