‘We have no oil but lots of Christians’

The Chosun Ilbo’s Kim Dae Joong* on why South Korea can’t afford to piss off the United States.

Our country has few resources. We rely 100 percent on foreign countries for our energy, and because we do, we should choose a side that has the resources. We cannot say we belong fully to the Christian world, but we definitely do not belong to Islam. That means we cannot afford to be on bad terms with the Christian world. Bluntly speaking, we have no oil but lots of Christians. Since we cannot hide under the wing of neutral “third” countries, we must show the wisdom, through a carefully calculated foreign policy, to avoid becoming embroiled in a whirlpool of war.

Although I think his statement that the entire world is “rushing toward a decisive encounter between the Christian and Islamic worlds” is an oversimplification (and it’s rather sad that the ‘Christian world’ is winning out because Korea lacks oil), he makes several good points in favor of a more balanced perspective on U.S. involvement in the country.

Strategic anti-Americanism benefits us no more than sentimental or ideological anti-Americanism. Blind pro-Americanism as a hangover from the Cold War is just as useless. We must adopt a fundamental strategy of taking the real benefits where we need the U.S. even at the cost of concessions, and of coldly cutting it off where it is in our interest to do so.

Those who advocate the withdrawal of U.S. troops from South Korea insist that the American presence here keeps up the pressure and thus the risk of war. If that were the case, the Korean Peninsula would have been reduced to rubble in the days when the troops exercised much greater influence here. Already U.S. troops are in the process of pulling out of South Korea. What terrible unresolved grudges these people must entertain, to throw stones at the U.S. forces’ retreating backs.

For South Korea, the U.S. is no longer the be-all and end-all: it is a means to survival. It is useful. There is no point in getting worked up as though we would perish immediately without the U.S. It is equally nonsensical to curse the U.S. as if it was responsible for an imminent Armageddon. The U.S. is no longer a requirement but an option: we should choose wisely.

The column was responding to criticism of the Korean government’s plans to negotiate a free-trade agreement with the United States. One former government official likened the deal to a move to make South Korea an American puppet and even “the 51st state.”

It reminded me of this post at The Marmot’s Hole that started a debate over essentially which “superpower” Korea needed to curry favor with. Should it gamble on a new world order led by China, possibly risking the security of it’s democracy? Or should it continue to be closely aligned with the United States, despite that creating regional tension and the perception that South Korea is virtually a U.S. protectorate.

I have a better idea now of the tenuous nature of the political situation here and what it must be like to live in a country that has good reason to worry about the bad intentions of its neighbors (and interested parties across the globe).

*A note to those of you reading in the U.S.: This Kim Dae-Joong is a popular newspaper columnist, not the former president of South Korea, Kim Dae Jung, who has a very similar-sounding name.