February 26, 2021
On February 19th, the Stimson Center’s 38 North and Security for a New Century programs bipartisan congressional Korea Study Group, released its final report, “Empowering Congress on the Korean Peninsula.” The report brought together United States House and Senate staff to work together with a range of former officials from both the Republic of Korea (ROK) and the United States, including government officials, analysts, and academics. The stated goal of the group was, “to empower the U.S. Congress and to encourage its members to play their constitutional roles in key foreign policy and national security issues by building a dialogue that would consider security challenges on the Korean peninsula and surrounding region, explore options to prevent a wider conflict, reduce the chances of a nuclear exchange, and maintain U.S. security interests and alliances.”
One of the key lessons the Study Group drew from their review of U.S. policy under previous administrations was that, when it comes to dealing with the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK), the Biden administration and Congress must pursue negotiations from a position of stronger deterrence posture and a fortified U.S.-ROK alliance. The authors of the report felt that, “If the United States does not reassure South Korea and Japan of its commitment to their military and political alliance…[the Study Group] expressed concerns that those allies would shift away from the United States and pursue their own capacities.” Furthermore, the Study Group concluded that the South Korean penchant for seeing their alliance with the United States as playing second-fiddle to U.S.-European alliances and even the U.S.-Japan alliance, urgently needs addressing, lest South Korea pursue its own nuclear strike capabilities.
This focus, on rehabilitating the U.S.-South Korea alliance in order to better deter North Korea, presents the United States with an opportunity to not only tweak its Indo-Pacific policy in a way that strengthens the overall region, but to strengthen the U.S.-ROK alliance as well as the ties between the United States’ allies themselves.
Allies and Overall U.S. Regional Goals
While the Biden administration is still working on formulating its strategy for not only North Korea, but the wider Indo-Pacific region, it’s vital to keep in mind the words of National Security Council Coordinator for the Indo-Pacific, Kurt Campbell, and his remarks at the virtual 2020 Atlantic Council Korea Foundation Forum where he said, “I just want to underscore that there is a tendency among administrators to disregard and distance themselves completely from the experiences of the previous administration…that would be a mistake for an incoming administration. I think we have to look carefully at elements of the Trump administration approach and understand what things can be built upon.”
To that end, before diving into how to better facilitate U.S. alliances in the Indo-Pacific region, it is valuable to look at the goals of the recently declassified “U.S. Strategic Framework for the Indo-Pacific” that guided American strategy during the Trump administration. That document’s second listed challenge was: ensuring that the DPRK does not threaten the U.S. or its allies, accounting for both the present danger as well as the potential for future changes in the level and type of threat posed by North Korea. Among the assumptions underlying this strategy, the National Security Council listed “Enhance the credibility and effectiveness of our alliances;”, and that, “Strong U.S. alliances are key to deterring conflict and advancing our vital interests.” To that end, the major objectives of the strategy were to, “Strengthen the capabilities and will of Japan, the Republic of Korea, and Australia to contribute to the end states of this strategy.”; to “Align our Indo-Pacific strategy with those of Australia, India, and Japan.”; “Deepen trilateral cooperation with Japan and Australia”; “Encourage South Korea to play a larger role in regional security issues beyond the Korean peninsula.”; and “ Empower Japan to become a regionally integrated, technologically advanced pillar of the Indo-Pacific security architecture.” The document further proposes reinvigorating or expanding alliances with the Philippines, Taiwan, Thailand, as well as other ASEAN countries.
In terms of the previous administration’s progress in the region, the key for the Biden team will be deciding which elements of the Trump administration’s approach can be built upon, and which should be discarded. To that end, the main element that should carry over for the Biden team is a focus on strengthening the capabilities and commitment of allies in the region. Strengthened allies will be better able to contribute to the U.S. administration’s desired end-state in the Indo-Pacific generally, and the Korean Peninsula more specifically. Whether that desired end-state is a completely denuclearized North Korea, or simply a DPRK that has accepted an arms control framework for their weapons program, the U.S. needs more capable allies which have fully bought into the U.S. strategy not just for the Korean Peninsula, but the wider Indo-Pacific. Furthermore, the United States vitally needs those allies to all be pulling in the same direction, and not bickering between themselves, as internal squabbles will make unified defense that much harder.
The United States-Japan-South Korea: A Troubled Triangle of Allies
When it comes to North Korea’s impact on the U.S. Indo-Pacific strategy at large, it would be wise to more strongly consider the goals and ambitions of the two key U.S. allies that are most immediately affected by the DPRK missile threat: South Korea and Japan. The two countries have a problematic history that has bubbled to the surface yet again in the past few years, and that history needs to be addressed before any progress can be made in better integrating the two countries into an overarching security strategy. Furthermore, the relationship between the U.S. and South Korea has been strained over U.S. cost-sharing concerns, and that wedge needs to be removed if the two countries are to pursue a strengthened alliance. In addition, as the Study Group correctly pointed out, Japan’s suspension of the Aegis Ashore Ballistic Missile Defense System raises questions about Japan’s commitment to regional defense measures.
