US Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld is not an obviously sympathetic individual, but it is hard not to feel sorry for him as he visits South Korea and Japan. In both countries, but particularly the former, he is being treated to polite but firm anti-Americanism, designed to have Washington reduce its troop numbers and bases.
In South Korea, there remain 37,000 US soldiers, the majority along the cease-fire line with the still belligerent and unreformed Kim Jong-Il regime of North Korea. The US soldiers are deployed in the front-line because Washington wishes to make clear to North Korea that further aggression against the South will immediately involve the international community. These American servicemen are the residue of a US-led United Nations force which in the 1950s drove back the invasions of the North Koreans and their Chinese allies. The world has moved on since then. The Chinese are no more communists than hawks are vegetarians. But remarkably, North Korea remains Stalinist.
South Korea meanwhile has become a potent economy, which, by emulating Japan’s post-war economic model, has gone a considerable way to matching its success. Though it retains a strong military tradition and stands on constant alert to repel a new invasion from the North, the South has become increasingly prosperous and relaxed, and ever more uncomfortable about the US military umbrella.
Once upon a time, it was only radical politicians who criticized the US presence. Now, in President-elect Roh Moo-hyun the country has a leader who is openly unhappy with the idea of the Americans staying around. Though his predecessors have made their own tentative but ultimately unsuccessful attempts to open dialogue with the North’s regime in Pyongyang, Roh believes that he has a real chance of playing a mediating role and bringing the two halves of the country together.
The US view is that Roh is deluding himself. While Washington has made it clear to Seoul that it would not impede a genuine rapprochement between the two Koreas, it is extremely uneasy if the removal of the US military presence in the South is part of that deal. Conservative US politicians like Rumsfeld and his president are pretty sure that they know the Pyongyang regime better than the South Koreans. They see it as manipulative, unreliable and desperate, thanks to the spectacular failure of its half-baked economic policies which have now brought the North to the brink of starvation for the third year in a row.
Though its bases in South Korea may fit in with Washington’s policy of a Pax Americana, the truth is that they do little for America itself. Reflecting its general espousal of free trade policies, the US is in fact protecting one of its economic rivals. There is therefore an understandable sadness that many South Koreans no longer want US protection.
