By Van Jackson
Washington needs to reorient how it thinks about ties between its two key allies.
The bilateral relationship between Japan and South Korea is notoriously bad. In theory, they check all the boxes that political science and sociology tell us should predict a close friendship — consolidated democracies, complementary economies, a common love of both sushi and K-pop, and of course a shared great power ally. Yet only a few years ago they experienced a quasi-military crisis over a disputed island, the political leadership of each country has an icy relationship with the other, and they have proven incapable of engaging in meaningful bilateral cooperation.
But recent history suggests that poor bilateral relations and productive cooperation can go hand in hand under the right circumstances. For the United States, long wishing to convince Japan and South Korea to work together without arm-twisting, bribery, or mediation, the challenge is knowing when and how to intervene. The United States can be a bridge that helps connect Japan and South Korea, but it’ll require re-orienting how Washington views their relationship.
The oft-cited reasons for strained relations — comfort women, disputed islands, Japan’s insincere apologies, paying ancestral homage at a shrine that includes war criminals — are all distractions, just as news coverage is a distraction from actually understanding world events. Domestic politics is partly, not entirely, to blame; chalking up poor relations solely to domestic politics is a wholly unsatisfying intellectual blow-off. Why would domestic politics in either Japan or South Korea encourage antagonism against one another, but not against other regional neighbors, especially given Japan’s history of aggression against far more than just South Korea? However necessary it may be, clearly domestic politics is an insufficient explanation; there is some other variable or set of variables floating in the background that would be more useful to understanding why relations are, and are likely to remain, poor.
Read the full story at The Diplomat