Growing Challenges Ahead for ROK-US Relations
President-elect Joe Biden once quoted in his memoir Immanuel Kant who had enumerated the conditions for happiness: something to do; someone to love; and something to hope for. For the past four years, many American people have lost their jobs; hated each other as they belonged to the different political turf; and were deprived of the future they could hope for. President Donald Trump’s “America-first” policy appeared to be working in his early tenure, but the outbreak of COVID-19 and his clumsy handling of the pandemic has disturbed the happiness of more than half of the American constituents.
Joe Biden promised to integrate the highly polarized U.S. society and make the U.S. respected by the international community again. In this vein, he has been tasked with a historic mission to create the conditions for happiness of the American people and lead the international order toward the right direction. Joe Biden can be called a “liberal internationalist.” His campaign platform includes the rebuilding of the international order upholding multilateral cooperation, free trade, and democratic values. Donald Trump, who has relied on bilateralism, trade protectionism, and populism for the past four years, can be categorized as an illiberal nationalist and has been denying the core elements of liberal internationalism.
As one of the largest beneficiaries of liberal international order, South Korea has little reason to oppose Joe Biden’s foreign policy principles. But Biden is the leader of the United States who is supposed to maximize US national interests. Allies do not allies coincide with each other on their national interests. In this sense, US allies such as South Korea and Japan should prepare for the future relations with the United States while figuring out foreign policy directions of the upcoming Biden Administration.
From Containment to Transformation
Joe Biden had contributed an article entitled as “Why America Must Lead Again: Rescuing U.S. Foreign Policy After Trump,” to Foreign Affairs and argued he would build a united front of U.S. allies and partners to confront China’s abusive behaviors and human rights violations, even as the United States seeks to cooperate with China on such issues as climate change, non-proliferation, and global health security. He also emphasized the need to fortify the collective capabilities with U.S. democratic friends beyond North America and Europe by reinvesting in treaty alliances with Australia, Japan, and South Korea and deepening partnerships from India to Indonesia to advance shared values in the region.
His key words include changing the behavior of China and united front with allies. Trump’s strategy toward China is the strategy of containment that is aiming at deterring Chinese military expansion and decoupling China from the global supply chain, which is less likely to be feasible and successful. On the other, Biden appears to be pursuing the strategy of transformation is focused on changing the behavior of China while maintaining “competitive coexistence” with China. The United States will certainly need a united front with allies and partners for military deterrence against China. The Biden Administration would not try to decouple China from global value chain as far as it is related to the normal trade and investment except ICT (Information and Communication Technologies).
ICT Warfare with China
However, high-tech is different since it involves not just economic but also political and military dimensions, which thus requires a different approach. Center for New American Security (CNAS), a security affairs think tank in Washington, recently published an interesting policy report, entitled “Digital Entanglement.” In the hands of liberal democracies, according to the CNAS report, controlling the communication infrastructure means preserving free and open societies and safeguarding democratic norms and values. For authoritarians, it is a pathway to solidify their rule through oppression and marginalization, to expand influence abroad, and to subvert the rules-based order. In this vein, the Biden Administration is expected to focus on how to prevent U.S. allies and partners from being involved in digital entanglement with China. Beijing is making utmost effort to export Chinese fifth-generation wireless (5G) infrastructure in Latin America, Africa, and central and eastern Europe. The Biden Administration will be leading the voice with a view to blunting that expansion under the circumstances that Australia, Japan, and UK have taken decisive action to exclude Huawei (the Chinese multinational technology company that designs, develops, sells telecommunication equipment and consumer electronics).
The South Korean experience is an illustrative case study of digital entanglement with China since it has not made the decision to exclude Huawei yet. The Biden Administration most of all will try to cultivate cost-effective, readily available 5G equipment providers to compete with Huawei and invest in diplomatic and security arrangements that mitigate South Korea and other allies and partners’ vulnerability to Chinese coercion. Along this line of thinking and strategy, the Biden Administration could propose an ICT alliance with South Korea with an emphasis on the next-generation semiconductor, AI, and quantum computing that influence the future of ICT warfare between U.S. and China.
Growing Challenge for ROK-US Alliance
It would be a gigantic challenge for South Korea since President-elect Joe Biden is talking about a united front of allies in coping with Chinese threats. ROK government officials tend to believe that ROK-US alliance is a military alliance solely confined to the Korean peninsula. If the alliance has to take an additional burden of deterring China militarily, South Korea is unlikely to take it. Joe Biden had made a commitment to host the Global Summit for Democracy in the first year of his tenure, which means he will lead a “value war” against China. If South Korea shows a lukewarm attitude in participating in the summit, she could be regarded by the U.S. as having joined the Chinese camp.
In this light, the raison d’etre of the ROK-US alliance would be put on the table, where a fundamental question will be raised as to whether and how those two allies could share the strategic burden in coping with the North Korean and Chinese threats. This means that a much more complicated issue could come while the SMA (Special Measures Agreement, or burden-sharing) issue will be expeditiously resolved. The 2020 Democratic Party platform of the U.S. has accused Trump of trying to extort South Korea in defense cost talks during a nuclear crisis on the Korean Peninsula, and also noted that the U.S. alliance system is facing the biggest test since the end of the Cold War.
From Top-down to Bottom-up for North Korean Denuclearization
The Biden Administration is likely to take a “bottom-up” approach unlike the Trump Administration that took a “top-down” approach vis-a-via North Korea. One of the serious disadvantages of the top-down approach is that it is extremely hard to find a solution when the summit talk does not lead to an agreement. Flanked by top foreign and security experts, Joe Biden will return to the traditional approach through which working-level officials including special envoys will explore the point of convergence between US and North Korea. The next president of the United States will thus consider a summit meeting with North Korea only when it can lead to the final solution of the North Korean nuclear problem.
Biden’s advisory group of foreign affairs did not disclose specific alternatives for the policy on the North Korean nuclear problem, but it seems there are two schools of thought within the camp: school of arms control and disarmament and school of denuclearization. The former prioritizes a nuclear freeze and moves toward a phased reduction of nuclear arsenal in return for appropriate compensations to reach the final stage of denuclearization. The latter supports a nuclear freeze, but they have reservation about the nuclear draw-down without an agreed roadmap for denuclearization. They prioritize the roadmap since it will prevent North Korea from relying on salami tactics that could be used to trade sanctions relief for limited denuclearization. How to resolve the nuanced difference between those two schools depends on who will be appointed as State Secretary and/or National Security Adviser by President Joe Biden.
Joe Biden said at the second TV debate with Donald Trump that he would meet with Kim Jong-un on the condition that Kim would agree that he would be drawing down his nuclear capacity. This statement is premised upon the denuclearization of North Korea, neither recognizing North Korea as a nuclear weapon state nor accepting a limited denuclearization of North Korea. A summit would not happen in this sense unless North Korea agrees on the roadmap of denuclearization. A bigger problem is that North Korea has not changed its negotiating position since Hanoi, which means that North Korea would try again to trade limited denuclearization for the lifting of five key sanctions resolutions of the UNSC.
In this vein, North Korea is likely to come back to its old playbook. Kim Jong-un would have no other options but to discipline the new US administration with its strategic provocations such as nuclear or missile tests. Only when the benefits of non-provocation should be higher than those of provocation, would North Korea try to shy away from the old playbook. But it would not happen since the upcoming Biden Administration is not ready to accept North Korea’s unchanged position. North Korea’s strategic provocations will make us repeat what we have been doing for the last 30 years. Then it remains to be seen if North Korea will be able to endure further economic sanctions by the UN Security Council.