Category Archives: United States

The Big Annual US-Korean Military Exercise this Month

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This month is the big annual joint exercise between US Forces in Korea and the Korean military, the army particularly. I talked about this on the radio this week; if you are curious for an introduction to US-Korean military cooperation, check the transcript below.

These drills have shrunk dramatically over the years, mostly in an attempt to bring around the North. Also, as Korea has gotten wealthier, environmental restrictions have made it increasingly difficult and politically unpopular to put a 100,000 people and tanks into the countryside. West Germans used to complain about this too in the 70s and 80s. Try to imagine what, say, 100 M1-A1 tanks would do to a river valley. They weigh 65 tons each! So increasingly these exercises are actually computerized wargame scenarios.

Anyway, these exercise are less and less about maneuver warfare (the old story for the North Korea army), and more and more about what to do if North Korea implodes (or explodes, or whatever – no one really knows). They big concern for the US is how to prevent NK WMD from either being launched or smuggled out. For the South, it is how to prevent NK civil war and army mutinies, to restore civil order, feed the NK population, and capture the party elite before they spring for China. And of course, lurking in the background, undiscussed by everyone and never properly accounted for in the wargaming, is what happens if the Chinese army, the PLA, pushes south and collides with us coming north. Yikes…

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TRANSCRIPT – DR. ROBERT E. KELLY, PUSAN NATIONAL UNIVERSITY

BUSAN E-FM: “MORNING WAVE”

MONDAYS, 8 AM

March 15, 2010

 

Petra:

Professor Kelly comes to us each Monday to talk about big issues in Korean foreign affairs. And this week we are going to discuss the big US-Korea military exercises last week. Hi, Dr. Kelly.

REK:

Hi, Petra. Thanks for having me

Petra:

 

Thanks for being with us again today.

REK:

 

It’s my pleasure.

Petra:

So last week there were these big Korea-US military drills. It seems like these are so common, we don’t pay attention to them much anymore

REK:

That’s right. They are pretty regularized now. They get a little bit in the news each year, but not much more. Politically the most interesting thing for Korea is not the US participation actually, but how North Korea responds each year.

Petra:

Don’t they usually say this is practice for an invasion?

REK:

That’s right. They always denounce it as imperialism, but the calm or anger of their denunciation tells us a little about what is going on in Pyongyang.

Petra:

 

And this year they didn’t seem to say much.

 

REK:

That’s right. In fact, after last year, when the North was very belligerent on just about everything, their recent behavior is downright gentle by historical standards.

Petra:

So what purpose do these drills serve?

REK:

Well, they are essentially practice. The first exercise is called Key Resolve; the second is Foal Eagle. That title is to indicate the resolve of the US to fight for Korea. This a computerized wargame, in which various scenarios are ‘played.’ These scenarios are defensive in nature, although the increasingly focus on the possibility of North Korean collapse. That is why the North Koreans worry. Should the North’s government implode, the US and South Korean militaries need plans on the shelf about how to restore order, disarm the North Korean military, and prevent nuclear weapons from either being launched or slipped out of the country. These are the big areas of interest now.

Petra:

What about an Northern invasion of the South?

REK:

Yes, that is still drilled too, but most experts, both Korea and American, consider that extremely unlikely. In fact, I have never read any war scenarios at all for Korea that realistically predict a Northern victory today. As we all know, the North’s economy is a shambles, its people are under-fed, and its military equipment is increasingly obsolete. In fact, South Korea could probably win a war on its own without the US at this point. This is one of the big reasons Kim Jeong-Il sought nuclear weapons. The inter-Korean race – military, political, economic – is over and has been for 15 to 20 years now. And North Korea has lost, very decisively. Nukes are just a desperation tactic.

Petra:

So do we even need the exercises?

REK:

That’s actually a good question at this point. I think the answer is still yes, but North Korea is in so much trouble now that the US and South do not exercise nearly as much as the used to. There used to be four really large exercise each now. Now it’s more like two, and they are smaller. As you might imagine, it costs a lot of money to run these simulations. Almost 20,000 Americans, beyond the US Forces in Korea here already, are flown for several weeks. Tens of thousands of Koreans are mobilized too. That’s a lot of money, and increasingly, South Korea’s environmental laws make it difficult for huge numbers of soldiers to tramp all over the countryside. It’s quite a big show, although its size has declined in the last decade or so.

Petra:

I heard that the US is going to give up the command of the Korean military sometime soon. What’s that all about?

REK:

Yes, that’s true. Right now, the US military has legal authority over the South Korea military in wartime. The Korean military is integrated with the US military into what we call the Combined Forces Command, or CFC.

Petra:

But that’s going to be abolished or something, right?

REK:

It is supposed to be, in 2012. Former President Roh pushed for this. He sold this to the Korean public as a restoration of Korean sovereignty. Seoul received peacetime control of its military in 1994. Before then actually – many Koreans don’t know this – the US government was legally the permanent, commander in chief of whole Korean military. For obvious reasons of course, that looked like US colonialism, and Kim Il Sung used to say that all the time. So after the Cold War, and the withdrawal of Soviet and Chinese support for North Korea, peacetime authority was returned to Seoul. As said earlier, by the mid-90s, South Korea had essentially won the inter-Korean race. North Korea became increasingly isolated as its former communist patrons turned away. So the Northern threat diminished dramatically. This gradual demilitarization of domestic life also helped South Korea democratize more rapidly.

Petra:

But CFC retained wartime authority. I have seen that discussed in the media a little.

REK:

That is correct. If there were a war, the US would re-take control of the Korean military. From a Korean perspective, this sacrifice was worth it. By giving the Americans command of Koreans’ own military, this helped keep the Americans here and committed to Korea’s defense. But again, it looked somewhat imperialistic – a foreign power controlling your own army – and the South Korean left had complained for years about this.

Petra:

So President Roh negotiated an end to it…

REK:

That’s right. Roh was probably the most anti-American president Korea has ever had, and George Bush was quite unpopular here. So Roh marketed the abolition of CFC as a big deal. CFC is supposed to disappear in April 2012, but now Koreans are starting to get cold feet.

Petra:

Why?

REK:

Under Presidents Kim and Roh, relations with North Korea – the sunshine policy – seemed to be improving. CFC looked like a relic of the Cold War. But sunshine never really came together, and the North’s nuclear program has grown and grown. This helped put a conservative, Lee Myung-Bak in the Blue House, and the Lee people a lot more nervous about ending CFC.

Petra:

What do you think?

REK:

Well, it does make life easier for the Americans. It makes it easier for the Americans, if they want, to say they are not as tightly bound to Korean defense as they were. If I were a Korean I think I would be nervous. I think the political pleasure of ‘total sovereignty’ does not outweigh the military benefit of tying the Americans to Korea as tightly as possible.

Do Americans Know Anything about Korea beyond the North? Not so Much…

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Greetings Earthlings

On the radio this week, I spoke about Americans’ image and sense of Korea; the transcript is below. This is a big deal here. Korea has lately gotten quite excited about ‘public diplomacy,’ brand promotion, and soft power. You may recall that the Bush administration got big into this for a few years after the Iraq War and Guantanamo wrecked the world’s opinion of the US.

