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Roh and Bush: Same side, different
goals
By John Feffer
(Used
with permission of Foreign Policy In
Focus.)
Roh Moo-hyun is going to
Washington with a public and a private message.
Publicly, the South Korean president will affirm his
government's desire to strengthen its relationship with
the United States and bring a peaceful end to the
nuclear crisis with North Korea. The private message,
which won't appear in any newspaper headlines, will be:
"Mr Bush, please don't screw things up for us."
The two Koreas have been moving closer together,
despite the rhetoric coming out of Washington and
Pyongyang's persistent attempts to acquire nuclear
weapons. According to the South Korean Ministry of
Unification, interactions between North and South Korea
last year were the most intensive since regular contacts
began in 1989.
This year, after removing mines
from the Demilitarized Zone, the two countries
established the first road link in 50 years, and several
delegations have already made the trip north. A sixth
reunion of divided families has also taken place. The
two sides will soon begin construction on a huge joint
industrial park just north of the border.
Roh is
keeping his eyes on this prize of greater inter-Korean
cooperation. If the two Germanys were able to pull off
such a feat during the most dangerous years of the cold
war, surely Korea can follow suit. Unfortunately, both
North Korea and the United States are eyeing very
different prizes.
Since taking office in 2000,
President George W Bush has steered US relations with
this isolated country into a diplomatic cul-de-sac. Even
before including North Korea in the infamous "axis of
evil", the Bush administration was keeping an
ever-elusive prize in its sight: regime change in
Pyongyang.
Toward this end, the administration
has campaigned against any policies that might extend
the life of the current North Korean government, from
the 1994 Agreed Framework to South Korea's engagement
policy. The Bush team has so far relied on economic
containment and diplomatic non-engagement to bring down
the North Korean government. Should these strategies
prove insufficient, the administration has also drawn up
several military scenarios, including a surgical strike
on North Korea's nuclear complex.
In its pursuit
of a nuclear-weapons program, Pyongyang has been an
accomplice in this deterioration in relations. During
the 1990s, North Korea considered its nuclear and
missile programs as bargaining chips and deterrents. In
the late 1990s, it became clear that the bargaining chip
of a potential nuclear program was not securing the kind
of diplomatic recognition (from the United States or
Japan) or economic carrots (nuclear energy, foreign
direct investment) that North Korea expected. Pyongyang
enlisted the help of Pakistan to develop a secret
uranium-enrichment program and, when the Bush
administration brought a new hard line to Washington,
accelerated this program in 2001.
The Iraq war
confirmed Pyongyang's worst suspicions: weak countries
get invaded, the United States doesn't put much faith in
inspection regimes, and unilateralism and preventive war
lie at the heart of the new foreign policy coming out of
Washington. From Pyongyang's perspective, a potential
nuclear program wasn't sufficient as a useful bargaining
chip. Meanwhile the deterrent of a real nuclear weapon -
a prize that Pyongyang claims to have developed but
whose existence it has yet to demonstrate - has so far
proved capable of thwarting a US attack.
Enter
Roh Moo-hyun. He has stressed the critical importance of
inter-Korean relations even to the point of ruling out a
military solution to the current nuclear crisis. Roh
didn't make too much fuss when South Korea was excluded
from the April negotiations in Beijing. Yet Seoul has
also put pressure on Pyongyang to make the first move by
giving up its nuclear program prior to receiving aid and
security guarantees from Washington. At the same time,
Roh made the domestically unpopular decision to join the
US coalition in the war on Iraq. This was an implied
quid pro quo: we'll fight your war if you support our
peace.
Roh is calculating that his peace posture
will persuade hardliners in Washington and Pyongyang to
set aside their differences in the interests of a
pragmatic accommodation. North Korea is willing to deal.
The Bush administration has so far been hesitant to
negotiate. The prize that Bush eyes - regime collapse in
Pyongyang - is in fact a booby prize, for it would
result in military insecurity, economic crisis, and a
refugee catastrophe in the region, with no certainty
that democracy would prevail or that weapons of mass
destruction would end up in secure hands.
This
week Roh Moo-hyun will deliver this quiet message to
Washington. With reconstruction bogging down in Iraq and
the US economy on the skids, the Bush administration
would be wise to listen to this man of peace.
John Feffer (e-mail johnfeffer@aol.com) is
the editor of the forthcoming Power Trip:
Unilateralism and Global Strategy After September 11
(Seven Stories, 2003) and writes regularly for Foreign
Policy in Focus. He is currently finishing a book
on US-Korean relations.
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