Charles Kupchan, a professor of international affairs at Georgetown University in Washington, offered his views in a recent interview with The Korea Herald on a range of issues including the U.S. policy of rebalancing toward Asia, President Park Geun-hye’s “trustpolitik,” the relations between the U.S. and China, Northeast Asian security and the rise of nationalism in Japan. The renowned scholar is a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations and the author of “No One’s World: The West, the Rising, and the Coming Global Turn” (2012). Following are excerpts from the interview. ― Ed.


Korea Herald: What is your assessment of the Obama administration’s pivot to Asia with regard to China and Northeast Asia dynamics?

Charles Kupchan: The rebalancing is a policy that was waiting to happen. It started well before Obama and it will continue long after Obama. It was delayed by 9/11 because with the end of the Cold War, the natural focus of an American grand strategy would shift from Europe to Asia. And that’s because big strategic issues of the day were resolved in Europe by the collapse of the Soviet Union. But they remain in this part of the world. What happened was that 9/11 came along and interrupted that shift. And it meant the United States had spent 10 years or so now more focused almost exclusively on the Middle East.

You might even say that this presidency, Obama’s second term, represents the first real American presidency of the 21st century, because Bush I, Bush II and Obama I were all about terrorism, Iraq, Afghanistan and the Arab awakening. Obama’s now trying to say we have to spend more time thinking about the rest of the world.

I think that the rebalancing strategy has been poorly presented. It has been portrayed in the press largely as a balancing strategy against China, as a containment strategy. That has made China uncomfortable.

And I think you’re right to say in some ways it complicates the diplomacy of South Korea because it forces you to make choices but you would rather not have to make (them) in an explicit way.

But I also think that China has played its hand poorly. For the last couple of decades, I think China has exhibited a great strategic tact. They have enjoyed remarkable growth, historically unprecedented economic gains, and have put some of that growth into their military sector. But they were sufficiently restrained in foreign policy that they didn’t scare their neighbors.

But over the last couple of years, Chinese foreign policy has become clumsier and more shaped by domestic nationalism. So I think that Beijing has, to some extent, made the pivot a self-fulfilling prophecy because they have made neighbors uneasy. The neighbors have responded by picking up the phone and calling Washington, saying, “You know, we’re not sleeping so well at night. We would like to get a little closer to you.”

So I think that has led to an unhealthy dynamic of growing tension between the United States and China, and a dynamic which, if left unchanged, will create a zero-sum view of the strategic game in Northeast Asia.

I hope that over the next year or so the momentum gets pushed to the other direction. That requires Washington to get away from this focus on the military dimension and to put new attention on commercial, cultural, political engagement. And I think it requires China to exercise greater restraint and to make clear that in dealing with territorial disputes it will rely on diplomacy, negotiations and procedures that are consistent with international norms. 

KH: President Park Geun-hye’s trustpolitik and the “Seoul Process” were modeled on Europe’s Helsinki process. What can Korea learn from the European experience?

CK: It makes sense to me. I think one qualification I will offer is trust is key. That’s what it’s all about. But it comes toward the end of the process, not at the beginning. What comes at the beginning is what is called confidence-building measures ― reciprocal gestures that indicate benign intent so that the two sides make concessions.

They try to say, “We do not mean you harm, our goal is not to topple you.” And then you put South Korean and North Korean workers back in Gaeseong. And you do three, four, five, six kinds of discreet steps over the course of several years. And then the output of that would be that you begin to build trust. That’s what (Park) means by Helsinki process ― thickening networks of negotiations and of ties ― and that’s heading in the exactly right direction.

KH: As you indicated in your book, rising powers are not neatly integrating into the world made by the U.S. and pursue their own course of development. But some critics say Korea volunteers to fit itself into the U.S.-made world, rather than to become more assertive and pursue its interests, especially with its heavy security reliance and serious North Korean threats.

How should South Korea chart its path to a middle power, and what kind of alliance should it foster with the U.S.?