National ‘branding’ has always struck me as pretty ridiculous. A rose is a rose is a rose, and no cute advertising campaign is suddenly going to make people think differently about you. No amount cheesy ‘peace ambassadors’ or ‘socialist fraternity’ internationales conned people into believing the USSR was any less dangerous. In the same way, Bush hack Karen Hughes’ surreal photo-ops with Arab children could do nothing to change the US image in the Middle East that was being set everyday by the carnage in Iraq. The point being, you can’t do something dumb, have it blowback in your face, and then try to advertise or ‘rhetoric’ your way out of it. If the US wants to change its image with Arabs, killing fewer of them is the most obvious thing to do, not sending some flunky to smile on al Jazeera.

This skepticism applies to Korea’s efforts too. The overwhelming problem for Korea’s image is the North. This simply goes without saying. Newsweek put Kim Jeong Il in its ‘global elite,’ and I dare say most westerners couldn’t name another major Korean figure, political or otherwise. When Gallup recently asked Americans to name their favorite/least favorite countries, North, but not South, Korea was on the list. Pity South Korea. We can’t even remember they’re an ally. (That’s actually pretty pathetic. I’m fairly embarrassed. Even worse: only 41% of Americans think the US should fight to defend South Korea. On how the US is slipping out of the SK defense treaty, read this.)

This annoys Koreans to no end. I hear about it all the time from friends and students. So here are my quick top guesses on why Korea is so ‘foreign’ to Americans and Westerners.

1. It is small. When westerners think of East Asia, that means China or Japan. Korea is just the little bit in between. This could change if unification happens, if unification is successful, if Japan continues its slide. But for the foreseeable future, Koreans should think of  Austria – quiet, small, rich – as their model, not Germany, China, or Japan – rich, aggressive, demanding.

2. Korean food is not distinct enough from other East Asian fare for the median westerner to know the difference. Now that I live here, I know the difference, but, honestly, it is a learned art. For the average westerner looking for lunch, accustomed to eating his national cuisine mostly, Korean food is just another ethnic take-out choice.

3. The language is really hard. The US Defense Department’s Defense Language Institute ranks Korean in its hardest languages to learn category, along with Chinese, Japanese, and Arabic. By contrast, Spanish is a snap for anglophones.  This is an absolutely crucial barrier. It makes the life of all the foreigners I know in Korea much, much harder. (See p 8 here for the complete DLI ranking of language difficulty for anglophones; the State Department’s Foreign Service Institute estimates that a mediocre, ‘professional working proficiency’ in Korean requires 4000 hours of study!! Spanish is ranked at just 1100 hours.)

4. The Confucian-Buddhist tradition. The West’s religious traditions are Christian, Jewish, with some Islam thrown-in. These monotheistic sensibilities are distant from  Korea’s social norms (ancestor veneration, e.g.) and the more ‘metaphysical’ religions of Asia.

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TRANSCRIPT – DR. ROBERT E. KELLY, PUSAN NATIONAL UNIVERSITY

BUSAN E-FM: “MORNING WAVE”

MONDAYS, 8 AM

March 8, 2010

Petra:

Hello everyone and welcome to …..

Right now we have our weekly foreign affairs expert for some commentary on Korea and Northeast Asia. Dr. Robert Kelly teaches in the Political Science and Diplomacy Department at Pusan National University. He’s been living in Korea about 18 months now, and his area of expertise is the international relations of East Asia. If you wish to contact him, please see his website at http://www.AsianSecurityBlog.WordPress.com.

Professor Kelly comes to us each Monday to talk about big issues in Korean foreign affairs. And this week we are going to discuss US relations with South Korea. Hi, Dr. Kelly.

REK:

Hi, Petra. Thanks for having me

Petra:

Thanks for being with us again today.

REK:

It’s my pleasure.

Petra:

It seems that several new polls came out about Americans’ image of Korea. What can you tell us?

REK:

About three weeks ago, the biggest US polling service, Gallup, released a survey of American attitudes towards foreign countries. And then last week the Chosun Ilbo and Gallup Korea ran a survey of ten wealthy countries’ attitudes toward each other. Unfortunately, Korea did not fare too well in either survey.

Petra:

Can you tell us some of the details, and why Korea is viewed poorly?

REK:

Well, I think poorly is not the right word. Instead I would say that Korea has two big ‘image’ problems. The first is North Korea. The Democratic People’s Republic of Korea simply dominates the world’s sense of Korea. I know this disappoints South Koreans very much. South Koreans would very much like Yuna Kim or Samsung televisions to be their representatives to the world, but this is just not the case. Kim Jeong Il is easily the best known Korean in the world.

Second, Korea is quite small, and to western populations, geographically and culturally quite distant. I discuss this often with my students. Koreans seem unhappy that there is a strong asymmetry between Koreans’ interest in the US, and American interest in Korea. Koreans, for example, have great interest in English, like to attend American universities, eat US fast food, and watch so many American movies that the Korean film industry requires tariff protection.

Petra:

But Americans don’t really know anything about Korea, do they? Hah!

REK:

Beyond the Korean immigrant community of course, no, not really. The Gallup survey, for example, did not even list South Korea as a choice for Americans to select as favorable or unfavorable. So traditional US allies, such as Germany, Canada, Britain, France, Japan, etc. were listed, and all received high scores of favorability. That is, Americans said they liked these countries. But South Korea was not listed at all. However North Korea was, and the DPRK received an 80% unfavorable rating. The only country with a worse number was Iran. So, no, South Korea is just not really on the radar for most Americans; Korea means North Korea to most Americans.

Petra:

What about the Chosun Ilbo study?

REK:

It too found that South Korea had only a 37% favorability rating.

Petra:

That seems pretty low.

REK:

Yeah, it is. I agree. Actually, I was surprised that the Chosun figure was so low. I am quite aware of how little Americans know of Korea, but the Chosun poll included other Eurasian countries that I thought would have more exposure to Korea, including France, Russia, Italy and China.

Petra:

So what does this mean?

REK:

Well, honestly, I don’t think it means all that much. It does not mean that Korea is any less free, wealthy, green, socially happy, secure, democratic, etc. These sorts of polls are usually like high school popularity contests. They make you feel good or bad, but they don’t actually change that much. However, Koreans have stressed Korea’s ‘global image’ a lot under this administration. Notions like ‘branding’ Korea or Korean ‘soft power’ mean a lot to South Koreans, so the government has embarked, eg, on a big push of Korean food in the West.

Petra:

Right. I read about. The First Lady is pushing Korean food. So these polls are disappointing, but don’t mean too much. Ok.

REK:

Generally, I think so. Koreans worry a great deal, unnecessarily in my opinion, about Korea’s image. But, we all know that clever TV campaigns or cute food advertisement aren’t really the driver of such things. Korea’s image in the world will be built on its political values, not by things like how many LEDs get exported to the EU. Look at India. It is quite poor, yet its long-standing commitment to democracy and freedom, and the pacifist, Gandhian heritage in its foreign relations has won it many friends for decades. And Korea will enjoy this sort of reputation if it continues to build an open, globalized, free democracy.

Petra:

But I think Koreans want more than that. They wants others to see and enjoy their cultural products too – like hanbok or kimchi.

