hankyoreh

U.S. special representative for North Korea Policy

Experts say rise of a new three-nation superpower politics in Northeast Asia could be on the horizon and that the new trilateral strategic dialogue could leave S. Korea out in the cold

Changes in the tripartite relationship of the U.S., China and Japan have been leading to transformations in the geopolitical situation in Northeast Asia. The U.S. and China have undergone rapid changes in their international standing, which in turn has generated a domino effect weakening the U.S.-Japan alliance and strengthening China-Japan cooperation. The waning influence of the U.S. is producing new realignments among the three countries. To borrow the words of geopolitical scholar Zbigniew Brzezinski, there is movement on the “grand chessboard” of Northeast Asia.

Following the global financial crisis that struck late last year and the advent of the Barack Obama presidency, the U.S. has been strengthening its cooperative relationship with China. The Obama administration has abandoned the containment policy with China and openly professed a policy of engagement. At a speech in China on Nov. 20, U.S. Ambassador to China Jon Huntsman cited remarks by President Obama at a White House meeting and said that the U.S. and China are the “only two countries in the world that together can solve certain issues, whether they are clean energy, climate change, regional security, or those dealing with the global economy.”

The Obama administration’s change to the policy line on China has some connection with the fact that China holds some 800 billion dollars in U.S. treasury bonds. In other words, it is holding the U.S.’s purse strings. Moreover, it is beyond the capacities of a declining U.S. to resolve issues such as the global financial crisis, climate change, the Afghanistan quagmire and the Iranian and North Korean nuclear issues alone.

The summit meeting between Obama and Chinese President Hu Jintao last month gave a true sense of the change in the two countries’ standing. During the summit, the U.S. recognized Tibet and Taiwan as Chinese territories. A South Korean government official said Sunday, “The U.S. did bring up human rights issues in China, but there was no trace of the aggressive U.S. of the Bush administration.”

Experts are predicting that the “positive, cooperative and comprehensive” relationship professed by the U.S. and China in their joint statement will inevitably give rise to a chain reaction in neighboring countries. Park Myung-lim, professor at Yonsei University, said, “The U.S. government’s policy to date has operated within a framework in which any cooperation with China would have the U.S. at the top and the U.S.-Japan alliance as a fundamental pillar.”

Park added, “That framework, however, could be shaken with structural changes between the U.S. and China.”

Indeed, the Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ) administration has been moving quickly into an independent style of diplomacy out of the determination that the country cannot ensure its own security and interests merely through the existing strategy of its alliance with the U.S. As a result, that alliance, which had seemed ironclad since the 1990s, has encountered friction with the issue of the relocation of the Futenma U.S. Marine Corps Air Station and entered a stage of restructuring.

Japan has been building a bridge of close cooperation with China, which for the past century has complained of issues including invasions. A symbolic moment for China-Japan relations is to come about on Thursday, when Ozawa Ichiro, secretary general of the ruling DPJ, travels to China accompanied by a large delegation of some 600 individuals, including 140 Diet members. A foreign affairs expert said, “He is taking all of Japan with him.” Following a Japan visit by Chinese Defense Minister Liang Guanglie on Nov. 27, the two countries, which had been engaged in a heated race to build up naval power, agreed on nine plans for military cooperation, including the implementation of joint marine military training.

Observers are having trouble predicting how all of this unification and separation will play out in the future. However, if the U.S. and China can avoid provoking one another and make an attempt to draw Japan in, the rise of three-nation superpower politics in Northeast Asia cannot be ruled out as a possibility. A report drafted last year under the leadership of U.S. Deputy Secretary of State James Steinberg and Assistant Secretary of State for East Asian and Pacific Affairs Kurt Campbell proposed the establishment of a high-level U.S.-China-Japan cooperative body in order to join the existing U.S. alliance with Japan to its relationship with a rising China. The three countries have already initiated trilateral strategic dialogue, and the mood in the South Korean government is one of accepting this as a “fait accompli.”

History has numerous examples of cooperation, betrayal, conspiracies and intrigues that occurred among major nations as powers shifted. According to a document declassified in 2006, while the Vietnam War was in full swing in 1972, the U.S. communicated to China that in order to isolate its main enemy at the time, the Soviet Union, it could pull its forces out of Vietnam if it could live with a Communist government in China. In 1905, when the Katsura-Taft Agreement in which Japan recognized U.S. rule in the Philippines was signed, the U.S. said it would not intervene in Japan’s colonization of the Korean Peninsula. What should South Korea be doing now?

Please direct questions or comments to [englishhani@hani.co.kr]