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BOOK
REVIEW
A Korean exit strategy for the
US
Korean Endgame: A Strategy for
Reunification and US Disengagement, by Selig
Harrison
Reviewed by Sreeram Chaulia
 Selig Harrison, one of America's finest
journalists and foreign-policy analysts, has written on
Korean politics for the past three decades. This book is
a compendium of his thoughts on ending the convoluted
50-year regional standoff in Northeast Asia, and a
reminder that the ball is in the US court to promote
progress toward a unified, de-nuclearized and peaceful
Korea.
Too often, Western commentators have
taken a myopic view of North Korea as an irrational and
belligerent "rogue state" that is the source of all
troubles. Harrison presents an eagle-eyed historical and
strategic sweep to demonstrate that the United States
shares a large amount of blame for past tensions in the
region and that US postures have to change to ease the
path for North-South confederation and ultimate union.
Paralysis of US policy
US military
commitments in the Korean Peninsula originated in the
context of Cold War alignments that no longer exist.
Since 1958, there have been no Chinese or Soviet troops
in North Korea, and yet the United States continues to
maintain 37,000 troops backed by the latest combat
aircraft and a "nuclear umbrella" over South Korea. The
ostensible justification for US force deployment in
South Korea is the bellicosity of the North, while in
private, US officials admit frankly that their presence
is needed to make sure that the South does not drag the
United States into a new Korean war, as South Korean
president Syngman Rhee attempted from the late 1950s.
What Washington ignores is that as long as it
retains an adversarial role on one side of the
unfinished Korean civil war, reunification will be
impeded. Pyongyang's security concerns, especially its
fear of US fighter jets, have been completely overlooked
by Washington, which fails to see that its nuclear and
conventional positioning in the South are considered by
the fragile and weak North as the primary threats to its
survival. US thinking is also a prisoner of a time warp,
based on the assumption that South Koreans still see the
United States as a defender against communist
aggression. Even such a respected peacemaker as former
senator George Mitchell, whom I met last year, defended
the status quo by telling me that US forces are
"welcomed as friends" in Korea. The potent rise of
anti-US nationalist sentiment in both South and North
Korea is apparently invisible in Washington.
Another reason for paralytic US policy is
misplaced belief that North Korea will collapse as a
state and be absorbed by the South. Harrison opposes
temporizing on redeployment of US troops because "North
Korea would survive as a separate state for the
indefinite future" (p 4). North Korean self-image is
founded on pride in having survived an unequal encounter
with the most technically advanced power in the world
from 1950-53. Kim Il-sung's nationalist credentials as
an inveterate anti-Japanese guerrilla fighter coupled
with five decades of statist education emphasizing total
loyalty to the nation have laid a strong ideological
foundation for North Korea's survival. "It would be a
mistake to underrate the underlying strength of
nationalist feeling in North Korea" (p 20). Kim Jong-il
has also begun a series of "economic reforms by
stealth", ensconcing technocrats in charge of
liberalization, allowing private farming and opening up
trade and investment links with the South. In Harrison's
estimation, the North Korean regime will "muddle
through" for many years to come by playing off
pragmatists against conservatives. The United States
cannot keep banking indefinitely on naive hopes of
Pyongyang's collapse.
Reformulating the US
role
The future role of the United States will
have a critical impact on North-South normalization and
transition to unification. North Korea is wary of Kim
Dae-jung's "Sunshine Policy", inter alia due to the
outgoing South Korean president's advocacy of a
continued US military presence in Korea after
reunification. The "gap between atmospherics and
reality" over the Sunshine Policy can be explained by
America's failure to relax economic sanctions or accord
normal trade status to the North, as was promised in the
1994 nuclear-freeze agreement. Kim Jong-il expected the
June 2000 summit to produce improved North Korean
relations with Washington, but the George W Bush
administration's hardline approach has now pushed
Pyongyang to lock up significant North-South contacts.
Beyond minor issues such as economic aid,
diplomatic recognition and regret for the US role in
dividing Korea, what North Korea wishes is for
Washington gradually to downsize its open-ended military
presence, which sustains a "climate of indefinite
confrontation". Coming down one step from its previous
demand for absolute and immediate US military
disengagement from the South, Pyongyang has indicated
that it would "not object to the continuation of a
modified US-force presence for a transition period when
arms-control tradeoffs are explored" (p 115).
A
revision of "Op Plan 5027", the US war contingency
scenario in Korea, visualizes a massive attack using US
air superiority to "abolish North Korea as a functioning
state and reorganize the country under South Korean
control". US refusal to shelve its right to first-use of
nuclear weapons for deterring conventional North Korean
advances, together with warnings by US generals of
launching preemptive nuclear attacks with B-52 bombers
if the North conducts war exercises near the
Demilitarized Zone, have raised Pyongyang's
determination to negotiate a change in US postures and
"tripwire" deployments, in return for guarantees of
ending the North's nuclear and missile programs.
