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| Image: Flickr User - Republic of Korea |
By Daniel A. Pinkston
As long as South Korea is embedded in America’s great power vision, certain issues will remain.
In our previous piece, we noted the issue of moral hazard that creates the possibility of a weaker alliance partner exploiting the stronger partner. In the case of the U.S. alliance with South Korea, Washington’s status as a global power gives it certain bargaining advantages with Seoul, but at the same time the bilateral relationship’s importance to Washington’s larger geo-strategic interests, particularly in the context of the rebalance to Asia, creates moral hazard that gives Seoul greater leverage in other areas. Put simply, the U.S. presence and ironclad security commitment allows South Korean to slack on defense because it knows the U.S. will ultimately bear the burden, due to its own strategic considerations and concerns over the safety of United States Forces Korea (USFK) forces.
From another angle, South Korea could be described as relatively dependent upon its superpower patron, and leveraging this dependence to its own advantage. From Seoul’s perspective, this behavior is rational and provides concrete material benefits, and helps the ROK avoid costs that it might incur if it were compelled to implement alternative policies in the political, diplomatic, fiscal, and budgetary realms. Additionally, moral hazard problems are related to fears of abandonment and entrapment, and potentially are linked to problems surrounding escalation and crisis management.
As John Power noted in a recent piece, the more extreme critics of moral hazard and alliance exploitation, such as Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump, accuse the ROK of free-riding on U.S. protection without paying for it. Others, such as Doug Bandow, offer a far more informed and nuanced analysis of the alliance, yet still suggest the U.S. should remove its troops from South Korean soil and end “military welfare” for the ROK. Robert Kelly believes that U.S. alliances with Japan and the ROK are disincentives for Seoul and Tokyo to reconcile and improve bilateral security cooperation. Some analysts push Kelly’s reasoning to argue that Japan and the ROK would quickly become close allies to balance against China and the DPRK if the U.S. were to withdraw from East Asia.
We disagree both with Trump’s factually baseless rhetoric and Bandow’s overall conclusions. Although we are sympathetic with Kelly’s views, we believe domestic politics in South Korea would push Seoul to choose internal balancing through increased defense spending, or even to acquire its own nuclear deterrent, before reaching out to Tokyo to replace a terminated alliance with the U.S. While we support South Korea’s efforts to take on an increasingly independent role for its own national defense, we are skeptical regarding proposals for a sudden or fundamental change to such a long-standing and relatively successful security architecture. With this in mind, we hope a critical analysis of the role that moral hazard plays in the alliance, can provide insight for alliance management and the maintenance of peace and stability in Northeast Asia.
Read the full story at The Diplomat