That is a long clunky title, but I could think of no other way to put it. Restaurants frequently include in their billboards a smiling image of the animal product they primarily serve. So a seafood restaurant will show a smiling octopus, or a a pork place will show a smiling fat pig wearing a chef’s hat. This reminds me of the cannibalism of “Charlie Brown’s Thanksgiving.” At the end, Woodstock eats turkey with Snoopy.
Enjoy the pics:
Amidst all the Iran hubub, the US and Korea had their first head of state summit this week. Here are my thoughts on what needed to be said. It seems to have been a wash, which is good enough.
The Good:
Obama affirmed a US nuclear commitment to SK. That is probably the biggest gain for the South. Given NK behavior in the last year, this was necessary. It also helps delay a possible nuclearization by SK. The SK conservative press is edging closer to this position.
Lee also seems to have gotten Obama to declare publicly that NK flim-flams in negotiations – obfuscating, demanding favors, giving little and then backtracking later. Everyone already knows this, but it is a blow for Obama who has stressed negotiations with US opponents. On the other hand, it reflects Obama’s realism. The reality of NK is that deals are, at least at the moment, not on the regime’s mind. It seems to want to prove to the world that it is a nuclear power and get acceptance of that.
Finally, Obama agreed to a upgrade of the US-ROK alliance to a “comprehensive strategic alliance.” Who knows what that means, but it is a good signal against the reality of a weakening US defense commitment.
No-so-Good
Obama seems cool to idea of shutting down the six party talks. Lee wants five party talks (i.e., without NK). NK has said it won’t return to the six party talks, and they seem to have done little but buy time for its nuclear program, and given China and Russia an opportunity for international grandstanding. So, sure, let Obama try more. Maybe his Cairo magic will work here, but I doubt it.
Nothing was said about Japan, and little about a united democratic front (SK, US, Japan) toward NK. Instead the idea seems to be building a 5 party front toward NK; “then the four nations will give the U.S. ‘bargaining rights’ after working out a joint plan what price the North should pay unless it abandons its nuclear weapons.” This would be ideal, but Russia and the PRC will almost certainly hedge and obfuscate and can hardly be expected to cede negotiating rights (like power of attorney or something) to the US. The democracies really shouldn’t be held hostage to Russian and Chinese opinion on NK.
Lee’s major concession seems to be that the US may directly negotiate with NK. The wisdom of this is hard to judge. NK desperately wants this – for prestige purposes and hopefully to hang onto its nukes. And NK will certainly push for a deal over SK’s head and to its disadvantage. This is risky, as the SK right will flip out if it looks like the US is unilaterally seeking a separate peace at SK’s expense.
As for the trade deal, nothing much happened – more arguments about beef and cars. Silly.
So all in all, it was a wash. Not much new was said. Nothing that really changes the game. But given how dangerous NK is, that is probably wise. All these talks are driven significantly by NK’s unpredictable behavior. The next big flap that will certainly throw all this into confusion again is NK’s upcoming ICBM launch, over which the US in turn will flip out.
Bonus NK lunacy: a WaPo story on how NK defrauds insurance, sells drugs, and counterfeits dollars. NK’s government is so uniformly awful, they seem like the bad guy out of comic book movie.
The president of SK will meet with Obama tomorrow. Given the rapid growth of tension with NK, here are a few things they need to nail down and say publicly. (For my further thoughts on the NK mess, try here and here.)
1. A standard reaffirmation of the alliance is necessary, especially because the alliance is actually weakening and NK can see that. Also, a standard outreach to NK for talks is necessary. Obama should spin his magic about talking to those will unclench their fist. Of course, the DPRK will not respond, but it is important to establish the moral high ground by outreach first. Obama’s particular skill at diplomatic outreach will bolster the case and legitimacy for future tougher action in a way W never could after he put NK on the axis of evil.
2. It may be time to formally extend nuclear deterrence to SK. US nuclear weapons were removed from SK in the early 1990s. The Cold War had ended, and the US was trying to convince NK that it wanted the denuclearization of the peninsula. It is pretty obvious now, that NK is not really serious about giving up its nukes. Without them, it is impossible to justify so much suffering to its people. They have become existential legitimating props for this brittle regime that is about to become even more brittle. Hence it is probably time to formally state that mutually assured destruction now applies in Korea.
3. Obama should give an oblique hint that the US might tolerate SK nuclearization. Some sort of vague language about ‘understanding that the ROK must defend itself by all necessary means, now and in the future’ would be a useful signal to the North that creeping nuclearization will eventually be meet in kind. This would also signal to China that it needs to really start cooperating on NK, rather than just obfuscating. If it doesn’t seriously try to help, then the democracies will feel compelled to go their own way.
