Pacts and Alliances in History

Diplomatic Strategy and the Politics of Coalitions

Melissa Yeager, Charles Carter, Melissa Yeager, Charles Carter

• Publisher: I.B. Tauris
• Year: 2012
• ISBN:
  9780857732569
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Politica e relazioni internazionali
• Subtopic: Trattati

Agreements between nations constitute the fundamental framework for the ordering of international affairs; and their successes and failures have led to some of the great turning points in modern history. The result of a unique collaboration by historians and political scientists, this book delineates, defines and assesses the idea of pacts and alliances as a key model of political organisation. Anchored by leading academics in the field, it presents numerous case studies covering a broad chronological sweep. Through theoretical and empirical methodology, the contributors address pacts and alliances from the fifteenth century onwards including, among others, the Korean-American and Moscow-Cairo alliances, the Sevres Pact, Turkey's accession to NATO and US alliances around the world. Through a close reading of these historical diplomatic relationships, fundamental yet relatively unaddressed research questions are developed and explored. First, what are the common denominators shared by successful alliances? Second, why do pacts and alliances disintegrate? Third, is the eventual demise of pacts and alliances inevitable?
Finally, what are the implications of these issues on pact and alliance making today? This is the first volume to address this wide range of issues, and to bring together researchers and theorists from the historical and political disciplines to provide original and groundbreaking theories of diplomacy. Together, these case studies explore why alliances succeed, why they fail and why it matters. Pacts and Alliances in History is therefore not only important reading for the next generation of policymakers, but will also help frame scholars' enquiries as they try to understand key events in international relations and history.

PART ONE

SUCCESSES?

CHAPTER 1

POWER AND CULTURE: THE ORIGINS AND DURABILITY OF THE KOREAN-AMERICAN ALLIANCE

William Stueck

In its creation and durability, the Korean-American alliance represents an instance in which strategic factors – control of territory and resources, denial of the same to others, and international stability – have often overcome cultural differences in language, ideology, lifestyle, and psychology.¹ This pattern is not always the case with alliances, or with international relations in general. Even when cultural considerations are secondary, they are rarely irrelevant. Yet the analysis of culture has its limits in explaining the interaction of nations. Cooperation between states can occur in the midst of considerable cultural divergence, and cultural convergence does not always eliminate or even reduce conflict. Indeed, conflict is sometimes exacerbated by such convergence. An examination of the pre-history and history of the alliance between the United States and the Republic of Korea (ROK) reminds us of the continuing need to combine traditional with newer modes of analysis.²

The questions addressed herein are as follows: Why, given the response to the North Korean attack of 25 June 1950, did the United States refuse to accept a formal alliance with the Republic of Korea (ROK) when its government pleaded for one in the spring of 1949, or even adopt a more concerted effort at deterrence in the year that followed? Why, given the obvious difficulties in relations with the ROK government led by Syngman Rhee, did the United States agree to a military pact with it in the immediate aftermath of the armistice in July 1953? Why has that pact endured to this day, a generation after the end of the Cold War that produced it? And, why, during the administrations of George W. Bush in the United States and Roh Moo Hyun in South Korea, did the alliance come closer than at any time during its history to breaking down?

A starting point for understanding the US refusal to form an alliance with the ROK in 1949, as well as the decision to withdraw the final American combat units from the peninsula, is an assessment by the Joint Chiefs of Staff in September 1947 of Korea’s significance to the United States. “From the standpoint of military security,” they declared, “the United States has little strategic interest in maintaining . . . troops and bases in Korea.” In any offensive operation on mainland Asia, the United States would bypass the peninsula and, although with control of Korea the Soviet Union might “interfere with United States communications and operations in East China, Manchuria, the Yellow Sea, Sea of Japan and adjacent islands”, that threat could be neutralized with air power based in Japan and Okinawa. The military leaders warned that a forced American withdrawal under the pressure of disorder and unrest in South Korea would represent a much greater blow to US international prestige than a voluntary disengagement.³

This assessment reflected a distinct change in emphasis from one by the same group during the previous April:

This is the one country within which we alone have for almost two years carried on ideological warfare in direct contact with our opponents, so that to lose this battle would be gravely detrimental to United States prestige, and therefore security, throughout the world. To abandon this struggle would tend to confirm the suspicion that the United States is not really determined to accept the responsibilities and obligations of world leadership.⁴

That is, with the joint occupation of the peninsula by the Soviet Union and the United States, the sharp deterioration in their relationship generally, and the struggle of the occupiers to advance their own political and economic systems in their zones, a US withdrawal and Communist takeover of the entire country would produce a serious blow to American credibility on a global scale.

The shift in emphasis between April and September 1947 was in part an outgrowth of the fact that in the earlier case the Joint Chiefs were commenting on the desirability of a major program of economic aid for South Korea whereas in the later one they were addressing the issue of a continued US troop presence. There is no denying, though, that at the later date the Joint Chiefs were far less inclined than before to argue that saving South Korea warranted a major effort. The question is, why?