On the issue of formally ending the Korean War
too, unless the United States ceases to be technically
at war with the North, no headway can be made. Harrison
recommends that the US sign a direct bilateral agreement
with North Korea for ending the armistice and then
inviting the South to join in the new peace structure as
a full partner. This accords with the historical fact
that South Korea never signed the 1953 armistice.
Obstacles to US disengagement
Harrison
points with acuity to a number of hurdles blocking a
transformation of the US role from a combatant to a
neutral "honest broker" between North and South. The
psychological legacy of the Korean War has resulted in
an exaggerated imagery of North Korea as a demonic new
"yellow peril" in American eyes. South Korea has also
lobbied intensely against the North by roping in
sympathizers in the Pentagon, Congress and US defense
industries that have a stake in continued militarization
of Korea. Another irritant is the "semi-imperial
trappings of US military life in Korea", where four-star
generals command a country's army and enjoy unparalleled
personal privileges. For Korea to have peace,
war-economy interests will have to be smashed by a bold
and visionary US president.
North Korean nuclear
and missile proliferation have helped hawks in Seoul and
Washington to argue against any compromise or
negotiation with a member of the "axis of evil". But
Harrison shows that this puts the cart before the horse,
since North Korea's nuclear ambitions were "propelled
from the start by the US nuclear posture towards the
peninsula" (p 197). North Korea has repeatedly asked
"formal US assurances to the DPRK [Democratic Republic
of Korea] against the threat or use of nuclear weapons
by the United States". Pyongyang promised US envoy
Robert Galucci its suspension of withdrawal from the
nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty in early 1994 only
after he publicly declared "assurance against the threat
or use of force against the DPRK, including nuclear
weapons". Former US president Jimmy Carter's landmark
deal later that year for temporarily freezing the
North's nuclear program also succeeded "precisely
because he was not associated with the counterproductive
threat of sanctions and preemptive nuclear strikes" (p
215).
The 1998 moratorium on Pyongyang's missile
testing was similarly premised on reciprocal US gestures
of normalization, although both Koreas have to consider
a US-independent fear of Japanese missile development
and plutonium reprocessing. "A unified Korea would be
defenseless if Japan should convert its civilian nuclear
and space programs to military purposes" (p 246). It is
in Northeast Asian and US interests to persuade Japan
not to start a "trilateral nuclear race" with North and
South Korea (the South's atomic and missile capabilities
far exceed the North's).
Preserving a neutral
and secure Korea
In the concluding section,
Harrison takes issue with the oft-cited statement that
if the United States disengages and militarily quits the
Korean Peninsula, regional great powers such as Japan,
China and Russia will overrun unified Korea to fill the
"power vacuum". Struggle among neighboring powers for
dominance over Korea is indeed a sad fact of history,
somewhat like Poland's, but Harrison avers that the
objective conditions inside Korea have changed a lot in
the last hundred years, making it impossible for a
repeat of the 1894-1905 experience. The rise of powerful
nationalist sentiment in both North and South will
render a unified regime "less vulnerable to foreign
manipulation than the politically quiescent and
economically underdeveloped Korea of a century ago" (p
347). It will be extremely difficult for giant neighbors
to manipulate internal factional divisions in a
resurgent, vigilant and unified Korea, which will claim
its own place as a major Asian power, alongside China,
India and Japan.
Nonetheless, deep mutual
distrust and animosity between Korea and Japan persist.
South and North alike share a conviction that Japan does
not want Korea to be united. Though Koreans are more
reverential to Chinese cultural influence, they are also
worried about the Manchurian land and petroleum seabed
disputes with Beijing that could spill over into past
forms of Chinese dominance in the peninsula. Russia is
also dismayed by its marginalization from Korean affairs
since 1991 and is eyeing "re-entering" Korea
economically to safeguard Moscow's geopolitical
interests in Northeast Asia.
To offset any
danger to Korean independence, Harrison wants the United
States to initiate a broader security dialogue with the
three big neighbors, involving agreements not to deploy
military forces, missiles or weapons of mass destruction
in unified Korea. But for this offer to be a serious
one, Washington has to begin reforming its own policy
and implement the disengagement steps outlined earlier
in this review. An egotistic, biased and one-sided
approach in Washington cannot yield lasting peace.
Written at a moment when US military presence is
increasingly seen as anomalous and insulting to national
sovereignty in both North and South Korea, Korean
Endgame has a clear-cut message: It is time for the
United States to get out of Korea and act as a regional
stabilizer rather than a destabilizing force.
Korean Endgame: A Strategy for Reunification
and US Disengagement, by Selig Harrison, 2002
Princeton University Press, ISBN: 0-691-09604-X, Price
US$29.95, 409 pages.
(©2003 Asia Times Online
Co, Ltd. All rights reserved. Please contact content@atimes.com
for information on our sales and syndication policies.)
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