REK:

Yeah I think that’s right, but I just don’t know how well that stuff translates into the West. Asian food is available in the West of course, but quite honestly, I never really knew or cared to know the difference between Chinese, Korean or Japanese food when I lived in the US. I didn’t know many people who could properly eat with chopsticks. And I certainly never met anyone who could speak Korean. There are of course pockets of interest in the biggest cities, but outside the Asian immigrant community, I dare say, Korea just doesn’t have that sort of profile.

Petra:

Why not? I think Koreans really would like Westerners to be more aware of it, as distinct from China or Japan.

REK:

I think you really put your finger on it right there. Korea is small; Japan is big, and China is simply enormous. Less than 10% of Americans have passports; we don’t travel that much. And the US has ethnic populations from almost every country on the planet. In the huge melting pot of American life, Korea is just one far-off place, with a very difficult language and religious traditions very different from those of America. By contrast, when Hispanics immigrants come to the US, they already share some cultural territory: the alphabets are the same, and Spanish is vastly easier for English speakers to learn; Mexican food has already made huge inroads in the US; most Hispanics are Catholics. But the cultural gulf with Korea is much wider – language, Confucianism-Buddhism, food, chopsticks, traditional dress and music. Things like that.

Petra:

So China dominates everything?

REK:

That is an exaggeration of course, but kind of. To the extent that Westerners follow events in Asia, China is the behemoth that dominates discussion, and for Americans, it is the alliance with Japan that is the lynchpin of the US presence in Asia. This is important. It is the alliance with Japan that draws most US attention on security in Asia. Indeed, the one truly important statistic for Koreans is that only 41% of Americans think the US should deploy combat troops to South Korea to defend it. That I think it is genuinely worrisome.

Petra:

Thank you professor for coming again this week.

‘Andrew Sullivan is an Anti-Semite,’ or the Israel Lobby is in a Panic

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In the last few weeks, the literary editor of the New Republic, Leon Wieseltier, accused Andrew Sullivan of being an anti-Semite for his changing, increasingly tough views on Israel. For original post, go here; for Sullivan’s response, here; Greenwald, as usual, gave the most insightful read of the whole thing. Also, Cole, Chait, and Mead.

1. My sense of Sullivan’s work – from reading his blog irregularly, his essays at the Atlantic, and his book Conservative Soul – is that the charge is ridiculous. Sullivan is as thoughtful a writer as they come. I can’t think of anyone who has so openly showed, through his blog, the humanist thinking process day-by-day. Unlike academics who strive to present iron-clad work as if they’d thought of every angle, Sullivan has basically thrown open his brain so the whole world can watch him think. He routinely retracts, modifies, and apologizes when he makes mistakes or reconsiders. In this way, he is wonderfully honest – head and shoulders above the partisan hackery of most of American punditry. The blog is essentially the organic thinking process of classical liberal, with a touch of conservative sadness, muddling through tough questions, as we all do, only for the whole world to watch in print. It is a fascinating process, occasionally mundane or humorous, frequently engaging, but prejudiced? Hardly. That violates the very spirit of thinking-out-loud behind his blog that has made it so popular.

2. Wieseltier’s piece is pretty shoddy. It is a collection of extrapolations, slippery allegations, and ad hominem shots. Name-dropping Niebuhr and Auden was pretentious and served no point. I would not have accepted this from a graduate student. You can’t write this way unless you have an assured platform. Wieseltier is a like PhD who just got tenure – ‘now I’ll say anything  I want.’ If he weren’t an editor of one the best intellectual-policy magazines in the US, no one would have read this essay. It is telling that most of the debate has either sided openly with Sullivan or suggested that Wieseltier overreached or overreacted.

3. The real story, as Greenwald and Walt have also suggested, is the growing panic of Israel’s deep supporters in the US. The ground is shifting against Israel, particularly because of its continuing hard-right insistence on retaining the West Bank. The current prime minister, B Netanyahu, has clearly deepened the rift with the US by his open recalcitrance on the settlements. Much of the credit for this shift on Israel is due to Walt and Mearsheimer’s book and the subsequent flood of discussion it unleashed and legitimized. (They too enjoyed the institutional power of saying whatever they want; tenure in top 10 schools gives you that kind of space.) Walt’s blogging, relentless, measured and intelligent, has kept up the pressure. Increasingly it has become clear that the biggest obstacle for peace is now the Israeli religious right, not Hamas or Hezbollah. The fundamentalist-zionist Orthodox have now pulled Israel’s otherwise modern, liberal population into a semi-imperialist venture that increasingly smacks of permanent apartheid for the Palestinians. There is simply no way the US can support this; Israel’s friends in the US know this, and they are panicking. The consensus of elite opinion on Israel is swinging against them, and anti-semitism charges against the likes of Jimmy Carter, Walt, Mearsheimer, and now Sullivan, tells you more about the changing American debate on Israel, than it does about these writers.

3. I find the charge of anti-semitism thrown at intelligent writers like these inappropriate, because it is a prejudice we associate with crass, vulgar, unrefined thinking. That is, we assume the racism and other bigotry reflects a lack of thoughtful thoroughness. So ‘X is an islamophobe after 9/11, because he has no idea about Islam, but still makes snap judgments based on minimal information.’ Yet clearly, Sullivan, Walt and the rest do in fact know a great deal about Israel, Judaism, and the associated issues. They have a long, substantial body of work over many years demonstrating, rich nuanced thinking on all sorts of topics. Their work, not just on Israel, but on lots of topics, is not a collection of from-the-hip prejudice, but usually pretty well-thought out. That’s why people read them to begin with. (Remember that Mein Kampf was a publishing failure originally; before reading it was coerced, the normal German saw right through it for the bigotry and poor thinking it was.)

Certainly ‘smart’ people can be racist or anti-semitic, but I bet the proportion is lower. Why? Presumably, all the reading, traveling, and reflection we associate with intelligence leaves some sort of intellectual mark. This is why we send our children to school to begin with. Presumably it humanizes the thinker to the circumstances of other people, encourages one to try to see the world through others’ eyes, and expands one’s sense of self. Consider Walt. He is the chairman of the finest political science program on the planet. Do you really believe the people who vetted him throughout the long institutional path to this height somehow missed his latent anti-semitism? Hundreds, maybe thousands, of professors, students, and administrators somehow missed this roaring prejudice? Is it possible? Sure. Probable? That question answers itself. So leave the racism charges for uneducated boors like Timothy McVeigh; it’s just a gimmick to stifle debate of things you don’t like.

More on Institutional Reform in the US: Our Greco-Japanese-Californian Future

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Walter Russell Mead (above) has a thoughtful addition to the accelerating debate on reforming US institutions, even though I think he is wrong on every point. The end of this discussion is to slow the pace of US decline. China is coming on strong; the US debt and deficits are crushing. The argument says that America’s institutions are getting old and creaky; they are too overrun with interest groups to allow the general will to break through. No one, not even the president, can overcome the hyper-partisanship and break the gridlock in the name of the national interests. In a metaphor, the US is like an aged machine, slowly running down, increasingly in need of major overhaul, not just a tune-up.

