Coinciding with the 70th anniversary of the U.S.-South Korea defense treaty in October 2023, two new books examine the value of the alliance for both countries—as well as the challenges they each face to manage and maintain it. While the books illuminate the aims and inner workings of the alliance in Seoul and Washington, they also provide timely and important insights into alliance politics more generally. Understanding the costs and benefits of security alliances to the United States and its partners is a topic of greater urgency than at any time since the start of the Cold War. Faced with the increasingly assertive behavior of a rising China, several Asian countries are looking to strengthen their security cooperation with the United States. In Europe, Washington’s NATO allies are leaning on U.S. support and leadership to handle Russia’s resurgence as a military power and willingness to use force. Yet, in contrast to the Cold War, continued U.S. willingness to uphold its long-standing alliances has become shrouded in uncertainty.
South Korea’s Grand Strategy: Making Its Own Destiny, Ramon Pacheco Pardo, Columbia University Press, 336 pp., $140, October 2023; The United States-South Korea Alliance: Why It May Fail and Why It Must Not, Scott A. Snyder, Columbia University Press, 336 pp., $140, December 2023
In South Korea’s Grand Strategy: Making Its Own Destiny, Ramon Pacheco Pardo posits that since the end of the Cold War, both liberal and conservative governments in Seoul have adhered to one grand strategy: autonomy for South Korea to decide its own destiny, with Seoul’s own power and its alliance with Washington the two main ways to attain it. Pacheco Pardo, a professor of international relations at King’s College London, concludes that a bright future awaits South Korea with this strategy. Scott A. Snyder, a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, paints a much more pessimistic picture. In The United States-South Korea Alliance: Why It May Fail and Why It Must Not, he argues that deepening political polarization and rising nationalism in both countries cast doubts on the viability of their alliance, to the potential detriment of U.S. national interests, South Korean security, and Northeast Asian stability.
Even as the two books focus on the U.S.-South Korea relationship, they address three major aspects of security alliances that are acutely relevant beyond any one particular pact.
The first issue is whether middle powers such as South Korea can pursue a grand strategy of their own—in particular, when they are dependent on a superpower to guarantee their security. The main aim of Pacheco Pardo’s volume is to use South Korea as a case to “develop a model of middle power grand strategy.” But if the book is an excellent contribution to the literature on South Korean strategic thinking, its broader argument that South Korea actually has a grand strategy is less convincing. The purpose and definition of grand strategy have been well developed in numerous books and are the subject of intense debate among academics and strategic thinkers. The definition by British historian Paul Kennedy captures the essence: “The crux of grand strategy lies … in policy, that is, in the capacity of the nation’s leaders to bring together all of the elements, both military and nonmilitary, for the preservation and enhancement of the nation’s long-term (that is, in wartime and peacetime) best interests.” In other words, grand strategy is laid out for the long term, and it brings together all of a nation’s resources to pursue a specific goal with clearly stated ways and means to get there. Pacheco Pardo does an excellent job highlighting that South Korea fulfills all these requirements. But in my view, this is not enough to define Seoul’s long-term national strategy as grand. There is a reason why Kennedy and others contend that grand strategy largely belongs to great powers: A state pursuing a grand strategy must have the power to define the end goal—and in large measure, shape and control the ways and means identified to reach it. Based on this requirement of a grand strategy, South Korea falls short.
There is much to admire about South Korea’s achievements. The country’s economic growth has lifted itself from poverty into the ranks of the G-20; it boasts the world’s ninth-largest armed forces in terms of annual defense spending; it has soft power with global reach; and it is a thriving democracy. South Korea has indeed become one of Asia’s key middle powers. But it is not in the position to carry out a grand strategy—for the simple reason that it is too dependent on other countries for its security. South Korea may be part of U.S. grand strategy, but Seoul is not in a position to place the United States in a grand strategy of its own. Moreover, South Korea cannot escape its geography, and if geography is destiny, the country was dealt a weak hand. Located between three traditional great powers—China, Japan, and Russia—and with a nuclear-armed North Korea on its border, South Korea finds itself in a more precarious position than most middle powers. In this neighborhood, South Korea’s growing influence in regional and global politics would not suffice to control international outcomes and pursue a grand strategy outside of the U.S. alliance.