4. Both should make an overture to Japan, to 1) restrain itself vis NK, and 2) cooperate more with the the US and SK. 1 is because Japan is far more likely to go nuclear first in response to NK provocation. 2 is because only with more serious coordination among the democracies out here (Japan, SK, US) can NK be further isolated. Yes, China has the most influence over Pyongyang, but China is simply not cooperating. It would rather overawe a poor, weak NK than face a unified, US-allied Korea. So we (US, SK, Japan) should stop complaining about the PRC and hoping they’ll fix this, deus ex machina. Instead, let’s do what we can on our own, which means forging a unified front and joint response strategy.
5. However China should not go unpunished for its dithering, so Lee and Obama should formally declare the 6 party talks dead. They didn’t help much anyway. China and especially Russia used them as a vehicle for global prestige-taking, not to actually work much on the issue of NK itself. So let the Chinese realize that free-riding for prestige purposes is irrelevant to the US, SK, and Japan on this question. They had their chance, proved to be insular and grandstanding instead of serious, so now is the time to walk away.
6. Commit publicly to passing the free trade area between the US and South Korea ASAP. It will send an important signal to China and NK that the US and Korea are committed allies, it will reduce consumer prices, especially in over-protected Korea, and most importantly, it will bring down the price of Sam Adams at my local grocery store here ($2/bottle!).
NK kremlinology is even harder than the real thing was, but here is my guess about what is going on now, and I have been kicking this around with my PNU political science colleagues. The hyper-belligerence of the regime in the last year reflects an inner split at the top over the impending succession to Kim. (Lots of others have interpreted similarly, so this is not a great insight. But there are other possibilities, so I will plant my flag here.) We know from previous experience with communist systems that they tend to move from a stalinistic cult of personality toward ‘interest group pluralism’ within the politiburo. This happened after Stalin, Mao, and now with Kim. The interest groups in communist systems are quite a different breed of course from the NRA or AIPAC. Usually post-stalinist communist states have a balance of power among institutional-bureaucratic interests: the party (the ideologues usually bent on continuing the stand-off with the West and defending the ‘utopia’), the secret services (whatever the local version of the KGB is called, mostly focused on informally blackmailing the rest with personal secrets to insure a good budget and nice western goodies), the military (clamoring for ever more armor, artillery, and nukes, but also more realistic and less reckless about western power than the party), industry (groaning under the weight of the military’s demands, desperate to avoid the introduction of market reform, or if so, to control it for themselves), and the state bureaucracy (terrified of the secret police, cowed and browbeaten for falling to meet mythical quotas and keep the electricity on).
As these groups jockey for control of the ever-diminishing budget, the conflict can get pretty sharp, complete with purges, external belligerence, and biting ideological pronouncements. The general will is lost as no one can aggregate these parochial interests into a leadership that can serve the country as a whole. As Brezhnev declined, the Soviet ‘interest groups’ overwhelmed the state, leading to the disastrous excesses of the military-industrial complex – the roll-out of new MRBMs (the SS-20) and the invasion of Afghanistan. These short-term interests of the military undermined the whole Soviet project, as they re-galvanized NATO, turned Jimmy Carter into a hawk, and paved the way for Reagan. This is my read of current belligerence from NK. Kim is like Brezhnev, the declining central representative of the general will, slowly losing control as factional conflict rises.
Kim Jong-Il’s biggest fear today has to be his own bodily integrity. He is sick and weak, and were NK to collapse, SK conservatives would be out for blood, and he knows it. Indeed much of the regime elite (party, military, everybody) would probably suffer (deservedly) harsh treatment in post-unification courts because of man-made famine of the 1990s. The blood of somewhere between 500k and 3m North Koreans is on the hands of the Korean Workers Party, who wouldn’t even accept food aid when rural people were eating dirt and tree-bark. Capital punishment is legal in SK.
Kim is sick, so is his country. He knows this. He also knows that his third son, the newly anointed successor, doesn’t have nearly the charisma of his grandfather or the regime connections of his father. Kim Jong-Un looks like he will be a figurehead, much like Andropov and Chernyenko, in the early 80s, covered increasing factional infighting in the USSR.
Prediction: An external strike on SK or Japan is unlikely. The regime knows it will lose a war with the ROK and US, plus Japan on the side. My guess is the handoff will occur as Kim slowly expires; the son will slowly move into dad’s shoes. After his death, the real infighting will begin, but again, I don’t think it will spillover into an external strike. The regime elite is not that stupid. If we are lucky, in a few years a military coup will occur, with Kim III replaced by a general or junta along the lines of that ruling Burma. Generals would be more likely to deal and almost certainly less brutal. This is hardly ideal, but in NK, a military, rather than party, dictatorship would be progress.
About 6% of the world is Buddhist, and about 20% of South Koreans. Sri Lanka, Burma and Thailand,as well as Japan (sort of) are the big Buddhist countries. Of course China and NK would be heavily Buddhist too if they permitted freedom of religion.