Resolution to these issues should begin by attempting to resolve the issues in order of their delicacy. Beginning with the least delicate issue, which is the suspension of the Aegis systems, which was cancelled reportedly due to the cost of ensuring that the boosters on the interceptor missiles will fall on its designated areas following separation from the missile. By the time of suspension, Japan had already spent $1.02 billion on development of the SM-3 Block IIA interceptor, and attempts to modify the programming on the missiles to ensure correct booster separation had not been successful as of June, 2020. The Japanese government had calculated that further overhauls would take an extra $1.8 billion and more than ten years to implement and, in addition, local Japanese governments also raised concerns about the missile sites, which contributed to the scuttling of deployment plans.
As the Korea Study Group’s report concluded, the United States should look at underwriting some or all of the cost of the Aegis Ashore system for Japan, as there is not a “zero-sum or clear bifurcation between North Korea’s long-range or regional and short-range missile threats. In addressing both intercontinental and regional threats, the U.S. protects two core national security interests…” While the United States should also pursue weapon-development efforts to replace the kill vehicles on the tips of older Ground-Based Interceptors, as the Group recommended, in the event that the new kill vehicle failed or did not have the capacity to do the full job, American citizens will ask why the U.S. did not look at funding this option in the first place.
U.S. concerns regarding Japan’s Aegis Ashore deployments should at least be partially allayed by the fact that in recent years, Japan has been trying to step up when it comes to the total amount that they spend on defense. While the country’s outlays still hover around the 1% of GDP mark, which is still rather low for such a developed economy with such proximate security concerns, Japan’s cabinet has approved a record $51.7 billion defense budget for FY 2021. This spending represents a 1.1% increase over this year, and continues an eight-year trend of increases to the country’s defense spending. This trend must be considered when it comes to setting U.S. expectations on Japanese defense commitments, especially considering the fact that continuing to increase defense spending during a global pandemic should account for something when it comes to satisfying U.S. demands.
Next on the list of issues that need to be resolved between allies is regarding cost- and burden-sharing. Specifically, with regards to South Korea, the issue of negotiating a new Special Measures Agreement (SMA) is a key sticking point that must be resolved in order to keep the alliance running smoothly. The last SMA expired in 2018 and the Trump administration did not initiate the latest round of talks on cost-sharing until late 2019. Rather than smoothing out the relationship, negotiations became contentious, with a deep divide between the Trump administration’s position and the Moon government’s. In the previous cost-sharing agreement, the South Korean government paid around $900 million per year, however some reports that the Trump administration wanted that figure to reach $5 billion per year. The South Koreans countered with a 13% increase on the $900 million figure, but that was a non-starter for Defense Secretary Mark Esper and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, while the $5 billion figure was a similar dead-letter on the South Korean side.
To square this circle, the Korea Study Group recommended that burden-sharing needs to take into account more accurate assessments of South Korean contributions. The Group found that Trumpian rhetoric had distorted lawmakers’ understanding of South Korean contributions within the Special Measures Agreement architecture, specifically that, under the agreement, Seoul provided for nearly 50% of the labor, logistics, and construction costs for U.S. bases in South Korea, and they also provided 90% of the costs of construction on U.S. Army Garrison Humphreys, which is one of the busiest U.S. Army airfield in Asia.
In addition, as has been noted by former ROK ambassador to the United Kingdom Hwang Joonkook, “‘SMA’ is not just an abbreviation for ‘Special Measures Agreement’ but for the Special Measures Agreement relating to Article 5 of the Facilities and Areas and the Status of the United States Armed Forces in Korea (SOFA) agreement.” Jonkook points out that Article 5 only deals with “facilities and areas” for U.S. Forces-Korea and that the U.S.’ position ignores the fact that to go after costs beyond “facilities and areas”, to training, equipment, and transportation, like the Trump administration wished to, would require a U.S. acknowledgement that the current negotiations are inconsistent with the spirit of the original Special Measures Agreement.
