The NSA – Great Power Politics and the Korean Security Dilemma during and after the Cold War

Trilateralism and Beyond: Great Power Politics and the Korean Security Dilemma during and after the Cold War

Edited by Robert A. Wampler

Kent State University Press

July 6, 2012

The National Security Archive is pleased to announce the publication of a new study that sheds light on the history of a critical Cold War flashpoint.

“A groundbreaking book on a vital and timely topic, one that gives a valuable historical perspective on the recurrent crisis on the Korean peninsula.” – Charles K. Armstrong, Director, Center for Korean Research, Columbia University

President George H.W. Bush and President Roh Tae Woo of South Korea shake hands across the table during an expanded bilateral meeting in the Jiphyon Room of the Blue House, Seoul, Korea, January 6, 1992. This meeting took place against the backdrop of encouraging advances on the Korean Peninsula, marked by a more cooperative stance by Pyongyang on relations with South Korea and on opening up its nuclear facilities to International Atomic Energy Agency inspection. (Courtesy George Bush Presidential Library and Museum)

The fall of the Berlin Wall more than two decades ago brought an end to the Cold War for most of the world. But the legacy of that era remains unresolved on the divided Korean peninsula, which still presents a clear danger for the United States and its allies. Two triangular alliances-one comprised of the United States, South Korea, and Japan, and the other of Russia, China, and North Korea-lie at the heart of the security challenge and all efforts to pursue a final peace treaty.

Trilateralism and Beyond brings together a collection of essays by leading American, South Korean, and Japanese scholars that probe the historical dynamics formed and driven by the Korean security dilemma. Drawing on newly declassified documents secured by the National Security Archive’s Korea Project, along with new archival resources in China and former Warsaw Pact countries, the contributors examine the critical relationships between the two triangular security relationships that pivot on the Korean peninsula. As Editor Robert A. Wampler says in his introduction:

“Taken together, these chapters provide a multifaceted analysis of the complex historical dynamics at the heart of the Korean security dilemma. The picture they draw is of broadening circles of relationships, starting at the central U.S.-South Korea security relationship and widening out to include Japan, then China and Russia and the perpetually enigmatic and maddening North Korea, whose actions have added several layers of complexity to Churchill’s famous description of Russia as “a riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma.” With their multiple perspectives on the common history of Korean peninsula diplomacy, the chapters provide what can be seen as a series of overlay maps that, when placed together, illuminate the linkages, goals, and assumptions regarding the two Koreas driving policy in the United States, South Korea, Japan, China, and Russia. While there can be no real map to the future, a better understanding of the route by which the Korean security dilemma has reached its current state and an appreciation of the lessons to be learned from this history would seem critical, if not essential, for addressing this challenge in the years to come.”

Dr Wampler will host a panel discussion on the book with several of the contributors at the Woodrow Wilson Center International Center for Scholars (see information in “Event” tab).

Below is the Preface to Trilateralism and Beyond by Professor Akira Iriye of Harvard University. A selection of declassified documents that illustrate a number of the themes addressed by the authors in this book can be found at the “Documents” tab.

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Foreword by Akira Iriye

[Copyright 2012 The National Security Archive Fund, Inc.]

President Clinton and President Kim Dae Jung, the White House, July 2, 1999. Kim, who owed his life to U.S. intervention with the South Korean government on two occasions, pursued his ‘Sunshine Policy’ of expanded engagement with North Korea while the U.S. sought to build on the 1994 Framework Agreement to end Pyongyang’s nuclear weapons program, linking the promise of diplomatic and trade relations to North Korea’s commitment to accelerate the dismantling of its nuclear program and to halt its missile program. (Courtesy William J. Clinton Presidential Library)

The National Security Archive has been a pioneer among scholarly communities in its persistent and successful efforts to gain access to governmental documents and its sponsorship of international research projects in which declassified material forms the basis of historical inquiry. The present volume is a product of such a project, this time focusing on U.S. relations with the two Koreas. The Archive’s Korea Project brought together some of the world’s leading specialists, and their papers have been revised for publication. It is easy to see from the six essays included in this volume how important it is to have access to as much public record-of all countries-as possible and also why a historical perspective is a prerequisite to understanding contemporary issues.