While I certainly agree with Mead and the conventional wisdom that the US institutions are not aging well and that the US interest groups distort national politics, I just don’t buy it that fixing the Senate or restricting campaign cash is the answer. (Although both are good ideas.) The real problem is attitudinal:

The US population does not really accept that the US is on a fiscal crash course. Like the Japanese, Greeks, and Californians, we just refuse to see the looming reckoning. Americans are unwilling to reduce their expectations of government, but they refuse to pay more for it. The Tea Partiers are the best example of this oxymoron. They loathe the federal government, but they come from states and demographic brackets that benefit most from government redistribution. Who do they think has kept logging companies from clear cutting the inland Northwest? Who built the highways on which they can drive their pick-ups? Who subsidizes their retirement and health care so that they have time to go to Tea Party rallies? Who supports universities in the Rocky Mountain states that no one would otherwise attend or work at?

Money is made in the US in from suburban residents between the ages of 25 and 65, and some of it is redistributed as taxes. Part of the social compact is helping the elderly or rural populations, and we all accept that as a reasonable cost of building a just society. But the Tea Party bites the hand that feeds it. For all their complaints about ‘socialist tyranny,’ how many of its elderly members refuse Medicare/Medicaid/Social Security, how many of its Western/Plains States members refuse the massive federal assistance for agriculture, cattle, and land-use rights? Their stark ingratitude, and staggering ignorance (of how and where resources are generated in the US), tells you that real issue of American decline the radical expansion of the entitlement mentality.

So all these institutional fixes are just changes at the margin. The real trick is to show the US public the real cost of government and force them to decide how much or little they want. That would be an absolutely delicious moment. But of course it won’t happen, so our future is increasingly that of Japan, Greece, and California: big fiscal holes, gradual erosion of competitiveness, a craven political class unwilling to show the voters the hard choices that need to be made.

So my sense is that Mead is dancing around the real changes necessary:

1. Reviving Federalism

I don’t know why this helps. It just rearranges the deck chairs. I suppose we could force the states to pay more of their own bills, but remember that they already routinely get lots of resources from the Feds. They are already broke. Most states can’t balance their budgets without federal assistance: CA is just the worst of a thoroughly national trend already. In the last 50 years, the states voluntarily gave up their fiscal sovereignty in exchange for more dollars. So now we are going to reverse the flow? I guess, but I am not really sure how that helps. Americans expect a huge amount from the federal government, and most people aren’t federalist or states-rightists out of principled commitment, but rather based on which parties control which levels.

2. Congressional Term Limits

I don’t think this helps at all. In fact, the evidence from the states suggests the opposite. When legislators come and go quickly, interest groups (and staff!) peddling greater ‘knowledge’ gain even greater access. ‘Yeoman legislators’ has a nice jeffersonian ring to it, but in a highly technical, highly legalistic, highly complex bureaucracy, they will simply get lost, just like Jefferson Smith did in Mr. Smith Goes to Washington. In Ohio, term limits have been a disaster: they increased the constant campaign, adding a new ‘merrygo-round’ feature as legislators looked for ways to bounce around both chambers and then the executive branch bureaucracy, and empowered staff and Columbus-area think-tanks.

3. A bigger House of Representatives

Again, Mead’s working assumption seems to be that legislators ‘closer’ to the people will govern better. Again, it feels good; it invokes  Rousseau and Jefferson. But I am not sure how much this help. In fact, there is good evidence from Africa and East Asia that a certain amount of state distance from the cacophony of rent-seeking private interest groups improves state effectiveness. This is not an endorsement of the Beijing Consensus for dictatorship, only a warning that socially entrenching the American state even deeper in the population does not help the government made hard choices. If we change the mathematical ratio of voters to MCs, how does that compel making tough choices?

4. Unicameral  State Legislatures

This is a good cost-saving measure. It is less expensive, and reduces transaction costs unnecessary at the state level. But doesn’t this clash with number 1? You don’t need two legislative houses at the state level, if the politics at the state level isn’t really that important. But if you revive federalism, and state politics becomes more consequential again, doesn’t it provide a rationale for keeping a more lengthy legislative process?

5. More States

Yet more decentralization. As with the above, I do not see the casual relationship between a government ‘closer to the people’ and therefore more responsible. More states means more transaction costs, but I don’t see the benefit.

Reform of US Institutions to Prevent Decline?

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James Fallows had a good piece at the Atlantic on US decline. This sort of writing is all the rage now of course, given the huge US debt and deficit and the indefatigable rise of China. Zakaria made a fortune and got a gig at CNN on the back of punchy neologism ‘the post-American world.’ Fallows is a nice antidote to the simple ‘power is moving to the East’ schtick of so many, especially out here. Asians love this discourse – for obvious reasons – but don’t really see the limits on the flow. There is too much enthusiasm out here, not enough analysis. For my short take on this, see here.

Fallows makes some solid arguments about Asia’s limits: gross levels of corruption, weak education systems that encourage volume over quality, limited, messy semi-democracy, socially circumscribed personal freedoms (due to strong social pressure to conform) and consequently lower creativity. All this is true. To it I would add the huge informalism and personalism of the economy. Massive amounts of money sloshes about illegally, informally, or simply ‘off-budget’ (what a wonderful euphemism for your slush fund!). As I have remarked before, the grey economy here is pretty big. I am always prompted by small vendors out here to buy in cash, not on a credit card. Credit card purchases are used for tax purposes, so this is basically a form of quiet tax fraud. I wish Fallows had actually written more on these bureaucratic-institutional limits on Asia’s rise. They don’t get nearly enough attention, as the GDP expansion stats dominate the debate.

But for Americans, probably the most interesting claims he makes concern US institutional reform. He notes that the US Constitution is over 200 years old. While this is a source of pride, it is also that case the the original document grows distant with each passing day from the realities of American life. Further, the simple age of the US government has insured the now long accretion of interest groups around the Washington policy process.

Fallows particularly targets the Senate, in which the divergence of voting weights runs from 1 senator per 18.5 million Californians, to 1 senator per 270,000 Wyomingans. Furthermore, the rise of the filibuster threat by the minority in the Senate means that a functioning majority in the Senate is now 60%, not 50%+1. Targeting the Senate for reform is popular at the moment. Obama hinted obliquely at it in the SotU.

The problem with reforming institutions, particularly the Senate, is that we have been here before. Robert Dahl noted many years ago about how the Senate wildly overrepresented agricultural interests in the US. The Progressive moment also thought that Congress got in the way as much as it worked constructively. It upheld the president as the sole carrier of the national interest, because he was the only one to get elected from a fully national constituency.

But ultimately, I am not really sure if the problem is institutional, but rather popular. The US public is simply unwilling to pay for  the expense of the services it wants from government. The country is now so large, so heterogeneous, that it is easy to adopt a NIMBY approach to tax hikes and spending cuts. The pool of US resources is still enormous. So its easy to lose sight of the costs your selfishness. Someone somewhere else is paying for you Medicare. Or perhaps even worse, we are losing the sense that behind government spending are the taxes that we pay. So of course we can raise unemployment benefits; it would be cruel not to, right? Of course we know in the abstract, but the bite of reality – of higher taxes when we demand more unemployment or Medicare – is lost. The chain of steps between completing our 1040s in the spring and the receipt of grandma’s social security check is now so long, that we not longer see the causal relationship. This creates the illusion that someone else can pay, but you can keep your redistribution or tax credit. So let other see their services cut and/or their taxes go up.

Hence, my sense is the problem is attitudinal. As US dominance ages, we have become more and more accustomed to more and more. We have lost the gritty bootstrap spirit that rising actors always have, whether they be emerging nation-states like China, or upstart interns at work.

