The New Face of Northeast Asia

Kent E. Calder

From Foreign Affairs, January/February 2001

Article preview: first 500 of 5,566 words total.

Summary:  After more than 50 years of dominating Northeast Asian diplomacy, Washington must now accommodate the fallout from the historic rapprochement between North and South Korea. As regional leaders take the reins of diplomacy, they face an uncertain future and lack the institutions that could guide the transition. The next U.S. administration can help, but not until it rethinks its own regional policies.

Kent E. Calder recently served as Special Adviser to two U.S. ambassadors to Japan. He is Director of the Program on U.S.-Japan Relations at Princeton University.

RUMBLINGS IN THE EAST

Northeast Asia, specialists have long argued, is among the most dangerous places on earth. Only there are the world's three principal nuclear powers (the United States, Russia, and China) and the two largest economic powers (the United States and Japan) still politically and geographically engaged -- their interests entwined in a volatile arc surrounding Japan. It was in that region that three years of bitter Korean conflict half a century ago shaped the Cold War for two generations. As other global hot spots moved fitfully toward peace, Korea remained locked in conflict. To this day, Northeast Asia lacks a regional security framework analogous to NATO or the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE), and there is still no peace treaty on the Korean Peninsula, where more than a million troops from opposing sides remain deployed within miles of each other.

Yet when Kim Dae Jung of South Korea and Kim Jong Il of the North met on the tarmac at Pyongyang last June 13, the region's past and present tensions seemed to be giving way to the promise of future cooperation. The remarkably positive chemistry of the initial meetings produced tangible results. Within little more than two months, North and South Korea had agreed to rebuild roads and railways across the demilitarized zone (DMZ), resolved to re-establish a liaison office in Panmunjom (a village in the DMZ used as a neutral setting for international discussions), and completed an emotional series of visits between family members who had been separated for nearly 50 years. Soon afterward, their athletes marched under a common flag at the Sydney Olympics.

These initiatives marked a significant shift in regional diplomacy. For the first time since World War II, Seoul and Pyongyang -- rather than Washington, Moscow, or Beijing -- were driving events. The two Koreas sensed that they were on center stage and relished their new place in the sun.

A glance at the map, and its geopolitical implications, suggests the power of the forces being unleashed by the Korean rapprochement. Korea is the strategic pivot of its region. With a hostile, communist North Korea lying between it and the rest of the Asian continent, South Korea has long been a geostrategic island. Yet peninsular cooperation could transform North Korea from a barrier into a bridge -- to Russia, China, and the world beyond. A lack of domestic energy resources, coupled with rapidly rising demand for energy, gives North and South Korea a shared economic motive to develop common railways and pipelines northward to exploit Siberian gas and trans-Siberian shipment opportunities. In 1999, South Korea's primary energy consumption rose more rapidly than any other nation's, driven by heavily increased demand for natural gas. The country is eager to reduce its already heavy energy dependence on the Middle East by diversifying toward new suppliers, such as gas-rich Siberia. As North Korea's economy strengthens, its demand for Russian energy could also rise sharply.

The Cold War created a static, stable, ...

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