Rethinking alliance

By now, South Korean and U.S. officials must be meeting in Washington, D.C., to discuss how to share the costs of stationing 28,500 American soldiers in Korea.

The officials will find it hard to narrow their differences much in the two days of talks, the fourth such meeting. Worse yet, the negotiations to reach the Special Measures Agreement (SMA), a defense cost-sharing accord, are more than likely to miss the original year-end deadline

At their third session in mid-November, the U.S. delegates stormed out of the talks after just an hour. The chief U.S. negotiator told reporters later that Seoul was not responsive to a request for “equitable” burden-sharing.

He was referring to U.S. President Donald Trump’s calls for quintupling Seoul’s payment to around $5 billion. In a recent editorial, the New York Times described the real estate tycoon-turned-president’s demand as “outlandish,” which will bring about “lose-lose” results for both allies.

Given the one-sided negotiating leverage in favor of the world’s most powerful nation, the outcome will come somewhere between the current $1 billion and the Trump-proposed $5 billion next year. One thing seems inevitable, however: the closer the amount to Trump’s demand, the farther away South Koreans will feel from who they have thought of as their most reliable ally.

For Korea, the Trump administration’s exorbitant demand is adding insult to injury. Such a demand could not come at a worse time when Seoul is still licking its diplomatic wounds from a tense standoff with Tokyo. Under escalating U.S. pressure, the Moon Jae-in administration reversed its decision to terminate a military intelligence-sharing pact with Japan.

Seoul decided to end the accord after Tokyo removed South Korea from its list of favored trading partners — for “national security” reasons.

Former U.S. President Barack Obama compared Japan to a “cornerstone” and South Korea, a “lynchpin,” in the Northeast Asian security structure. Now South Koreans feel they have been reduced to just a prop for the cornerstone.

Trump and his men are even threatening to use the longtime U.S. trump card in tough bargaining with Seoul - a troop withdrawal or reduction. Some gurus here say America may pull out some 6,000 soldiers or so, but would not, and could not, go any further than that.

If Washington’s strategic goal is to keep Beijing in check in the foreseeable future, where can it find a better place than South Korea and its base in Pyeongtaek, the largest and perhaps most expensive U.S. base outside of America, about 90 percent of which was built with South Korean money?

The U.S. wants to keep South Korea as a sub-partner of Japan to form a three-nation joint front against the Middle Kingdom. Unlike Japan, however, South Korea cannot remain at odds with China, its largest trade partner. Seoul is still smarting from economic damage caused by the U.S. deployment of an anti-missile Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) battery in Korea.

North Korea is also a country that should be unified with the South through peaceful means, not a regime to be destroyed or toppled, as conservatives in the U.S. — and South Korea — think. True, China and North Korea may be self-assertive and even hostile toward South Korea. However, allies and adversaries can change, as the incumbent U.S. leader seeks to demonstrate in various parts of the world.

South Korea and the U.S. have called each other blood allies over the past seven decades. Many South Koreans, especially older and conservative people, still regard America as a liberator (from Japan) and defender (from North Korea), waving the Stars and Stripes at outdoor rallies.

Younger and liberal groups see it somewhat differently. They believe South Korea has just been a frontline post to protect democracy and capitalism — or the U.S. military-industry complex’s interests. Donald Trump is only revealing the U.S. intention in the most straightforward of ways. This is due to the difference between rightist and leftist thinking. It may also reflect the changed status of South Korea not just from more than a century ago but from half a century ago.

Both liberals and conservatives are wrong. America is neither an angel nor a demon but just a country, which has been acting in ways that maximize its national interests. So should South Korea.

Of course, Korea, even if unified, is the smallest and weakest link in this part of the world. That does not mean it should subordinate itself to one superpower while estranging others, risking its security. By reconciling, if not unifying immediately, with North Korea, this peninsula could become strong enough not to be ignored by the surrounding powers, especially Japan. How can a nation pursue its interests without full sovereignty?

From historical experience, Koreans know China cannot be an alternative to the U.S. Instead of approaching one side, South Korea has only to maintain a balance, different from seeking mechanical neutrality, siding with one or the other depending on the issue, in ways to best respect humankind’s common interests based on multilateral values, including peace, co-prosperity and egalitarianism.

Former President Roh Moo-hyun became the butt of ridicule when he put forth his “balancer theory,” which called for South Korea to play a balancing role between the U.S. and China in 2005. Politicians and media outlets hostile to the liberal president criticized the “premature” proposal, saying Roh and his government did not know their place.

However, South Korea had no other option but to become a good balancer. Roh was right then — and more so now. Korea can never be a balancer if it waits until it becomes as powerful as the surrounding countries. In that case, the nation may not even need to be a balancer at all.

Compare the late president with the current bigwigs of the conservative Liberty Korea Party. Its leader staged a hunger strike to maintain the military information-sharing accord with an unrepentant, rearming Japan. The LKP floor leader went a few steps further, begging U.S. officials not to hold another summit with North Korea right before the April 2020 general election for the sake of her party’s chances of victory.