As our sense of entitlement has expanded-  due to the sheer scope of US influence and wealth for 3 generations now – we  have accrued wildly unrealistic expectations of what government owes us. Bush 2’s fiscal policy is the perfect embodiment of that explosion of unrealistic expectations. He said we could have it all: tax cuts, wars, more Medicare. Serious people knew this was unsustainable, but the great damage done has been to the US citizen’s perception. We have been borrowing from the future for so long, that these expectations are now set; they are locked into the psychology. This psychology of being owed a lot, not institutional blocks in the Senate or K Street, is the real problem. And it may very well take a national fiscal calamity to change popular attitudes downward. By way of example, this happened in Korea in 1997/98. The Asian financial crisis brutalized the country, but helped insure a national seriousness about growth and taxes that you just don’t see in the US.

Would it just be Easier to Pay-Off our Middle Eastern Opponents?

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I recently watched Generation Kill, the HBO miniseries on the invasion of Iraq. It is quite good, particularly on the huge uncertainty generated by the fog of war, and the consequent overuse of violence to protect oneself from that uncertainty. At one point in the miniseries, a town is being hit by Tomahawk cruise missiles, and a soldier makes the interesting remark that with all the money put into just a few of those Tomahawks, they probably could have just bought off the local Fedayeen or Republican Guard units, or bought off enough locals to kill or arrest them. It is an interesting notion, and once I can’t say has ever received scholarly treatment in IR or strategic theory. Here is another good master’s thesis waiting to be written.

Instead of killing these people, can we just throw money at them? Fred Kaplan asks this question, and so does Michael Semple. Both are dubious. But I am not so sure, especially given the huge costs of Westerners trying to coerce the Taliban, ex-Baathists, and other various alienated Muslim/Arab elements around the Middle East. The obvious retort is that money does not buy allegiance, only temporary quiet. Money does not ensure ideological affinity or loyalty; it does not make its recipient a liberal committed to the democratic processes or central governments of Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Yemen, Somalia, etc. This is so, but consider the following counterpoints:

1. The US military, as the soldiers in Generation Kill pointed out, is an extremely expensive machine. The just-released 2011 US defense budget is $700+B. That is a staggering sum of money. The cost of using such an expensive force is high too. US equipment is super-expensive, given increasing computerization and integration (the ‘networked battlefield’). It will cost another mint to replace and bring back up to par US military stocks around the world when the GWoT ends (someday, we hope). What the US military spends in the GWoT every day certainly out-costs what bribery would cost by at least an order of magnitude (billions vs millions).

2. Shooting people instead of buying them has huge costs too. As we have learned by now, we are never going to kill every terrorist on the planet. We cannot kill our way to victory. Worse, in tribalized cultures like the ME, for every person we kill, there is a brother, son, uncle, friend who gets pulled into a blood oath to avenge that death. We have created spirals of ‘accidental guerillas’ through less-than-ideal discrimination in the use of force (another point Generation Kill demonstrates very well). Every unnecessary or partially necessary combat fatality creates a high possibility of more and more irregular combatants joining up for revenge. We might stanch the inflow of new recruits if we kill fewer and buy off more. Indeed, many people, Kaplan included, have noted that funding the Sunni gunmen to fight against al Qaeda in Iraq was the turning point in Iraq, not Bush’s surge. We also used bags of money in in Afghanistan in late 2001. So there is some evidence that this might work.

3. Isn’t paying off people morally superior to coercing, much less shooting, them? I am aware of course that the die-hards of al Qaeda and other Salafist groups cannot be bought. But there are many others who might be ‘buyable.’  I think a morally superior use of American power would be to purchase their temporary quietude than to hunt them.

4. You might object that simply buying them just delays the fighting. When the money drys up, then they will go back into the bush. Maybe, but

A) Buying them off, even temporarily, buys the government time to reach out and reconcile them. It gives exactly the ‘breather’ to the Iraqi or Afghan central government that Bush claimed they needed to get on their feet. But instead of the US military coercing a pause in violence, the dollars buy it. But in the end, the effect is the same. And if the Iraqi or Afghan governments can’t use that pause to get their acts together, then no amount of US killing will help them in the medium-term. Whether you choose policing/coercing or buying, you still get the same outcome (the pause), which our ME client-friends must then use (but they will likely squander).

B) Buying them indefinitely is still probably cheaper than a medium- to long-term US commitment, like the new Afghan surge Obama just announced in December. Everyone seems terrified that the US will be in the Middle East for decades, as it is in Germany, Korea, and Japan. Ok, so instead of hotly disputed withdrawal deadlines – which get flim-flammed anyway by ‘conditions on the ground’ which warrant that trainers, pilots,  the CIA, etc. to stay behind after the withdrawal date – why not substitute pay-offs for awhile? I realize it is hardly ideal. It’s US-funded local graft. But consider the alternative.

These are just some initial thoughts. As I said, this is a wholly under-researched question, probably because it feels morally uncomfortable, shady, or sleazy. It reeks of corruption. And it surely does, but given the alternatives, particularly the use of US force, I think the moral equation is overbalanced in its favor actually. But this needs more serious investigation.

Korea’s Post-American Alliance Choices (1): India?

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This will be an occasional series. The US is entering a period of decline. Its ability and willingness to meet its alliance commitment to South Korea is waning. So Korea is, quietly, beginning to poke around in Asia. It is setting up preferential trade areas where possible, signing up whomever it can for ‘strategic partnerships,’ and generally branching out in the region. This serves both its desire to be a more regional player (rather than be permanently trapped in its peninsular ghetto with NK) and its growing need for friends beyond the US. The US has neither the money nor the domestic will to fight another Korean war. So it makes sense for Korea to look around, even if no one will admit that that is what it is doing.

On Monday, I spoke on the radio about this. Last week, the president of Korea had a state visit to India. India is a good choice for several reasons. Like Korea, India is

1. a liberal democracy with a lot of religious diversity.

2. worried about China’s rise.

3. an American ally.

4. Bonus: India is not Japan.

While more common than in the past, stable democracy is still hard to find in Asia. It makes sense for Korea and India to hang together. Of course, the closest democracy to Korea is Japan, but the mutual loathing is so severe, that Japan is a last ditch alliance choice for Korea. Further, both have a good tradition of internal tolerance based on their religious diversity. Everyone knows of India’s of course, but Korea too is one of the most religious fragmented states in Asia (sizeable minorities of Catholics, Buddhists, born-again protestants, and agnostics, with no dominant bloc).

This commonality of values is complemented by a commonality of interests, or rather an interest: China. Both are edgy about its quick rise (no surprise there), and both continue to hedge it and ally with the US in order to do so.

The downsides though are high. India is far away. It does not have the two-ocean fleet necessary to project serious power into Northeast Asia, and it is still losing the race with China.

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TRANSCRIPT – DR. ROBERT E. KELLY, PUSAN NATIONAL UNIVERSITY

BUSAN E-FM: “MORNING WAVE”

MONDAYS, 8 AM

February 1, 2010

Petra:

So President Lee went off to India last week. What happened? Why is this important?

REK:

Two reasons. First, Korean has a trade relationship with India. Second, Korea is slowly poking around Asia for other friends and possible partners.

Petra:

Ok. Is Korea’s trade with India significant?