Buddhism is, thankfully, not that important for IR or world conflicts. Buddhism is not focused a deity and so lacks the ‘my-god-is-the-right-one’ theistic furor that sets Islam, Judaism, and Christianity against each other. When Huntington argued for an East Asian civilization grounded in Buddhism and Confucianism, Asians yawned, but for the dictators who wanted to use ‘Confucian values’ as a legitimizing prop. Monotheists will slaughter each other over doctrine, but Buddhists rarely do (possible exception). They seem to find it bizarre that monotheists would war over catechistic mythologies like Muhammad’s flight to Jerusalem or which way to make the sign of the cross. I find this terribly liberating. This is another of the great benefits of living outside your own culture. The locals see things you never would, in this case, the idiocy of monotheistic absolutism. I always tell my students when I teach the GWoT how nice it is to live in a place where religion is not a fraught contentious social division one must tip-toe around. Buddhists seem far more open to criticism than Muslims or Protestant evangelicals particularly, with their bitter insistence on the literalism of the Bible or Koran, creationism, female sexual restriction, or deitical supremacy. And I find it disappointing that exactly this sort of burning Protestantism is making inroads into Korea. Charismatic evangelicalism is a big wave here. The nocturnal skylines of Seoul and Busan are filled with (rather creepy) neon red crosses. Every time I go to the Busan train station I get harangued by protestant ideologues at the escalator telling me I am going to hell if I don’t embrace Jesus. Ah, how nice to be reminded of Jesus Camp and the Bush years even here so far away…
So off I went last weekend to a ‘temple stay’ at the big Buddhist temple in southeast Korea – Beomeosa. Basically you live like a Buddhist monk for 24 hours. Here a few thoughts.
1. Religion as an endurance test! If you thought Catholic weddings or praying 5 times a day were rough, then try Buddhist bowing. A full Buddhist bow (to images of the Buddha and other major monks, as well as important monks you meet in person) requires great dexterity, particularly ankle and knee strength, and you do it a lot. About half the participants in temple stay were curious westerners like me. We really struggled, as the full bow requires you to go down to the floor and then back up without supporting your body weight with your arms. You could hear knees cracking all over the place. My girlfriend laughed at my pathetic ability and pain. On top of that we had to get up at 3 am for morning prayers and then hiked up a mountain to a shrine. Koreans like to hike up, not across. I think I lost weight by the end of it.
2. Metaphysics instead of theology. We didn’t learn too much theology, and then I remembered of course, that Buddhism doesn’t really have a logic of a god. So instead, it was a lot of (fairly soft, I thought) metaphysics about self-abnegation and finding oneself within. The best account of this I read for a westerner is Maugham’s The Razor’s Edge, but I have to say I find it a little depressing. I asked our monk leader if he didn’t miss having a nice glass of wine looking at the sunset or eating a delicious well-cooked meal. Didn’t he find life kind of dry and flat without these experiences (much less sex, rock’n’roll, nicotine, scotch, etc)? He just laughed at me.
3. Formalism. Chris Rock once said in a stand-up routine that he doubts God will make his decision to allow one into heaven based on what one eats. I must say I agree. I have never understood things like kosher or halal. Our monk leader told us that they don’t even eat garlic or onions, least they ‘stimulate’ the body too much. And then of course, came all the other ritual as well, so common in established religions. There were a great many rules about dress, the arrangement of bowls at dinner time, the manner in which to walk (double file line with right hand on top of the left in front of you), when to talk, etc. It seems to me that rules that start functionally (don’t eat pork because you might get trichinosis), over time solidify into precepts irrespective of other change, and then become central doctrinal tenets that determine to whether or not you get to heaven or nirvana. Will Haredim really make it into heaven because they wear those hats? Do I need to shave my head to achieve nirvana? Really? Do they even believe that?
4. Social science vs meditation. I found my social science training collided badly with quietude of mind the monks told us to cultivate. I am one of those people who can’t even watch dumb movies without analyzing them to death. So when we went on our meditation walk in the forest, all I could do is observe and think instead of clearing my mind as we were told to do. I drifted: What is the importance of this particular shrine? What kind of tree is that? Why are the pathways so uneven? I was supposed to be thinking of inner peace and calming my mind. Instead, I found myself wondering if Korea has liability laws, because on the dark, uneven path, you could easily trip and break your legs badly.
So I guess I am not cut out to be a Buddhist, but it was good exposure.
It is hard to not be astonished at the sheer scale of the South Korean grief over the death of former president Roh Moo-Hyun. TV networks estimated some 5 million people paid their respects publicly – at his home, in Busan, or in Seoul – in the last week. That is over 10% of the population. The western press response has been confusion and lack of coverage; westerners don’t really know quite what to make of it. Our chief executives pass away all the time, and even though it was a suicide, I can’t imagine anything like this social outburst happening in the West. Yet it was the top new here all last week, despite another NK nuclear blast. It was on the news all day long, and the country basically shut down on Friday for the funeral.