The essays examine how the two Koreas, Japan, the United States, the People’s Republic of China (PRC), and the Soviet Union (Russia) dealt with one another in the last decades of the twentieth century and at the beginning of the twenty-first. Of these six countries, North Korea is perhaps unique in that, as Sergey Radchenko notes in his essay, its “policies, grievances, and demands . . . change very little” from decade to decade. This in sharp contrast to the other five countries where constant change would seem to have been their main characteristic, as clearly documented in the essays. What is equally important is that the world itself was significantly transformed in the last three decades of the twentieth century so that the old-fashioned game of geopolitics-the story of “the rise and fall of the great powers”-became less and less relevant. Instead, regional communities, transnational movements, and global networks of goods, capital, labor, and ideas came to provide the context in which nations sought to define, protect, and promote their interests. All countries with strong interests in, or concerns about, North Korea were aware of such changes, while the latter alone seemed to hold to its old ways. While most of the contributions in this volume focus on the security question, in particular the implications of North Korean’s nuclear armament for regional stability, they also touch on many other issues that always complicated the formulation of an appropriate response to that challenge.

In the first chapter, William Stueck traces the development of U.S. policy in the Korean peninsula in the framework of a six-party relationship, including Japan, China, and the Soviet Union. It is a complex story, but the author’s research finds that while most administrations in Washington have been eager to reduce U.S. commitments in Korea, this has proved very difficult because of North Korean’s unwillingness to cooperate. Although examined in the framework of regional security affairs, Stueck also mentions that from around 1989 the United States began to emphasize “the promotion of human rights and democratic values” among its objectives in the Pacific. This is not surprising in view of what appeared to be global democratization at that time, including the Chinese demonstrations at Tiananmen Square; but we can put it in an even larger framework, that of the growing importance of transnational, as against international, issues in the world at the end of the twentieth century, issues such as human rights, refugees, and global warming.

In that context, Seung-young Kim’s chapter on human rights makes a superb addition to the literature, showing that the promotion of democracy became a fundamental aspect of U.S. relations with South Korea during the 1970s and beyond. Particularly revealing is Kim’s discussion of the protest movement in South Korea against President Chun Doo-hwan that persisted throughout the 1980s, in which U.S. officials kept in close touch not only with the Korean military as well as opposition leaders but also with Chinese leaders. There were clearly global political developments in which all these countries became enveloped.

While the third essay in this book, Yasuyo Sakata’s study of the U.S.-Japan-South Korea security cooperation, focuses on geopolitical issues, it also touches on such topics as international aid to North Korea during its periods of food shortage and the alleged abduction of Japanese by North Korean agents, a human rights violation. Perhaps “human security,” the term that the United Nations Development Program (UNDP) began to use in the 1970s, might best describe the trilateral relationship. The next chapter, by Michael Chinworth, Narushige Michshita, and Taeyoung Yoon, brings the story of the sexangular relationship to the present and offers measured optimism about the possibility of renewed cooperation among South Korea, Japan, and the United States. Even so, the authors stress that “communication . . . remains a problem” among Seoul, Tokyo, and Washington.

The final two chapters expand the focus to examine Chinese and Russian diplomacy on the peninsula. Gregg Brazinsky examines China’s approach to North Korea, which, the author shows, became inseparable from the PRC’s overall relationship with the United States. The leadership in Beijing was determined to pursue its policy of modernization and globalization, which any crisis in the Korean peninsula would be sure to frustrate. In South Korea, too, China wanted to encourage political stability and “the country’s evolution toward democracy.” It may seem strange that a dictatorial regime in Beijing should encourage democratic government in South Korea, but it all fits into the theme of economic connections with the outside world. Here again, one sees the intrusion of larger forces on more traditional geopolitical strategies.

Given PRC’s growing involvement with South Korea, Pyongyang’s leaders not surprisingly turned to Moscow for assistance, a story that is presented in Radchenko’s chapter. He notes how isolated politically and intellectually North Korean leaders appeared to be when they visited the Soviet Union during the 1960s and the 1970s. They seemed to follow where their dogmatic ideology took them, and it was up to Soviet and Eastern European officials to disabuse them of some of their excessive ideas. They did succeed to some extent, but, as the essay suggests, the two countries’ paths diverged further in the aftermath of the collapse of the Soviet Union.

Communication is a critical component of diplomatic efforts to address the security dilemmas on the Korean peninsula. If security were susceptible to “realistic” solutions, lack of communication would not matter. But in today’s interconnected world, mutual understanding is more than ever crucial, and one cannot enhance understanding by merely focusing on national security. We have to think in terms of the hundreds of thousands of Koreans, Japanese, Americans, Chinese, Russians, and many others who come into daily contact with one another all over the globe. It is ultimately they who must build the world of tomorrow.