REK:

Middling. Korea is India’s 9th biggest trading partner. That is ok. But there are 1.3 billion Indians, and they are getting wealthier. So it makes sense for Korea to try to push into this market. This is similar to the growth of China. As China and India both develop and get wealthier, their huge internal markets will attract interest from around the world.

Petra:

So if this was basically a trade mission, why did President Lee go?

REK:

Well, it was more than that. President Lee was a guest of honor for India’s big national holiday. It was an official state visit. Such trips fit President Lee’s style of diplomacy. First, the president has increasingly used his position to act as a salesman for Korea industry. You may recall his earlier bout of commercial diplomacy in the United Arab Emirates regarding Korean-designed nuclear power plants. Second, the pursuit of trade agreements has grown into a major Korean foreign policy tool in the last decade or two.

Petra:

Can you explain that a little more?

REK:

Sure. The bedrock of Korean foreign policy is the security alliance with the United States. But increasingly Korea has looked for an autonomous economic foreign policy. And Korea’s chosen manner of reaching out, especially in Asia, is trade deals. Korea has sought all sorts of preferential and free trade areas, and President Lee has made this a regular focus of his trips abroad.

Petra:

Has it been successful? I thought Korea belonged to the World Trade Organization which organizes global trade rules.

REK:

That’s true. But the WTO is stuck right now. The current round of trade negotiation, begun in Doha in Qatar in the Middle East, has been bogged down for years. With the Doha round frozen, Korea has turned to bilateral and regional trade deals in its foreign policy. This trip to India, as well as the recent sale of nuclear reactors in the Middle East is a part of this process.

Petra:

So the WTO is stuck, and President Lee is trying to push Korean exports on his own on these trips?

REK:

Yes, that’s right. In international relations, we call this commercial diplomacy, and President Lee is getting quite good at it. The big prize, an FTA with the US, is still out of reach though.

Petra:

Ok. Let’s stay with India. You said something about Korea looking for other friends and partners. What does that mean?

REK:

Well Korea is a tight neighborhood. It is surrounded by three big countries – Russia, Japan, and China – who have traditionally bullied or informally dominated the Korean peninsula. Korea’s political geography, or geopolitics, is quite poor; it is encircled. This is the great benefit of the US alliance. The US is too far away from Korea to dominate it, but the US alliance does help Korea prevent itself from being dominated by others. As long as US troops are in Korea, Korea can push back any encroachment by China, Japan or Russia.

Petra:

So what does this have to do with India?

REK:

Well, the US is in trouble now. The US deficit is gigantic. The US public debt is too. The US is fighting two hot wars in the Middle East, and several clandestine conflicts there as well. It is eight and a half years now since 9/11, and Americans are exhausted with all these wars and conflict.

Petra:

Does that include Korea?

REK:

Not really, but Americans certainly don’t want to get pulled into a big conflict here. As most Koreans know, the US military footprint in Korea is shrinking, and the US will officially relinquish wartime authority of the Korean military in 2012. In short, the US is increasingly looking for ways to lower the costs of the Korean alliance.

Petra:

So Korea is shopping for other friends?

REK:

Probably, quietly. I certainly would be. The US looks at Korea, and it sees a wealthy modern country that it believes should be able to defend itself without much US assistance. So Korea is wise to begin to think about friends and possible allies beyond simply the US.

Petra:

So can India be an ally to Korea?

REK:

Maybe. India has some definitely upsides for Korea. Like Korea, India is a democracy. Democracy in Asia is still somewhat rare, so Indo-Korean cooperation on security makes good sense. India also worries a lot about China’s rapid growth. India has an ongoing border dispute with China, much as the two Koreas and China do over the ancient Koguryeo role’s in history. So there is a community of values between India and Korea – liberalism, democracy, religious tolerance – as well as a community of interests – careful observation and response to China’s rise. Finally, both Korea and India are American allies.

Petra:

So how is the Korean government proceeding?

REK:

Well President Lee and the Indian prime minister agreed to upgrade Indo-Korean ties to a ‘strategic partnership.’ That implies that the two see each other as more than just trading partners or friends. President Lee pursued the same approach with US President Obama in the summer 2009. But for observers, it is hard to know the details of this new partnership. There will be regular meetings between officials of the two countries’ ministries, but it is hard to know how serious this will be.

Petra:

So there is no Indo-Korean alliance in the offing?

REK:

Probably not. Better to see this another sign that Korea is aware that the US is in trouble because of the long war on terrorism and the huge financial burden of the crisis. Korea is wise to start poking around for new friends, if not trade partners, and India is a good choice.

Petra:

Thank you coming again, Professor.

Republican SotU Response: Vote for Me because I Read the Bible and my All-American Sons Love Football – Bleh…

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Part one of this post, on Obama’s State of the Union address, is here.

If Obama’s speech seemed tired and rather boring, I must say I found the Republican Response simply atrocious – Vote for me because my all-American sons love sports just like you! It was Palinism; i.e., decadent, late Bushism.

The Democrats cheering at just about every line was sycophantic and annoying. Just saying flim-flam like, ‘I want America to be the best at future technologies,’ got Obama mawkishly long applause, and after awhile it got really tiresome. Agreed.

But the GOP response was downright disastrous. Here the applause really was scripted as syncophantic. What is it with the GOP and her0-worship? Ech! They even hooted and ho-yahed for McDonnell. And did you catch the unbelievably ‘diverse’ cast of worshippers behind the governor –  a soldier, a black,a policeman, an Asian, an old woman? This is supposed to be the contemporary GOP? Of white protestant tea partiers in Virginia of all places? Good lord. I laughed out loud the first time they panned the backstop audience.

It all reminded me of the GOP 2004 convention, a) with its painfully overchoreographed image of diversity for a party whose voter base is overwhelmingly white, born-again protestant, and b) the hero-worship of W as just a regular good ole boy who rose to greatness by his wholesome American gut values. Only in Virginia, this guv made sure to tell us his beaming daughter served in Iraq, and his snappy young sons like Sportscenter. Hah! What unbelievably smarmy crap! Do Americans really fall that?

If you thought Bobby Jindal was bad last year, at least he didn’t ask his family to perform the family-values  swimsuit competition for the religious right: ‘the Scriptures say families and America are great, so vote for me!’

The riposte captured all the banality and policy bankruptcy of the current GOP. The US economy nearly melted down, and there is wide consensus that massive government intervention scarcely averted another Depression. Yet the GOP response told us only that government is going to stifle America. That’s it?! When corporate and private spending is down all over the place, and the only big source of demand in the economy right now is government? That is your answer? Government is the problem when the only reason unemployment isn’t worse is government? C’mon. How can I take this seriously as policy?

On foreign policy, McDonnell was just as bad. He could only complain that we mirandized Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab. I take it to mean that we should torture the hell out of him or otherwise deny him any rights. When did torture become a litmus-test for status as a conservative?! Creepy…

I was once again struck by the utter failure of the GOP to respond seriously to Obama’s election and the scope of the financial crisis. This is still the GOP of the W years. Governor McDonnell told us nothing we haven’t heard before, and he did it in the worst Rovian fashion – a highly controlled, hyper-scripted environment filled with sycophantic, awestruck faces, the shameless exploitation of his family, an even more shameless diversity ploy, Bible citations – excuse me, ‘Scripture,’ the recitation of same points again and again, now matter what the topic of discussion, and a bullying tough guy approach on foreign policy. They should have just let Palin do the response; she really believes W was one of America’s greatest presidents ever.