Something important has been unleashed, but even Koreans don’t really know, as the opposition is already trying to ride the wave as a political tool. So here are a few preliminary thoughts:
1. The FT fingered the most important insights. The connections between business and government at the top in SK are a textbook example of the problems new or transitional democracies confront in managing the economy, especially a growing one. One president after another in Korea has been investigated, usually with good cause. That Roh lamentably killed himself does not invalidate the possibility that he was corrupted by the kickbacks common in the revolving door between Korea’s political and economic elites. Business-family oligarchs corrupting politics is common practice in Asia. Growth plus elitist politics quickly breeds an informal corporatist system whereby ‘national champions’ – selected not for their prowess but their crony connections – receive subsidies and other preferential access to the budget in exchange for all sorts of election support and other sleaze. They become ‘too big to fail’ – with all the terrible inefficiencies that come with such a privileged status – and their success is easily frequently identified with that of the country. What is good for Samsung is good for Korea is still a common mindset, and this gives all sorts of leeway to the chaebol to escape market punishment by dumping costs on taxpayers. The IMF crisis helped reduce concentrated corporate power in Korea, but Koreans usually bristle when I say the crisis was good for their political economy in the medium- and long-term.
2. SK however should be congratulated for the diligence with which it investigates this corruption. Common practice of course is to sweep this stuff under the rug and pass of the costs to taxpayers. Weakly organized interests distant from power – ie, the voters – usually suffer while ensconced, politically influential interests set the national budget or business regulations. Think of Indonesia under Suharto, or China or Russia today. The IMF crisis revealed to Koreans the price of corrupt oligarchic corporatism, and these investigations, as nasty and political as they may become, at least suggest Koreans want accountability and take it seriously. This is another step in Korea’s democratization, and a necessary one. It is an awful irony on top of an awful irony that Roh stood for such accountability, then came under the light himself, and now might still be alive if the government was not so diligent in pursuing corruption.
3. The size of the outpouring of grief is the bigger story than Roh’s death itself. As I watched millions of Koreans publicly crying, even shrieking, I was increasingly reminded of the outpouring over Princess Diana. The grief process itself was a bigger story than the death. In the case of Diana, I must say it was embarrassing at first, but then increasingly disturbing. Her death was tragic of course, but a relic of a corrupt monarchy who enjoyed an unearned lifestyle of skiing and affairs enjoyed a mawkish sentimentality that suggested a shallow, celebrity-obsessed culture. There was a History Channel special top 100 people of the millennium two years later. Viewers could vote for candidates, and Diana beat out Stalin.
In Roh’s case the grief says two things. First, Koreans know how corrupt their politics is and don’t like it. That is a huge plus. That insures ongoing democratization – of great importance here in East Asia especially. The explosion of grief suggest there is a strong grassroots desire for better, cleaner governance. Koreans want their democracy to be vibrant; NK and China will take note, and that is good. By contrast, the grief over Diana was disturbing, because it suggested an unhealthy celebrity obsession, especially over royalty in a democracy.
Second, Koreans genuinely want their politics to be more open to popular participation and social mobility. Roh represented both of these trends, whereas President Lee seems to be drifting the other way. SK has a political culture dominated by a local version of French enarques. Pareto’s circulating elites are the Korean revolving door between business and politics – particularly the weak independence of Korea’s parties from the state. Roh had none of the usual enarque-style connections in the political class, and his education and career suggested that regular Koreans could aspire to the presidency. My students always giggle about Governor Schwarzenegger, and I have mixed feelings myself on his career track to such high office. But people like him or Jesse Ventura show how open the US political system is, and how social mobility is real in the US. The grief over Roh suggests Koreans want this too.
4. Finally, the outpouring reflects a feudalist, pre-modern tendency to see leaders as ‘fathers of the nation’ – an expression I have heard a few times about Roh this past week. This will fade as Korea has more and more presidents over time. Time – specifically more presidents over more time – will make the president’s office more institutional and less personalized. This too will be healthy, as the last thing Asia and developing states generally need is such ‘national fathers.’ That mindset gives you the identification of the body politic with one man – so obvious in NK, Suharto’s Indonesia, or China under Mao.
The following is my response to a paper by this title at the Northeast Asian security and cooperation conference discussed in my previous post.
“Before my theoretical comments, let me say as a citizen that I am both alarmed and embarrassed by the content of the paper. Alarmed because if the author is correct, then the US and China will be at war soon. Embarrassed, because if this is how Chinese or Asians or non-Americans generally see the US, than the Bush administration was even more disastrous than I thought. I am ashamed that serious people would believe the US seeks “world domination,” wants to invade NK, or unleash a militarized Japan on an unsuspecting East Asia. I certainly don’t want that, nor do I believe that most Americans see their foreign policy this way. Chicago Council on Global Affairs’ public opinion surveys of US popular foreign policy attitudes hardly substantiate these claims either. Chalk this up as more fallout from the disastrous Bush administration.
My comments will focus on IR theory, but the paper’s real focus is normative public policy, not political science.
1. This paper presents the US in a mix of offensive realism and power transition theory. The US is expansionist and a declining, angry hegemon using a neo-imperial grand strategy in Asia to prop up declining prestige and influence. Specifically, the United States is pursuing “world domination,” and the language used is pretty strong. The US is “arrogant,” “selfish,” engaged in a “conspiracy,” “infiltrating East Asia," and “besieging China.” The US is not just a unipole but a revisionist hegemon deploying tools of overt dominance. The US is remilitarizing Japan and purposefully preventing a Korean settlement as an “excuse” to stay in the region.