CK: I think that there are a number of countries that are not in the West but have nonetheless followed the path of development that’s quite Western in its character. I would put South Korea and Taiwan in the category, countries that underwent a phase of development, and Japan obviously being another example, developed a broader middle class, and became middle-class societies that over time liberalized in step with depths and breadths of the middle class. That’s really what Western development was all about ― was about the rise of the bourgeois.

In an early modern Europe, the ability of the bourgeois was to make a bargain ― you want our wealth to help create the state, you need to give us political power. That has led to geopolitical alignment between the west and South Korea, and the West and Japan, and the West and Taiwan.

It’s not just about a marriage of convenience. It’s deeper than that. It’s about being part of a community that shares common values and common institutions. I think that will continue to happen in other countries, but I think that there has been way too much optimism that this model is universalizable. That is to say that everybody is going down the same path.

I was recently reading a book by Edward Steinfeld about China. He basically says that China is basically the same as South Korea but it’s just bigger. In terms of that, China will follow the path of South Korea, a country that began as a one-party state, industrialized, grew its middle class and democratized. So he said, just wait a while. That is not going to happen anytime soon. It may happen but it will be in generations.

So I think that’s why I’m pretty confident that where the world is heading toward is one that will be very diverse politically, ideologically and geopolitically. I think that South Korea is, with the exception of its troubled relationship with its brother, in reasonably good shape. Its economy is relatively healthy and there is a reasonable level of geopolitical security. One thing that I think is missing is greater regional integration.

Let’s set aside North Korea for now. South Korea will be comfortable in its skin only when it is comfortable with its neighborhood. That means ties with Japan and China need to be much better and much deeper. That’s where there is trust deficit. It’s not just with North Korea, but with immediate neighbors.

And that has a lot to do with history as much as contemporary issues. But one other thing that you can take away from European history is how important it is for a project of regional integration to advance. And that regional integration has to be self-sustaining.

Right now it’s too dependent on the U.S. That’s stable for now but real peace in Northeast Asia requires trust between South Korea and its longstanding neighbors ― Japan and China. So I would like to see South Korea do more to invest in those relationships.

I thought a good example of how fragile the region is on this front was the agreement between South Korea and Japan to share intelligence. It just then blew up. That shows that just the beneath of the surface there isn’t trust. There is residual suspicion and animosity. And that’s troubling. That should be right up at the list of priorities after North Korea. It’s a fundamental dilemma. In general it’s better to build incremental support than to catch everyone by surprise.

So if the South Korean government got on the evening news and said, “You know, it’s really time to try to deepen our relationship with Japan, be adults and put the past behind us,” there will be certainly decent national opposition, but you also might get plenty of people who say, “Hmm, that’s a mature thing to do.”

KH: In 2011, you said the U.S. should build a stronger, more mature partnership with Japan under the Democratic Party leadership. Now with Abe and his LDP back in power, are you concerned about their revisionist push and its relationship with Korea and China?

CK: First of all, the Democratic Party melted down. They just had a very difficult time governing. So that strategy of Japan that would consolidate the relationship with the U.S. and also invest in its relationships with China and South Korea, I still think that’s the way to go. But it was so poorly handled that it went nowhere.

Abe seems to be turning back the clock and adhering to much more conventional Japanese foreign policy of hugging the U.S. and doubling down on nationalism and historical issues. I think it’s setting the clock back and not particularly helpful. But that seems to be the direction of the government that he’s put together. Hopefully they’ll moderate over time.

KH: Do you believe the U.S. has a role in preventing the Abe administration from becoming too nationalist?

CK: This has happened before. The U.S. quietly and publicly said, this is not helpful. I don’t think it usually does much, partly because these guys either believe it or it’s part of their domestic strategy, so I’m not sure the U.S. has a lot of input. Sometimes it may work by preventing it from being even worse. But we don’t know if that kind of moderation took place because this kind of nationalistic tilt is still there.

KH: The changing world order sees a broad diffusion of power. But in Asia many countries, especially in Southeast Asia, are apparently stuck in the middle of a power struggle between the two superpowers. That is, as China gets more assertive many countries, especially democracies, look more to America and seek its security protection.