A second major issue raised by both books is the enduring tension between South Korea’s quest for autonomy and its need for an alliance. Pacheco Pardo and Snyder have different views on what this potential clash of interests entails for the alliance. Pacheco Pardo acknowledges that there is a prominent debate in South Korea about how the alliance curtails the country’s autonomy, in particular on how to deal with North Korea, but he still finds a relatively strong political agreement across liberal and conservative South Korean governments that, on balance, the alliance is beneficial. Pacheco Pardo contends that “South Korean administrations generally see the United States as an enabler of their country’s autonomy.”
Snyder, in contrast, notes that left-leaning administrations in Seoul are distinctly more fearful of entrapment in U.S. interests and priorities, with the result that they push harder for South Korean autonomy than conservative governments. Snyder’s main concern is the simultaneous emergence of more nationalist leaderships in both the United States and South Korea and that such a constellation might weaken and degrade the alliance, perhaps even causing it to disband altogether. He argues that the alliance became vulnerable during the almost concurrent administrations of U.S. President Donald Trump and his South Korean counterpart Moon Jae-in, and Snyder worries about the outcome of a similar political constellation in the future.
Of course, the tension between autonomy and alliance commitments is not unique to South Korea; it is a normal feature of most alliances. The persistent tension between France and the United States during the Cold War is perhaps the most prominent example, and even today, France pushes for stronger strategic autonomy. Another example is U.S. allies’ reluctance to support some of Washington’s policies in the early 2000s, including the 2003 invasion of Iraq, which actually sparked an academic debate about soft balancing as a new way for middle powers to relate to a superpower. Even though the case for an alliance usually builds on a common threat perception shaped by geography and balance of power, that does not preclude each state from having distinct geopolitical interests and national characteristics. Some room for maneuver to pursue national interests within an alliance might actually enhance its endurance, and in the case of South Korea, managing its relationships with North Korea and China requires a certain local touch.
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The third issue illustrated by the U.S.-South Korea relationship is that the U.S. network of alliances in Asia and Europe is not a one-way street, where the United States provides security to wealthy free-riders. On the contrary, alliances perform a range of geopolitical, military, and economic functions that benefit U.S. interests. U.S. power projection and its forward position in Europe and Asia would not be possible without the willing cooperation of alliance partners. Snyder does a fine job showing how the degradation of the U.S.-South Korea alliance would undermine U.S. interests in the region.
More specifically, Snyder identifies four consequences of a U.S. military withdrawal from the Korean Peninsula. First, it may increase the likelihood of inter-Korean conflict and reduce the ability of the United States to shape the outcome of such a conflict. Furthermore, it would have a direct impact on Japan’s security, with the Korean Peninsula becoming the primary vector for possible attacks on the Japanese mainland. Third, China would view U.S. withdrawal from South Korea as an indication of weakened U.S. commitment to Asia, a perception that may embolden China to undertake a military operation against Taiwan. Finally, Snyder argues that the loss of the foothold on the Asian mainland provided by South Korea could set in motion a broader U.S. retrenchment from East Asia, enhancing Chinese influence at the expense of U.S. interests not only in East Asia but also in the wider Indo-Pacific region. I fully concur with Snyder’s assessment on all four accounts.
Looking ahead, two main developments will shape the U.S.-South Korea alliance. The first is structural, in the form of the U.S.-China bipolar power structure. In his volume, Pacheco Pardo states that South Korea now has more autonomy and ability to create its own destiny than ever before. However, he bases his study entirely on South Korea’s development in the post-Cold War period, when the United States was the sole superpower—whereas now, we are in the early phase of a new bipolar power structure. In contrast to unipolar power structures, bipolar structures largely compel secondary states to choose sides, limiting their autonomy. There is less room for hedging in a bipolar world. Washington’s diplomatic push to limit the Chinese telecommunication giant Huawei’s access to U.S. alliance partners and beyond is one example of this dynamic. Seoul already experienced the effect of the U.S.-China bipolar rivalry in 2017, when China imposed economic sanctions on South Korea following the U.S. placement of the THAAD air defense system there.
The other development to watch in both countries is domestic politics, in particular the uncertainty that another Trump administration would cause with regard to the U.S. alliance commitment. In a U.S.-China bipolar structure, one would expect the U.S.-South Korea alliance to strengthen. Still, Snyder indicates that the forces of domestic politics and narrow definitions of national interest in both Washington and Seoul could pit the United States and South Korea against each other, even when a growing bipolar confrontation compels them to work together.
Thus, South Korea faces a dilemma where the forces of bipolarity reduce its autonomy within the alliance, while the uncertainty about Washington’s commitment to the alliance increases Seoul’s need to hedge. This is exactly the kind of policy response that could cause the alliance to degenerate, no matter its usefulness to both sides.
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