If Obama came across as exasperated or tired, McDonnell broadcasted unreconstructed Bushism. Stick with the former until the GOP can finally figure out how to move on.

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Finally I must add one professorial, intellectual barb to the whole proceedings:  it was remarkably, staggeringly shallow at almost all times for anyone with a serious knowledge about or education in the big issues in American life. I spent 2-3 hours watching the State of the Union, the GOP response, and some of the punditry on CNN. I was amazed at how little genuine expertise, technical detail, or serious, apartisan/non-spin, cost-benefit analyses of policy choices were included. It was almost all just campaign spin (how will this or that play in the red states?; speaking of, will Maitlin and Carville please finally go away?!), agonizingly cheese-y anecdotes (tell the woman making brake fluid in Des Moines that America has lost its edge), inspirational vacuities (America’s promise for the future), and shameless partisan positioning (my daughter went to Iraq, and my handlers made sure to place a black and Asian behind me – look! don’t miss ‘em!).

What junk! I mean really. How unbelievably insulting. Can’t our public officials treat us as reflective, deliberative voters, instead of dupes who think you’re great because you quote the Bible? How gratingly, offensively shallow. Grrr. WE ARE NOT CHILDREN.

If you have any kind of serious education in politics and economics, this was 3 hours of your life wasted. You learned almost nothing serious about the coming year’s policy debates – other than unintended signals that the GOP is lost in time, Obama doesn’t know what to do with health care, and no one is serious about the deficit.

Most of my day is spent reading technical work in political science and economics, so I imagine this is why it seemed so jarringly childish and evasive of serious issues. But honestly, if you had read even a few articles in the Economist or Financial Times about US politics, you would have learned more. I could have given a better talk than any of those guys, and in less time. This is why we have the democratic legitimacy crisis Obama mentioned. If you treat the population like idiots, they become disaffected.

Obama’s State of the Yawn-nion

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My thoughts on the Republican response are here.

Interpreting the State of the Union (SotU) address is kremlinology on par with deciphering what the North Korean regime really thinks, what Sarah Palin’s honest policy preferences are, or what Paris Hilton fans actually see in her. American politics is not my academic area, but I worked for Congress for a bit and teach US politics regularly (almost all political science professors do). So here are a few take-aways…

1. SotUs as a tonic for US democracy’s legitimacy crisis.

SotUs are of course more about the drama and symbolism of the US Constitution in all its majesty. Just about everyone of any significance manages to show up – all 3 branches in their entirety, plus the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the cabinet, the First Lady and all the top staff of those assorted figures. As an object lesson to the citizenry this is helpful, as you get a chance (only once a year unfortunately) to see all the people who are representing you, crafting decisions in your name, and spending your money. In fact, this is rather healthy as exercise of democratic practice. John Q Citizen gets a chance to see his government in action and its trappings of glory (or not). Obama mentioned the crisis of legitimacy of American government (the idea that Americans unheathily loathe their government for its extreme partisanship, constant gridlock, and chronic capture  by special interests). Seeing the full retinue of government doing its thing on national TV for all to watch is a good antidote to that. Foreign Addendum: It is also an excellent ‘teaching moment’ for foreigners who a) find the US government unbelievably disaggregated and complex, and/or b) live in an authoritarian society.

2. The speech seemed listless and grab-baggy, or maybe just down-to-earth after W.

I didn’t leave with any one overriding idea. Bush 2 had three really memorable SotUs with easy-to-take-away one-liners: 2002 (axis of evil), 2003 (African yellowcake), 2005 (the US world-historic mission to spread freedom). Obama did not scale to those heights. Instead, it was a mish-mash of ideas and small-beer policy proposals, none of which really gripped me (more tax credits to make the tax code yet more indecipherable – bleh).

My guess is that the lawyer in him is wary of Bush-style extravagance. And it is true that Bush’s rhetorical flights were indeed memorable, but mostly because they were terrifying – a global long war for freedom and wildly unsubstantiated charges about Iraq, jihadism, etc. It is evidently Obama’s style to dial down expectations. But nevertheless, it drifted, and it felt tired. Like the Afghan surge speech in December, it didn’t rouse or convince me of much of anything. It glided through a series of topics without much serious discussion, and there was no central theme.

3. Another chance at serious debt/deficit discussion was passed up.

The ‘spending freeze’ has gotten much press, but honestly, it’s a gimmick. If the prez leaves out Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid and Defense (plus interest on the debt), he is left with less than 20% of the entire budget to ‘freeze.’ This is not serious. Forcing the FBI to hire one less secretary or pushing HHS to use fewer paperclips is pleasant but meaningless budgetarily. For decades presidents have tried to find budget savings in ‘waste, fraud and abuse’ (Reagan’s preferred locution), but to no avail. Clinton closed the budget primarily by keeping the big 1990 tax hike of Bush 1 and then pushing through his own in 1993. He also controlled the government’s size and used pay-as-you-go to force Congress to fund any new spending. W dropped all this and just borrowed while cutting taxes. The only way Obama can get the budget back in line is with a tax increase, unless he will go after the programs he excluded from his spending freeze. Particularly Defense needs to go on a diet.

In fact, Obama suggested a flippantness about the looming fiscal disaster when he deployed the disturbingly casual locution, ‘and while we’re at it, let’s cut this other tax too!’ Sure! Why not just chop all sorts of taxes? Wth difference does it make? When are we going to talk seriously in the US about the need to a tax hike as the only realistic way to balance the budget? One of the biggest idiot lines of the Bush presidency was when he said we could reduce the deficit without raising taxes. If you want to have functioning government, you can’t just keep voting yourself tax cuts and spending expansions. Otherwise you’ll look like California. In fact, in the 15 minutes or so devoted to the budget deficit, the only serious proposal was the restoration of ‘pay-as-you-go.’

4. Foreign policy’s a throw-away.

For all the folks who claim the US is an empire, we sure are an introverted one judging by this talk. Foreign policy got less than 10 minutes, despite the ongoing GWoT that is in fact in increasing under Obama. About the only thing useful was the oblique hint that Obama will push for more trade (cleverly repackaged for the speech as ‘more exports’) with Korea and Latin America. But even this too has obvious problems, as just about everyone today is trying to export more as a route out of the crisis. If Obama thinks that he can pull the US into a current account surplus, he’s dreaming. Most of America’s big trading partners (Germany, Japan, India, Korea, China, Taiwan) run a surplus on the back on the voracious American consumer. Understandably, Obama now wants them to return the favor (his ‘National Export Initiative’), but if he thinks mercantilists in the Asia are going to suddenly import more, forget it. If there is one thing I’ve learned living in Asia, it’s that governments out here are like the Spanish Habsburgs on trade. They’d rather brutally punish their own citizens through higher and higher trade barriers than tolerate any serious trade deficits with the US. Is this unfair to Americans? Absolutely. But it is also how they play the game here, so forget some export promoted US recovery with Asians buying our stuff.

Beyond this, Obama gave us nothing new on the Middle East or NK – just more ‘I’m tough’ schtick to keep the right-wing blogosphere from exploding.