I doubt most Americans would accept this image or support such an aggressive line. I also challenge anyone to find policy statements (not just policy papers from think-tanks or something), leaks, or State Department foreign relations papers that support this. Also, someone needs to write a dissertation on the idea of a revisionist hegemon; this is new in IR theory, but a good insight based on Bush administration behavior.
2. The author misuses the notion of the security dilemma by asserting that the US is primarily responsible for tension in East Asia. A security dilemma is a common problem in regions and does not require outside intervention to ignite. The SD explains the unhappy logic of states arming and counter-arming, all while claiming this only for defense. The regional security literature shows how much this process accelerates among proximate states, and lateral pressure explains why it can lead to genuinely explosive arms races. A far simpler, less conspiratorial approach would see that North East Asia is a tightly packed geographic region and consequently has a built-in likelihood of a tough SD. Local grievances over history, territory, and ideology all worsen it, as does the lateral pressure of so much regional growth occurring so rapidly. In short, closely proximate, wealthy, and growing states with lots of disagreements will certainly have a nasty SD.
History suggests this too. Long before US power seriously arrived in East Asia in the 1940s, East Asian societies were warring with one another. Indeed, most Korean, Japanese, and American IR tags the US as a stabilizer or offshore balancer over the horizon, not an instigator. And it seems far more likely that a US abandonment of Korea and Japan would spur much more serious arms racing spirals. Without US extended deterrence, it is likely Japan and SK would feel strong pressure even to go nuclear. Finally the USFK and USFJ are here with popular assent. If these states voted the US military out, the US would leave. It left France in the 60s and the Philippines in the 80s. Like NATO, American ‘empire’ in East Asia is one of invitation, not imposition. The problems between East Asian states exist despite the US presence and would persist should it leave. The US has little impact on the historical conflict over Japanese imperialism and textbooks, the border disputes over Dokdo, Taiwan, or the South China Sea, or the ideological splits between communism and democracy.
3. The author seems to argue for a security community in East Asia, but ultimately suggests that a concert, dominated by the US and PRC, is necessary. The problem is the US presence. Yet the security community literature is quite skeptical about its possibility here. The grievances listed above are deep. Without agreed norms and borders, it is hard to see NE Asia building a multilateral system. It took Europe centuries of war to agree on borders and that war is an illegitimate tool of diplomacy. Asia is simply not there yet. The level of trust and ‘we-ness’ necessary is lacking, and the US is not the cause of this, unless one argues that the US presence freezes grievances that could otherwise be worked out in a confrontation. Again, the disputes over memory, territory, and ideology are massive impediments hardly related to the US. The existing evidence on successful and failed security communities indentifies no major role for a US presence. In Western Europe and Latin America, successful security communities were established with and without a US presence. In NE Asia and South Asia, security communities have failed with and without a US presence.
4. Regarding US ‘neocontainment’ of China, the author slides to fantasy quite honestly. The author asserts that the US is aligning with India to create a great power check on China; is aligning with Australia and SE Asia to contain China in the South China Sea; wants to either “invade NK” (!) or foment chaos there to suck in China and “drag China down;” and most fantastically, remilitarize Japan “to give it a free hand to create trouble in East Asia.” I do not know of evidence to support any of this. Certainly nothing in NSC National Security Strategies has ever spoken this way, and much of this can easily be explained away.
The US is engaging India, because, 1. Democracies naturally feel a comradery that the CW strangely damaged between India and the US. 2. The US is desperate to avoid a nuclear arms race in South Asia, as well as the possibility of proliferation. 3. The US desperately wants a reduction in Indo-Pakistani tension so that Pakistan can redeploy its best forces from its eastern border to the northwestern frontier to battle the Taliban-Pashtun insurgency. None of this has anything to do with China; indeed stability in Pakistan is clearly in China’s interest. No one wants a talibanized nuclear Pakistan.
The US is similarly engaged in SE Asia. It is all-driven by the GWoT. The US does not want Indonesia to slide toward radical Islam, and the US assistance program there has focused on police and counterinsurgency training, not naval strategy or large-scale warfighting. Nor is it even clear if the Indonesians want to be roped into a US-led neo-containment ring. In the Philippines, the US is doing the same. It wants to help Manila control its island fringe. I know of no US naval or large-scale assistance, nor of a return to the large bases of the past.
In NE Asia, it is just maoist fantasy that the US wants to invade NK. There is no evidence of that. Nor does the US want to bring China down. As Secretary Clinton herself said a few months ago, the US is grateful to the Chinese for buying its debt. I have seen nothing suggesting there is a US plot to reduce China. And remilitarizing Japan so it can bully East Asia? Where is the proof of such an outlandish claim? If anything, the US would like to see Japan normalize so that its history fights recede; this would lower the temperature in East Asia. As with Germany after WWII, the US would like Japan to be an integrated, well-behaved democracy tied to the West. A resurgent Japanese militarism would create huge headaches for the US and likely pull it into a war again if one occurred.
