The Hindu : U.S. faces unease in East Asia

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Wednesday, Nov 26, 2003

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U.S. faces unease in East Asia

By P. S. Suryanarayana

There is a lack of popular enthusiasm in South Korea and Japan for a military role in U.S.-occupied Iraq.

PAPERING OVER the new cracks in the Pentagon's alliances with Japan and South Korea, the U.S. Defence Secretary, Donald Rumsfeld, has sought to shift the focus to a strategic `vision' of `modernising' these military relationships. The leaders of Japan and South Korea certainly exuded friendliness towards Mr. Rumsfeld during his visit there in mid-November. However, the public protest, which captured the ground-level mood of dissent, would have left him in no doubt about which way the wind was now beginning to blow across much of East Asia.

The latest public protest was a sequel to the show of anger witnessed during the visit to East Asia and Australia by the U.S. President, George W. Bush, in October.

In a talk to U.S. military personnel at the Osan Air Base on November 18, Mr. Rumsfeld said he was asked by a South Korean reporter "why should the Korean people send their young men and women over to Iraq, halfway across the globe?" The question was about South Korea's reluctance to fight in Iraq at this time, at Washington's behest, in a "war for the Imperium'' (as seen by some Americans themselves).

However, Mr. Rumsfeld's reply did not address this critical perception at all. Instead, he argued that South Koreans could fight in Iraq now "for the exact, same, reason that the American people sent their young men and women over to Korea 50 years ago." It requires no clairvoyance, though, to recognise how far removed from reality is his hard-sell about Washington's current desire to have companions in a dicey situation in Iraq.

The combative answer really calls into question the genuineness of his public position that it is the `sovereign' right of each country to weigh its own national interests before deciding "how it can best contribute to the global war on terror, whether in Afghanistan or Iraq." At no stage has he conceded the rights of Japan and South Korea to refrain altogether from sending troops to Iraq. Seoul already has a small but now-besieged `non-combat' contingent in Iraq for `reconstruction' purposes. Tokyo cannot despatch combat-ready troops, thanks to the injunctions of the Japanese Constitution, itself a legacy of U.S. occupation of post-empire Japan for some time after World War II.

While, ironically, the U.S. is now trying to replicate in Iraq what Douglas MacArthur had done in Japan after World War II, America's use of nuclear weapons to end that war is not forgotten in East Asia to this day. Sounding hollow indeed, against these memories, is Mr. Rumsfeld's latest comparison between the rationale of the old U.S.-South Korean alliance and the logic of his advocacy that Seoul participate in the military occupation of Iraq today. Mr. Bush's latest `imperial' project can be traced back to how it was partly shaped by the one-sided military alliances that the U.S. struck to its advantage in East Asia, on the basis of World War II and the 1950-53 Korean War.

The lack of popular enthusiasm in South Korea now, or in Japan, for a military role in U.S.-occupied Iraq is explained by the qualitative difference between the circumstances in which Washington fashioned its old East Asian alliances and the present situation in West Asia.

Scepticism over the current U.S. wish-list extends to Thailand and the Philippines, whom Mr. Bush recently designated as "non-NATO (North Atlantic Treaty Organisation) allies." Aware of the new strains of resistance in East Asia, Mr. Rumsfeld has outlined an alliance-modernisation plan. First, the `static' posture of the U.S. forces in East Asia would be made `agile' so that terrorism and other security challenges of the 21st century could be met. Second, while the U.S. forces in South Korea would be re-located in `hubs', Washington and Tokyo would discuss a cooperative role in "missile defence." In sketching out these technology-driven ideas, Mr. Rumsfeld has not addressed the wrong signals that the plans might send to China.

If the Japanese and South Korean defence leaders, Shigeru Ishiba and Cho Yong-kil, have not openly demurred, the reason has to do with their desire to influence Washington's current thinking on how to offer North Korea "security assurances" and wean it from its ongoing nuclear-weapons `programme'.

Michishita Narushige of the Japanese strategic affairs community had, in 2000 itself, outlined a scenario, relevant to the present situation, that "Japan and South Korea, in particular, would face the task of reassessing and possibly reconfiguring their alliance relationships with the United States" in the event the "North Korean threat" were to `disappear'.

A question, on the other side of the spectrum, is whether Mr. Bush and Mr. Rumsfeld could indulge in what William Appleman Williams had characterised over two decades ago as "the charming belief that the United States could reap the rewards of empire without paying the costs of empire and without admitting that it was an empire," at least in Washington's calculus.

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