To that end, in order to resolve major burden-sharing issues, the Study Group recommended that the Biden administration, with support from Congress, establish a two-track solution. The first track would be a regular, three-category (transportation of U.S. troops, equipment cost, training costs) SMA structure with a return of negotiations to the working-level. A second track would consider U.S. demands separately and would need a new team to negotiate as well as a new timeline to discuss the various elements of burden-sharing in the alliance. In the author’s opinions, these new tracks could expand to include talks on the overall health of the U.S.-South Korea alliance, as well as how the U.S. Indo-Pacific Strategy fits in with the ROK’s New Southern Strategy. That said, the Biden team will have to avoid the Trump administration’s insistence on eye-watering increases to the total dollar amount of burden sharing requested, as South Korean domestic politics must be factored in when considering what an appropriate ask would be.
Japan-South Korea Relations: Resolving Long-Standing Disputes
As Kurt Campbell said at the Atlantic Council’s Korea Foundation Forum back in December, as to whether the United States should play a more active role in facilitating better Japan-South Korea relations:
“I think Asian specialists are divided on this. There’s one view that suggests that this is two democratic friends, and states. They’re in a terrible quarrel. It’s probably affecting their bilateral relations, their strategic interests…but in some ways it’s none of our business. I believe that would be the traditional view. I would probably put myself in a different camp. I do not believe it’s in the strategic interests of the United States to have our two closest allies working at such cross purposes. I believe this undermines American purpose. I believe this undermines allied solidarity on the issues that matter most including North Korea. And I believe there are reservoirs of goodwill in both countries that can be tapped into. I think that there are potential roles for outside groups including the United States to potentially play a role…I do think the lingering political impasse that Seoul and Tokyo find themselves in has now gotten to a place that even the sceptics in both countries find themselves deeply worried about the future. I find that an unsustainable course.”
Therefore, if the issues of cost-sharing and Aegis deployment are resolved, there still is the particularly thorny issue of the Japan-South Korea relationship that needs to be addressed. Specifically, the dispute between the two countries centers on alleged atrocities committed by the Japanese Army during Japan’s colonial rule of Korea in the early parts of the 20th century, including the Japanese Army’s coercion of Korean and other women into sexual slavery. This issue was supposed to have been resolved back in 2015, when the two sides reached an agreement wherein the Japanese government issued a formal apology and promised an $8.3 million payment that would care for the surviving women affected. This comes on top of a 1993 apology by the Japanese government over the same issue. Despite these previous apologies, survivors have still proceeded to pursue settlements under South Korean law, with a South Korean court issueing a judgement in January of this year ordering the government of Japan to pay $91,800 each to 12 Korean women forced into sexual slavery by Japanese troops during World War II. These cases have been filed, some advocates say, because the sentiment is that none of Japan’s apologies in the past have been official due to the fact that they have not been ratified by the legislature or approved formally by the executive branch. Advocates further state that no laws have been enacted by Japan to acknowledge responsibility for these actions, rendering these apologies non-binding.
For their part, the Japanese government did not accept notices from the South Korean court, and as Katsunobu Kato, chief cabinet secretary to Japanese Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga has said, “We have repeatedly expressed that the Japanese government is not subject to Korean jurisdiction under the principle of exemption from sovereignty under international law.” The South Korean court argued that it could not accept that claim of immunity because the case involved “anti-humanity acts systematically planned and perpetrated by the accused.”
All of this is on top of the fact that in 2018, the South Korean Supreme Court issued a ruling ordering Mitsubishi Heavy Industries of Japan to compensate South Koreans forced to work in its factories during the Second World War. That decision, some believe, prompted the Japanese government to take the provocative step of removing South Korea from a “white list” of countries that get preferential treatment on requirements for the import of sensitive Japanese-made goods.
To calm such a combative relationship will require some out-of-the-box thinking from South Korea and Japan’s major partners, most importantly, the United States. Clearly, the issue is not going to be resolved through either Japanese or South Korean courts to the satisfaction of the other side’s government and citizens. Further, while some scholars have indicated that surviving “comfort women” may be able to sue in U.S. courts due to some of the crimes alleged being committed on the Island of Guam, a U.S. territory, the issue of foreign sovereign immunity will still likely prevent the women from getting the Japanese government to acknowledge any court decision.
Currently, one of the surviving victims of sexual slavery has requested that both countries appear before the International Court of Justice, which could deliver a verdict on the issue. This effort should be heartily endorsed by the Biden administration, as its resolution through an established U.N. body would be the ideal way of resolving the issue. However, previous reports indicate that the Japanese government is not particularly interested in proceeding down that path. Therefore, to resolve this issue, the United States should consider creating a new, multilateral organization dedicated to addressing lingering criminal and other issues from the end of the Second World War. Participants could include South Korea, Japan, Australia, Germany, France, Italy, the United Kingdom, and the United States, and participation would be open to as many constructive participants as could possibly be gathered. The benefits of such a grouping would be to, once and for all, resolve lingering issues that the now-allies have, further strengthening current ties and eliminating underlying resentments.
