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Korea: Benefits of a mission to
Mosul
By Jamie Miyazaki
It
has been six months since the war in Iraq began, and
it's no secret that the security and reconstruction
efforts there are not progressing anywhere near as
smoothly as Washington had previously envisaged. In the
midst of ongoing criticism, the Bush administration
recently took another hit when the American public's
confidence in their president's ability to handle an
international crisis dropped from 66 percent, where it
stood in April, to 45 percent. With an election year
just around the corner, this statistic is hardly
edifying news for a White House gearing up for the
campaign trail.
Having previously spurned the
United Nations in favor of a "coalition of the willing",
President George W Bush has found himself back at the UN
Assembly trying to garner support for a new mandate
authorizing a UN-backed, US-led peacekeeping force for
Iraq in an effort to reduce US exposure to a nation in
freefall. However, Bush's formerly defiant performance
and negotiating posture at the Assembly look to have
discounted any chance of a new UN mandate being passed.
Therefore, it appears unlikely that many of the 14
nations Washington has asked to provide troops for Iraq
will acquiesce. Still, a handful of these countries
remain under continued pressure to contribute to the
coalition effort regardless of the lack of a UN
imprimatur. Foremost among these are America's two main
allies in the Asia-Pacific region: Japan and South
Korea. With a dispatch of Japanese Self-Defense Force
troops appearing a certainty, Washington's focus is now
on Seoul.
Over the past month as the Pentagon
has sought to reduce its commitment in Iraq, it has
applied increasingly overt pressure on the
administration of South Korean President Roh Moo-hyun to
contribute further to coalition forces. US Ambassador
Thomas Hubbard has stated that South Korea is one of the
few countries with a military of sufficient size and
ability to deploy troops to Iraq to help restore order.
General Leon LaPorte, head of US Forces Korea (USFK),
has chimed in with similar comments. Initial vague
suggestions for an increased South Korean presence and
not-so-subtle allusions to troop dispatches by other
countries have crystallized into more a focused request
aired by Richard Lawless, US deputy assistant secretary
of defense, for the dispatch of about 5,000 South Korean
troops to the northern Iraqi city of Mosul to relieve
the 101st Airborne Division by early next year.
Unfortunately for the White House, South Koreans
have long been skeptical of the rationale behind the
Iraq war. Moreover, recent revelations in both the
United States and the United Kingdom of politicians
cherry-picking the most gloomy intelligence briefs to
bolster their case for war while discarding others has
not done much to counter underlying Korean suspicions
that the war was motivated by a desire to increase US
influence in the Middle East as opposed to reducing the
risk of further terrorist attacks. The decision earlier
this year to dispatch 675 South Korean non-combat
personnel to Iraq was controversial, and according to
recent opinion polls, 75.6 percent of South Koreans
oppose the dispatch of troops, although more would be
inclined to support the deployment if it were authorized
by a UN resolution. But with a UN resolution
unforthcoming, Roh is under pressure from Washington on
one side and a skeptical public and legislature on the
other.
Moreover, with National Assembly
elections scheduled for next April, Roh, like Bush, is
facing electoral constraints. However, Roh's problems
has been further compounded by the recent split in the
Millennium Democratic Party (MDP), and now 38 pro-Roh
MDP members have decided to form their own party. Roh
too has tendered his resignation from the MDP and is
hoping to use this new party, provisionally called the
People's Participatory United New Party (PPUNP), as the
base from which to push his reformist agenda.
Unfortunately the PPUNP is the party most vociferously
opposed to a new troop dispatch. Roh finds himself in a
situation all too familiar to British Prime Minister
Tony Blair: under heavy pressure from his most important
ally, he must justify an unpopular request to a hostile
public and party.
This comparison to Tony Blair
is important, as Blair's justification for British
support in the Iraq war and South Korea's more reluctant
endorsement of the conflict were based on markedly
different grounds. Blair chose to couch his argument in
the language of moral obligation and ridding the world
of a particularly nasty dictator. Roh on the other hand
justified his much more limited but equally
controversial assistance on the grounds of national
self-interest. By sending 675 non-combat personnel,
Seoul was acting in good faith toward its US ally,
demonstrating its commitment to a "more equal
partnership" and guaranteeing itself more leverage in
formulating a coordinated Washington-Seoul policy toward
North Korea. While Roh didn't go as far as saying
Seoul's support for a war in Iraq was a quid pro quo for
US endorsement of a Pyongyang engagement policy, this
was certainly an underlying implication.