CK: We need to separate two issues. First of all, are the best days of the U.S. behind it? My answer to that is no. The U.S. is going through a difficult moment politically and economically, but it will recover economic vitality and democratic vibrancy. That’s because underlying assets are there ― a growing population, the best universities in the world, entrepreneurial spirit and capital, and a flexible and open society.

It has all the assets that will serve very well. So I’m confident that some time in the near future ― it could be three years, it could be four years ― the U.S. will snap back. In that respect, I don’t think the U.S. is in decline.

If you take it from a different angle, that is the relative position of the U.S. in the world changing, my answer to that is definitively yes. And to broadly say the relative power position of Western democracy is changing, the answer is more emphatically yes because the share of wealth and power that Western democracy represents has been edging down and will continue to edge down. 

That means the world is entering a period that will be unprecedented. By that I mean it will be the first time in history for an interdependent, globalized world that is no longer run by Western democracies.

We don’t know what that world will look like because it’s always better when there’s a captain at the helm. Because that means when a decision has to be made or fire has to be put out, somebody’s there. And we’re now to see what it is like to live in a world where there’s high demand for global governance but there’s nobody in the driver’s seat. We’re just going to figure out how to manage that world.

China is not going to be a superpower on par with the U.S. for a very long time. That’s because even though its aggregate wealth surpasses the U.S. probably in 10 to 15 years, it won’t have a military that is peer competitor of the U.S. and it won’t have a global reach, and it won’t have the global appeal ideologically or culturally that the U.S. has.

But I do think that here in Northeast Asia there is a kind of moment of strategic reckoning ― I guess that might be the way to put it ― in which China and the U.S. need to arrive at a meeting of minds about status, control, influence in this part of the world. That’s because the U.S. remains kind of the hub geopolitically and China is emerging as the hub economically. It will over time want to assert its influence in a geopolitical sense.

That’s where the moment of opportunity and danger comes. I think we’re reasonably far away from that moment. But I think these years are the ones in which the U.S. and China need to focus on preventing a zero-sum logic to their relationship. And the last year or two have pushed things in the opposite, negative direction. It’s important to change course and get the U.S. and China working together rather than seeing them in the opposite direction. 

KH: The daunting economic challenges and political paralysis that are currently faced by rich-world countries like the U.S. and Europe apparently give more confidence to China and other nations that pursue state capitalism. Do you think the current crisis somehow undermines the notion that democracy and development are an intertwined process, and gives rise to a new model of governance?

CK: This crisis that the U.S. and Europe are passing through comes at an inopportune time. Because if I’m right, we’re entering this period of transition and there will be no one calling the shots. Then it’s important for the Western democracies to be outwardly focused and to be fully engaged in managing this period of transition. That won’t happen if our political institutions are dysfunctional and inwardly focused.

My second concern is that there are lots of countries out there in the world that are planning their next steps. They’re trying to decide what course they take. And a majority of countries are in that category. Emerging economies are trying to consolidate markets and consolidate democratic institutions. And they’re sort of looking out of the world, seeing who’s doing well and who’s not.

When the world’s most mature democracies and those that have the freest markets are stumbling, then countries like China seem to be doing better. That complicates their choice and makes it more appealing to follow the brand of state capitalism than liberal democratic capitalism.

I think we’re still in early phases of this kind of crisis in the West. It’s difficult to say what the outcome will be. I think that the Western way has done well over the last several hundred years partly because of the intrinsic appeal of the ideas ― human rights, human dignity, democracy and markets.

But they’ve also done well because they’ve been attached to superior power. So liberal democracy was an appealing and intrinsic idea but it was also liberal democracy wedded to dollars and to American aircraft carriers. So when Western ideas are no longer attached to superior power they may not have the same global appeal.

That doesn’t mean that Chinese ideas are going to triumph Western ideas. But it does mean that the folks showing up in Africa are bringing renminbi or Chinese warships. That makes choices of Africans looking for outside engagement and gives them more options.

By Shin Hyon-hee (heeshin@heraldcorp.com)