The goal of such a new forum would be to arrive at some form of adjudication panel or binding arbitration that would have the task of reviewing any outstanding issues that member countries wish to include, encompassing not only South Korean “comfort women”, but even allegations of rape by American soldiers during the conflict. To ensure the credibility of the decision-making body, it would need to be fully funded to be able to afford a staff of judges/arbitrators, investigators, historians, and any other personnel that the assembled nations feel would ensure a just outcome to the proceedings.
One of the central foreign policy themes of the Biden campaign was about restoring an emphasis on American values and justice. As many have pointed out, peace and justice are interdependent, meaning you can’t have peace without justice. Therefore, the Biden administration should work to establish a forum for U.S. allies that were participants in World War II to come together to resolve their differences.
The key question will be how to structure such a forum that it achieves buy-in from all of those involved. Besides opening the group to include more than just the U.S., Japan, and South Korea, one of the elements of the forum’s structure would be that no one single country would receive a veto on decisions made by the overall group. In the case that the group voted in favor of South Korean “comfort women”, it would give Japan the political cover to tell its citizens that they voted against the ruling, but that they simply did not have enough votes.
To show that Japan is not the only country that is under the microscope in such a forum, the United States should volunteer to have considered not just allegations of rape by American soldiers, but also its use of nuclear weapons on Japan during the Second World War. The United States government, despite former President Obama’s visit to Hiroshima in 2016, has never formally issued an apology for its use of nuclear weapons against the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. This proposed forum would give the United States not only an opportunity to resolve lingering issues between two key allies in the Asia-Pacific region, but enable it to cleanse some of the stain of being the only nation to use nuclear weapons in war.
While such a move may not be a popular one among Republican politicians, there are indications that Democratic voters are not quite as certain that America’s use of nuclear weapons in World War II was warranted, meaning that there is room to move American voters’ opinion on the issue.
Obviously, such a proposal is bound to have numerous barriers, from concerns that it sidesteps the U.N.’s International Court of Justice (ICJ), to the fact that it does not include all belligerents of the war. Furthermore, achieving buy-in from European powers will be a thorny issue, as many of them have little desire to resurrect old wounds. However, an attempt at restorative justice would only have weight if a broad range of countries are party to the new forum. In addition, having a broad list of allies involved in the forum would grant it a greater degree of legitimacy, while avoiding possible interference in the process by Russia and China, who might look to spoil the reconciliation of Japan and South Korea as inimical to their interests. Creating a new forum specifically for the adjudication of latent World War II related issues between the current allies would also bypass the multi-year time period that the ICJ routinely takes to resolve issues.
Whether the two sides decide to pursue the path of existing bodies like the International Court of Justice, or a new body, the Biden administration should stand wholeheartedly behind a legalistic process to resolve the two sides disputes, as letting an 80 year-old dispute get in the way of vital defense cooperation between the United States’ two most important allies off the coast of the Sea of Japan and the East China Sea is in no one’s interests besides North Korea and China.
Conclusion
As the Korea Study Group has rightfully pointed out, if the United States is going to strengthen its defenses in the region to combat continued North Korean nuclear- and conventional-weapon build-up, there needs to be a much greater focus on alliance cohesion in the region. Currently, that cohesion is plagued not only by bilateral problems in the U.S.-Japan and U.S.-South Korea relationships, but by seemingly intractable disputes between Japan and South Korea themselves. Solving these problems will be vital to ensure that North Korea or China does not exploit the lack of unity.
Whatever the Biden administration decides in formulating its policy towards the region, it will have to resolve some long-standing issues that the Trump administration proved unable to overcome. Whether the issue is Aegis Ashore or a Special Measures Agreement, the United States may have to simply recognize that defense priorities have to come before economic ones, and that if providing more funding is going to be the only way to get these two issues resolved, then more funding may just be the answer. When it comes to thornier justice issues that are lingering between Japan and South Korea, more out-of-the-box thinking may be required, with an emphasis on the type of values-based restorative justice that, rhetorically, the Biden administration would be keen on embracing. None of these issues are simple, however, and through consultation will be needed with both Japan and South Korea if these issues are to be resolved once-and-for-all.
As U.S. National Security Coordinator for the Indo-Pacific, Kurt Campbell, has said: “In addition to this rebalancing [to the Asia-Pacific region] and refocus that’s going to continue as we go forward, you’re also going to see a number of other, subtle innovations…one will be a much greater focus on allies and friends. Not just in the Asia-Pacific region. I believe in that context, South Korea will play a very prominent role.” Time will tell if this greater focus on allies will pay dividends or if squabbles will get in the way of real progress in bolstering American alliances in the Asia-Pacific.
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