5. The author’s disappointing conclusion is that Obama will not change his obviously Bush-inspired vision of US foreign policy. Both are exponents of American exceptionalism and therefore will pursue adventurism. This is probably inaccurate.
a . This suggests to me a lack of understanding of elections in democracies. Obama has in fact changed US foreign policy. His charm offensive of the last few months has explicitly focused on undoing the Bush legacy of the US as revisionist hegemon. He is reaching out to Russia, Iran, and Venezuela. Bush would never have done this.
b. It underrates the importance of US pubic opinion and its powerful rejection of the Bush administration. Bush left office with the lowest approval rating since President Truman. US elections are usually focused on domestic politics, but Bush made such a foreign policy mess, that Obama was able to build an issue out of it. Further, only a huge rejection of Bushism made it possible for a Democrat as liberal as Obama to achieve the White House. The last 3 Democratic presidents were all moderate southerners. Obama is a genuine liberal, and there is no way he would have been viable without a major rejection of Bush’s legacy, which includes his belligerent foreign policy.
6. Finally, a few large comments on US foreign policy are required. It is true that the US has an exceptionalist vision of itself – the last best hope for mankind (Lincoln), the end of history (Fukuyama), God has a special mission for the United States (Bush 2). But it is important to see that this exceptionalism leads to isolationism, not imperialism. In US foreign policy mythology, Eurasia is the old world of nobility, land and class conflict, world-breaking fanaticisms, dynastic wars, etc. By contrast the US is the new world – where all men are equal, with no history of radicalism and ideology. The US is starting history anew. And so US foreign policy should avoid the corruption of the old world. The US should be a beacon as a “city on the hill” to the world. Hence President Washington counseled the US to avoid “entangling alliances.” John Quincy Adams said the US should “not go forth in search of monsters to destroy.” In short, yes, the US is arrogant about itself, but that arrogance leads to overseas avoidance out of contempt, not to imperialism based on a civilizing mission. I know foreigners loathe it when Americans celebrate themselves this way, but what’s important here is that American exceptionalism does NOT counsel “world domination,” but isolationism.
And in fact, US foreign policy followed this generally, and even after major wars, the first US inclination has been to leave, not stay and dominate, much less colonize. So the US joined WWI very late, fought a few battles in the spring of 1918, and then went home. If anything, the conventional wisdom today is that the US was not ‘imperialist’ enough in the interwar period. By not joining the League of Nations and world affairs more generally, the US made no contribution to slowing fascism in the 20s and 30s.
Again in WWII the US joined relatively late, only after it was forced in by Pearl Harbor. Even after Pearl Harbor, FDR did not believe he could get a war declaration against Germany. Hitler declared war first. When the war ended, the US population called ‘to bring the boys back home’ – a constant postwar rallying cry hardly consonant with imperialism. Indeed the US was pulling out of both Europe and Asia, until the Europeans invited US presence in NATO, and NK invaded SK, convincing the US it had to stay.
And after the Cold War, isolationism again returned. The Republican party retreated to tradition realpolitik on issues like Haiti and Bosnia. After Iraq 1, the US pulled out most of ‘the boys.’ NATO was questioned. US forces in Asia and Europe shrank. Only another surprise attack, 9/11, convinced the US to once more ramp up in Eurasia. And even this was short-lived. US public opinion support for Iraq 2 slid below 50% in 2004 and never returned. The US has been looking for a way to leave Iraq and Afghanistan ever since.
Maybe the US is an imperialist. Certainly Chalmers Johnson and Noam Chomsky think so, but there is a lot of counter-evidence that questions the “world domination” argument. This is not not considered in this paper.”
Part two is here.
The Institute of Chinese Studies at Pusan National University held this two-day conference with Chinese and Japanese scholars also invited. I was a discussant on a panel entitled “China’s Changing Role in NE Asia.” I provided feedback on a Chinese paper on Obama’s foreign policy. My remarks are my next post. It was a new opportunity for me to sit to meet with Chinese and Japanese scholars at a conference.
1. The Chinese were very policy-oriented, while the Japanese were more like American IR, and the Koreans split the difference (just like their geopolitics). I found it difficult to respond to my paper, because it was mostly a normative interpretation of US foreign policy, talking about what the US should or should not do. None of the Chinese papers used much IR theory; most of them cited news magazines, Foreign Affairs and Foreign Policy in order to make policy points. By contrast, the Japanese work looked more like what I read in ISQ or IO. In a side discussion, a Japanese scholar said to me that this was quite common from Chinese scholars at conventions, and that it used to be more so. S/he felt uncomfortable, because these things frequently degenerated into foreign policy contests. This reminded me of my earlier observation that Korean IR is also slanted toward public policy, although not as much.