The Latest Bogus North Korean Peace Offering

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Once again, North Korea asked for a peace treaty last week to formally end the bizarre stand-off on the DMZ. This was the topic of my weekly radio chat on Busan’s English language radio station. As you might imagine, every tremor from the North is felt in the South, no matter how small or gimmicky. The CW is that last week’s offer was not serious. Both the US and SK quickly rejected it. But nevertheless, it is amazing to see how ‘keyed in’ SK is to NK. That must be a great, albeit perverse, joy to Pyongyang. Whenever they want to make a fuss, they have a captive audience in the South who will jump whenever they pull the strings. His own country may be falling apart, but at least Kim can keep South Koreans jittery and jumpy year-in, year-out. Awful. In fact, there is probably a good master’s thesis in there about how states in a highly integrated region have massive side-effects (lateral pressure) on each other. Think about how inter-linked where Europe’s militaries before World War I. Once one mobilized in 1914, everyone else had to. It is the same here.

The interview below is mostly a review of how we got here. The inter-Korean border is the most militarized in the world, and the most irregular. The DMZ is technically an armistice space, not a border. (And it’s downright surreal to visit.) Legally, the war is still on. But no one really quite knows what that means. In practice of course, it means that the SK and US militaries are on a hair-trigger. The UN has long since been sidelined.

I don’t buy it at all that last week’s treaty offer was serious. My best guess is that now that NK has demonstrated that it is a nuclear weapons state, it is on a charm offensive. As I argued on air, I think NK is pursuing an ‘Indian strategy’ on nuclearization. The US told India not to go for nukes in the late 90s. They did anyway. The US and the other nuclear states complained and sanctioned for awhile, but after a few years, everyone just gave up. India hung tough, and eventually, it came back into international society with no serious damage for nuclearization and a nice new toy to prove it is a great power.

I think the same bargaining logic is occurring here. NK has changed the ‘facts on the ground.’ It is now a nuclear weapons states. It can now reconfigure the ‘status quo’ in any negotiation to include its nukes. The US will see the status quo ante is the baselines, but NK will not, and the reality of its functioning nukes will implicitly change the game. As always, NK proves to astonishingly successful and canny at brinksmanship.

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Petra:

So last week, North Korea suggested a peace treaty be brokered to officially end the Korean War.

REK:

That’s right. North Korea is really struggling under the weight of sanctions imposed by the United Nations. A lot of experts think North Korea is desperate.

Petra:

I see. Why do we need a peace treaty at all? The war is long since over…

REK:

That’s right. The active, shooting war ended in 1953, but amazingly, a formal treaty was never signed. Technically North and South Korea are still in a state of war. What exists today between them is simply a pause, what we technically call an armistice. But this has never actually been formalized in a signed document. So it would be technically legal for both sides to start shooting again.

Petra:

Yes, that’s right. So why don’t they?

REK:

Well, by 1953, everyone was exhausted from the war. Everyone wanted the peace, and over time, the armistice hardened into this long-term stalemate that we see today at the demilitarized zone. Indeed, the inter-Korean border and its strange war-like status is unique in world politics. Not even the two Germanies in the Cold War had this sort of relationship. In Korea, neither side has wanted a formal treaty, because neither side wants to officially recognize the other. Both claim to be the legitimate government of the whole Korean peninsula, so the war devolved into this unfinished stalemate. As I said, it’s a strange, unprecedented situation.

Petra:

So why is North Korea proposing a peace treaty now? What does this mean?

REK:

The North Koreans have sought a treaty for about 15 years now. In the early 90s, North Korea was badly hurt by major changes, including the withdrawal of Soviet support, China’s diplomatic recognition of South Korea, and the death of Kim Il Sung. Then of course came the brutal famine. Given all this difficulty, Pyongyang has repeatedly tried to get a peace treaty to bolster its own existence. North Korea has basically lost the race with South Korea, and it is desperate to get the US and South Korea to recognize it officially. Pyongyang fears that the continuing stalemate is helping to slowly destroy the country. A peace treaty would open the door for aid money.

Petra:

So why did the US and South Korea so quickly reject the offer last week?

REK:

Two reason. First, US official policy is that North Korea must negotiate with South Korea primarily, and North Korea has not made clear if the peace treaty would include South Korea. Excluding South Korea from Northern diplomacy is a longtime Northern trick. It prefers to negotiate directly with the US. The second reason is nuclear weapons. Last year, the North clearly demonstrated to the world that it is a nuclear weapons state. But the US and South Korea do not want to recognize that nuclearization. So any progress on the peace treaty is linked to denuclearization.

Petra:

Is that likely?

REK:

Quite honestly, I don’t think so. North Korea has endured staggering levels of poverty and deprivation to get nuclear weapons. Even as its people starved, the regime continued nuclear development, and 2009 was a banner year in which all that work came to fruition. After so much hardship it is almost unimaginable that the North will go back – unless there were some kind of amazing deal of aid and support from the US, South Korea, and perhaps Japan. But this is terribly unlikely.

Petra:

The North already know most of your argument about giving up its nukes right?

REK:

We think so. It is terribly hard to read Northern intentions, but US secretaries of state have been saying basically the same thing for almost twenty years now.

Petra:

So why are they proposing the peace treaty now if they already know it is unlikely to advance?

REK:

Again, no one knows for sure, but probably because of the weight of UN sanctions on the regime. Last year, after the nuclear test definitively proved North Korea was a nuclear power, the US, South Korea, and Japan pushed a tough set of trade and economic sanctions though the UN. These newest sanctions more than ever target the foreign enterprises and wealth of the North Korean elite. The sanctions are beginning to bite not just the long-suffering population, but also the ruling clique, especially the military, and that is dangerous for Kim Jong Il.

Petra:

So the treaty is just a trick or a gimmick?

REK:

No, I don’t think so. They genuinely want it, because they are so fearful of the South’s superior economic and military power. North Korea faces a perpetual legitimacy crisis, because South Korea is so obviously more successful and happy. Few Koreans would choose to live in North over South Korea, so the regime desperately wants Southern recognition and money.

Petra:

Bu nuclear weapons make that so much harder to achieve.

REK:

It does, which is why the decision to nuclearize is somewhat puzzling. I think the nukes are to prove that even though North Korea is economic inferior to South Korea, it is military superior. I think the regime hoped that it could stall and obscure the negotiations long enough to get nuclear weapons, and then the US – and South Korea and Japan – would be forced to recognize its nuclear status.

Petra:

So the negotiations would ‘reset’ after the achievement of nuclear weapons…

REK:

That is exactly right. Before nuclearization, North Korea’s cards in its poker game with the South were weaker. But now, the nukes are huge new ace. I think North Korea wanted to mimic the success of India with nuclearization in the 1990s.

Petra:

What happened there?

REK:

Well, the US told India not to pursue nukes. They did anyway – to have the global prestige of being a nuclear power. The US responded with sanctions, but not really with much commitment. A few years later, America gave up, and its normal relationship with India resumed. In other words, India hung tough through a few years of US-led sanctions, but eventually the US dropped the issue. So India got to keep its nuclear power, and have its relations with America.

Petra:

And North Korea is trying to do the same?

REK:

Basically yes. They know the US and South Korea are furious over the nukes, but they guess that if they can weather that dislike for a few years, they will be able to keep them, just like India. The peace treaty is just a way to signal that they are nice now they achieved nuclear weapons.