Under
renewed pressure to field a fresh Korean troop presence
for Iraq, Roh has chosen to tread carefully on this
divisive issue and has assiduously fallen back on
national-self-interest arguments. The previous 675-man
Korean contingent appeared to have yielded Roh very
little leverage in his efforts to persuade the Bush team
to pursue a more conciliatory negotiating line with
Pyongyang at August's six-way talks. This time, however,
in an ironic reverse twist to the "axis of evil" domino
theory, the Roh administration has explicitly linked a
Mosul dispatch to a conciliatory approach to the North
Korean issue. The next round of six-way talks is
scheduled for next month, and Seoul will be eager for
the Americans to offer North Korean leader Kim Jong-il
some carrots as well as sticks.
With the 101st
Airborne scheduled to leave Mosul in February or March,
an approval from the National Assembly is required
around November, as troops need to arrive in Mosul by
January for one or two months' on-site training before
active service can commence. Time is therefore of the
essence and, with the Pentagon wanting to reduce its
Iraq presence and Bush keeping his eyes on the polls,
Roh can be fairly confident that the time issue will
play to his advantage.
Roh has indicated he is
not in a rush to come to a decision but hasn't ruled out
the possibility that his decision could occur at the
Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation summit scheduled to
take place from October 21-22 in Bangkok or at the
annual US-ROK (Republic of Korea) Security Consultative
Meeting from October 24-25 in Seoul.
Not only
would a softer line on North Korea from Washington be
good electoral news for Roh and the PPUNP, but linking a
Mosul dispatch to the North Korea issue would signal
that Seoul is taking a more assertive role in the
50-year-old US-ROK alliance that forms the bedrock of
South Korea's defense and foreign policies. A "more
equal relationship" between the two nations has been one
of Roh's key foreign-policy goals and, while he has yet
to articulate clearly what this abstract objective
means, a Mosul dispatch/Pyongyang tradeoff would counter
criticisms of Roh as Bush's poodle and play well to a
wide electoral base.
However, it is unclear
whether Seoul is really in a strong enough position to
horse-trade with its US ally like this. Pentagon
hard-men Donald Rumsfeld and Paul Wolfowitz have both
made clear their displeasure at South Korean government
tolerance of American-bashing. In a press conference
with South Korean reporters, Deputy Defense Secretary
Wolfowitz has also warned against linking the two
issues.
As Dr Chaesung Chun, assistant professor
of political science at Sookmyung Women's University,
rather bluntly put it at an Asia Foundation seminar in
Washington, DC, in May, "South Korea's foreign policy is
the foreign policy of weak countries ... our primary
concern is survival ... South Korea faces international
systemic constraints. The character of the new
leadership does not matter as much as the external
constraints."
Any unfavorable reconfiguring of
the USFK strategic footprint in South Korea could be far
more uncomfortable to Seoul economically, strategically
and militarily than America's discomfort at the failure
of Roh to dispatch 5,000 troops. This rather nasty
meathook reality has not gone unnoticed by some senior
South Korean officials. Korean construction firms are
already anxious that a troop-dispatch refusal could
leave them out of the loop for lucrative construction
contracts and both Deputy Prime Minister of Finance and
Economy Kim Jin-pyo and Korean Ambassador to the US Han
Seung-ju have both called for a troop dispatch, the
former on economic grounds and the latter on security
grounds.
Whatever the decision, Roh is in for a
tough sell to the disappointed side, but as he has
indicated, any Mosul dispatch needs to be argued on the
grounds of national self-interest in order to get past
the Korean public. Unfortunately, what is less clear is
whether that national self-interest is a version
palatable to him and his supporters. Still, at the very
least Korean peacekeepers and dissatisfied Iraqis are
likely to hit it off on one issue: that the Americans
never bother listening to them anyway.
(Copyright 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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