2. The Chinese attitudes towards Japan, Korea, and the US were fairly hostile (or paternalistic toward Korea) in the formal discussion, but in the private conversation it was all smiles and congeniality. For example, my paper was all about the US pursuit of “world domination.” (*Sigh* Thank the Bush administration for that attitude.) Another paper argued that China is becoming the dominant power in Korea, and will and should markedly structure the outcome of unification. China’s “3 No’s” are: a unifying Korea could not create chaos in Manchuria, not be a bulwark of US containment of China, and not indulge Pan-Korean expansionism. China would only ‘permit’ a neutral unified Korea. Yikes! This reminded me of Russia’s recent claims to a sphere of influence in the near abroad. I asked a few Koreans about these remarks, and they generally agreed that they were pretty sinister. This sort of talk will clearly push Korea toward the US more as an over-the-horizon guarantor of its sovereignty against a rising China. Empirically, the argument struck me as a correct reading of China’s attitude toward Korea, but normatively, I would be pretty nervous if I was a Korean. Japan too came in for lots of fire about history, its nationalist right, hidden expansionist impulses, toadying to the US. The Japanese scholars seemed to take this pretty well, but it was awkward. In the end, I got the clear impression that the Chinese would like the US out of Asia and think that the Japanese are closest militarists.
3. The body language of the conference became noticeable over time. The Japanese and Korean scholars tended to speak in low tones and short bursts. The Chinese spoke quite loudly, tended to wave their fingers and point, went on quite longer than others. I don’t know if this is culturally-encoded or belligerence or what though.
4. The Chinese scholars also seemed to speak for the government or nation. They comfortably and frequently used the first person plural –’we China will do this or that’,’ or ‘we will permit/not permit this or that.’ I and the Japanese scholars spoke in the third person generally. This made me wonder if their work is in some way cleared or approved by a government agency.
The IR scholar in me, of course, immediately perceived a sociology of power in all this. The Chinese clearly spoke with a self-confidence and assertion about their government’s “interests” in Asia that the rest of us did not. You could easily feel the ‘China rising’ vibe in their presentations and comments. They weren’t openly belligerent, but I did feel a little ‘bullied.’
Further, their presentations were quite normative and policy-focused, so they subtly polarized the panels. Other participants felt cast into national roles as ‘defenders’ of ‘their’ governments; certainly I felt that way. It easily could have become a foreign policy showdown between nationals rather than an academic forum. I remember when my turn came to speak – after an openly maoist, anti-American policy paper (covered in my next post) – that I did feel this ‘patriotic’ urge creeping up on me to play the ‘American’ in the room and say posturing, RISK-boardgame stuff like, ‘my government can hardly be expected to tolerate this…,’ or defend the US allies in room – the Japanese and Korean scholars. It was tempting to play the macho superpower and throw that back at the Chinese by, e.g., saying that the US will defend Korea’s sovereign right to reunify as it sees fit without Chinese guidance/permission. This was a genuinely uncomfortable, bizarre, and new feeling. I think I restrained myself reasonably well – I certainly don’t think of myself as a nationalist – but some of the comments (like the US wants to invade NK) were so outlandish I felt compelled to dismiss them as “fantasy.”
All in all, it was a great experience. The papers were a mixed bag academically, but as examples of attitudes and cleavages in NE Asia, they were superb, and the sociology of the conference was a huge learning experience – better than the papers themselves.
If Fan Death is the Koreanism most widely discussed (and mocked – I must admit) by westerners, the salutary affects of individual foods is the one you encounter most regularly. At almost every meal I enjoy with Koreans, my companions will speak to me about the health-improving qualities of this or that item we are eating. This occurs so consistently, I expect it now as a regular social element of Korean dining.
This goes far beyond what your mother told you when you were young about eating your carrots for your eyes, or the importance of milk for your bones. Koreans routinely ascribe far more specific salutary effects to almost ALL food items. Indeed, sometimes I ask my dining companions, out of sheer curiosity, what this or that food does. None (of my friends) are trained nutritionists or health experts, yet my acquaintances ‘answer’ this question immediately, easily, and earnestly. It is an astonishing piece of shared social knowledge. One wonders if North Koreans would similarly be able to comment on the salutary effects of individual food products.
I will try to comment on particular improving properties and foods as I learn them. Here are the most singular three I have heard so far:
1. Eating Duck Fat will scrub the inside of your blood vessels.
2. Eating dog will improve your ‘vitality’ (ie, sexual virility or potency – and yes, I have tried dog, and yes, it was tasty).
3. Eating foods of many colors simultaneously will synergize into an extra booster effect for your overall health.
On April 21, the Korean Association International Studies held this conference in Seoul. I was a discussant on a panel entitled “The Strategic Mindset of the Obama Administration and Its Policy toward Northeast Asia.” The conference was pretty good – a mix of academics and public policy types. IR academics from Korean universities mixed with a few parliamentarians, staff from the foreign ministry, and US embassy staff. I found this a nice change from APSA and ISA conferences.
