● The direction is “yes, the US-centric hub-and-spoke system is still tenable in the 21st century.”
● The main reasons are as follows:
1. North Korea’s nuclear capability is getting stronger, and its aggressiveness is getting more serious. So South Korea still needs a strong alliance with the US, and the US still needs South Korea to respond to North Korea’s aggressiveness.
2. However, multilateral alliance system is still not plausible in East Asian countries (Japan, South Korea, and Taiwan) because South Korea and Japan have different major threat perceptions (South Korea -> North Korea, Japan -> China). Especially for South Korea, it is difficult to officially designate China as a security threat, because of it’s economic interdependence with China.
Moreover, Taiwan is not a country with which South Korea and Japan can conclude international agreements because of the One China policy.
3. Distrust between South Korea and Japan is still very high.
* For the last 12 years, there has been no bilateral summit talk between the neighboring countries until they hold a summit talk in March 2023. And there were no fruitful results at the recent talk in 2023.
* Koreans are very unhappy that Japan, unlike Germany, does not sincerely apologise for its past and denies its dark past. While Japan believes that the 1965 agreement settled the issue, it recognises that it is unfair for South Korea to continue to raise the issue.
* The failure of President Yoon Sekyeol to address the issue of past historical disputes during the summit talk has resulted in a significant backlash in South Korea.
● Use a lot of the results of the US-South Korea summit talks that happened in the US in April 2023.
● Refer to the following required reading:
Cha, V. D. (2010). Powerplay: Origins of the US alliance system in Asia. International Security, 34(3), 158-196.
Cho, I. H. (2018). Downsizing Hegemony: Alliance, Domestic Politics, and American Retrenchment in East Asia, 1969–2017. Asian Security, 14(3), 246-262.
● Refer to the lecture slide (attached).
Cho, I. H. (2018). Downsizing Hegemony: Alliance, Domestic Politics, and American Retrenchment in East Asia, 1969–2017. Asian Security, 14(3), 246-262.
● Refer to the lecture slide (attached).