1. I got into a minor flap over the ‘criticality’ of South Korea, and of East Asia in general, to the US. I argued that SK is tied as an ally with Turkey behind: 1. Canada, 2. Great Britain, 3. Israel, 4. Japan, 5. Mexico, 6. Germany. I also argued the most critical regions for the US before East Asia are: 1. North America, 2. Western Europe, 3. the Middle East. Ranking is a contentious but useful exercise. Pleasantly, the audience of almost all Asians did not respond with resentment, although most seemed unhappy. Most seemed to accept that North America and Western Europe outranked Asia; the ME was more contested. But very revealing was the desire for SK to be high up on the list of US allies/interests. That bespoke the enormous prestige of the US as the G-1 and the craving others have for US recognition. Should it really make a difference to South Koreans how Washington ranks it? Does SK worry where Kenya or Brazil ranks it? The difference is that US can bestow status on middle powers. Even NK craves that recognition by its avowed enemy.
Briefly, I think there is little doubt that the most important region for the US must be North America. This is basic geography. Canada has been the most important US ally for a century for obvious reasons. And despite cultural distance from and an awkward history with Mexico, the US clearly needs it to be stable, if not democratic. Two years ago, no one thought the US would worry about a semi-failed narco-state emerging in Mexico, and now we might have to send troops to the border. Europe too is no brainer. US cultural, religious, linguistic, military, and ethnic links vastly outweigh the bilateralism we pursue in Asia. Americans learn European languages when they learn them at all, and go on vacations and junior years abroad in Europe. By contrast Asian languages with their culturally distant alphabets and pronunciations are just too uncomfortable for Americas. Asian food is challenging to the American palette. And non-theistic Asian religions are too different. Finally, the Middle East is of greater importance, not just because of current crises, but for structural reasons too. Oil and Israel are long-term US interests, and the post-1967 Islamic revival, the extreme edge of which lead to 9/11, will be with us for generations. Regardless of the success of the Iraq war, the neo-con argument that the ME’s dysfunction has become a major threat to the US and will require a long-term commitment to fix is accurate. We fear the radicalization of moderate Muslim opinion far more than NK stalinism or even Chinese nationalism.
2. I think expectations of Obama are wildly out of proportion to his personal time and energy, his ability to impact foreigners’ preferences, and the domestic constraints he faces in Congress, from interest groups, etc. I find myself repeating all the time that Obama is not Jesus or a magician or something. He can’t simply solve NK, or fix the financial crisis. Like Walt in Singapore, I found at this conference what seemed to me an excessive hope that the great O could simply make things go back they way they were before the financial crisis or breakthrough long standing problems like NK. The big IR problems are deeply entrenched, and Obama, like all presidents, faces enormous bureaucratic-congressional inertia at home. US consumers and the government are tapped out right now, and a return to the US as importer of last resort is unlikely for awhile and probably not very healthy for the global economy anyway. Asian exporters are going to have to focus on difficult reform (cleaning up the SOEs in China, chaebol in Korea, kereitsu in Japan, eg) and domestic demand. And this will be good for them, as simply exporting to the West has sustained political and economic oligarchs around the region for too long
Foreigners’ expectations are enormous, and I think very misplaced. The US consul in Busan told me that he finds himself telling Koreans that he is our president, and that you should expect him to defend the US national interest. This is obviously so, but that it needs to be repeated at all, speaks enormously of just how much the rest of the world hopes Obama can transform almost everything. Eg, what I really learned in listening to Korean high hopes for Obama at this conference was the deep, deep exasperation with NK. You could see in the hope for Obama just how much South Koreans would like the endless NK game to finally stop so that Korea could be a more normal country.
Much of this is fantasy I fear – like that woman who said that Obama will pay her rent. I want Obama to succeed too, but most of the long-standing problems in IR will not succumb to his charisma. The structures of IR change very slowly. Darfur, Iran, Russia, NK, Palestine – all these may change a bit at the margins due to his personality, but I doubt Obama will achieve major breakthroughs without the long patient work of diplomacy that most US presidents have pursued. But this presidency is a good test of the levels of analysis theory in IR. Maybe Obama can overcome the domestic, state-level impediments and international-level structures that usually dictate IR outcomes.
3. Korean IR, like Latin American IR, seems pretty focused on practical applications and policy. All the conference papers were policy-relevant, and much of the discussion was as well. I attended another conference in November last year and am participating in another on regional order in East Asia tomorrow. Those talks were/are all policy relevant as well. And the Korean IR journal literature is heavily focused immediate issues, such as NK, democratization, Asian growth models, and the character of leadership in Asia. In this way it feels more like International Security than ISQ.
I imagine this focus on policy stems from the huge challenge of the DPRK to the South. IR is an existential issue for the ROK. Theory probably seems like a luxury. Similarly, SK only got wealthy in the last few decades. The practical needs of interaction with the global economy probably trumped model-building or formalism in Korean IPE. All this is relevant to the debate in IR since the end of the Cold War about whether IR is too eurocentric. ISR (10/4, Dec. 2008) had a good symposium on this question. A good addition would be a discussion of Korean IR.
Robert E Kelly 