The answer is threefold: conditions in Europe, conditions within the United States, and conditions within Korea. In strategically critical Europe, the United States had decided to take on major new responsibilities in the face of economic conditions that, if continued, would work to the advantage of the Communists and the Soviet Union. In the United States, Congress, confronted with growing demands for expenditures elsewhere, had refused to consider a major program of economic aid to South Korea and had substantially cut the Truman administration’s proposed military budget for fiscal year 1948. The latter move included a reduction in the army of 58,371 civilian employees and 12,500 officers, while the former made it increasingly difficult for the United States to maintain stability within South Korea.⁵ In South Korea, in fact, conditions had been deteriorating for over a year. Economically, the division of the peninsula into two occupation zones had proven a major drawback and American administration and policies in its zone had sometimes actually worsened conditions. Politically, large numbers of South Koreans sympathized with the Left and the vast majority were tired of the American occupation and longed for independence. Koreans on the Right, led by Syngman Rhee, had made it impossible for the United States to reach a compromise with the Soviet Union on the establishment of a provisional government for the entire peninsula. Most American soldiers were tired of being stationed in an economically backward land, which was at the end of the US supply line and whose people were less and less deferential to their liberators from Japan. The Americans often made their discontent known in letters home, to family, to the War Department, and to their representatives in Congress, thus helping to erode patience with the occupation on Capitol Hill.⁶ The pressures that led to the September 1947 assessment of the Joint Chiefs continued to drive their position on Korea all the way to the North Korean attack in June 1950.⁷

For the State Department, however, the Joint Chiefs’ April 1947 judgment seemed equally compelling. While military leaders produced and sustained the momentum for rapid withdrawal of American troops, the diplomats stretched out the process until June 1949. In the end, the State Department, influenced by the same pressures as the Joint Chiefs – if not quite to the same degree – accepted the final departure of US combat units from a now independent ROK in the South.

The diplomats did so despite having led the charge to take the Korean issue to the UN General Assembly in September 1947 and then to ram through the interim committee of that body a resolution paving the way for UN-supervised elections in South Korea alone.⁸ This course could not help but lead to the establishment of two independent and hostile governments on the peninsula. (The Democratic People’s Republic of Korea [DPRK] appeared in the North in September 1948.) Yet in mid-1949 the State Department resisted President Rhee’s quest for either formal or informal security guarantees against an attack from the North. When in May the ROK government released a statement distorting the circumstances under which the country had become divided, implying that it was the fault of the United States that Communists were in Korea and threatened the ROK, and omitting the role Rhee had played in sabotaging the American effort to reach an agreement with the Soviets to end Korea’s division, US diplomats bridled. They warned ROK leaders that they must do more to put their own house in order, including a buildup of their own army, and to avoid provocations along the tense 38th parallel boundary, where skirmishes between the ROK and DPRK armies were commonplace. When the ROK ambassador in Washington noted with concern to American officials that the United States was distancing itself from the Nationalist government in China as the Communists advanced there, he was told that South Koreans should learn from that case that US aid could not stem the Communist tide unless indigenous forces put up a stiff resistance.⁹

Among other things, the exchange revealed the deep psychological and cultural chasm existing between officials of the two governments. On the one hand were people representing the richest, most powerful nation on earth, who were attempting to cobble together a new global order in the face of concerted opposition from without and only limited acquiescence from many of their countrymen. To US officials dealing with Korea, ROK leaders were a contentious, willful group who showed little appreciation for the American role in freeing their country from Japan, had enormously complicated the American task in the recent occupation, and now presided over a corrupt, autocratic, and inept government facing active resistance from a significant portion of the South Korean populace.¹⁰ That regime constantly sought aid, resisted any strings attached, and attempted to maneuver the United States into an open-ended commitment to its survival. Such a pledge was out of the question, not the least because it might encourage ROK’s belligerence toward the DPRK – unnecessarily provoking a conflict that was contrary to American interests – and/or discourage the government from pursuing domestic policies that would broaden public support and enhance prospects for economic development. Under the circumstances, the overt ROK campaign for a clear US commitment simply underscored its absence, thus undermining a more modest effort to deter an outside attack.

On the other hand were people from a small nation that had for centuries sought to isolate itself from the outside world. It had largely succeeded in doing so through a loose attachment to a relatively unobtrusive China, in the Confucian worldview its “elder brother.” In the late nineteenth century, Korea was dragged unwillingly into relations with the larger world, was fought over by the three great powers surrounding it, and then, early in the twentieth century, was conquered by the strongest among them. Their country too weak to win independence on its own, Korean exiles sought the assistance of stronger powers, but divided over their preferred patron. When they finally escaped the Japanese grasp in 1945, it was at a price of occupation by two other great powers, both of which held interests and perceptions that conflicted with Koreans’ desire for immediate independence. In the end, those who became ROK leaders chose to postpone unity so as to grasp independence under conditions in which they dominated half the country. Having achieved that objective, partly through manipulation of the United States, they found themselves in the uncomfortable position of resenting their sponsor for its condescension and its failure in 1945 to prevent Soviet entry into the North, yet expecting it to play the “elder brother” role in providing protection against hostile outside forces.¹¹

Given those divergent perspectives, the US failure to employ measures adequate to deter an outside attack on the ROK is hardly surprising. Even Ambassador John Muccio, a patient diplomat more sympathetic than most Americans to South Korean leaders, was distrustful enough to ensure that the allocation of US military aid to the ROK was sufficiently piecemeal to discourage adventurism toward the North.¹² In the spring of 1950, South Korean warnings of an impending attack from the North fell largely on deaf ears.¹³

Although cultural/psychological differences played a part, the small place of Korea in a US strategy that remained very much a work in progress qualifies as the main factor in the inadequacy of American deterrence. In the summer of 1950, the strong American response to the outbreak of conventional war occurred despite cultural/psychological differences. The explanation is encapsulated in the reasoning of the Joint Chiefs in the April 1947 memorandum quoted earlier, which gained reinforcement from US sponsorship of the ROK through the UN General Assembly and the blatant nature of the DPRK attack. Under the circumstances, fears of repeating the experience of the 1930s dictated strong action.¹⁴

Much the same can be said about the conclusion of the US-ROK security treaty in 1953–54. To be sure, the psychology of the relationship had changed dramatically by then because Koreans and Americans had fought and died alongside each other in repulsing the Communist onslaught. The United States had lost over 36,000 men in combat and the ROK had lost over three-and-a-half times that many. The mutual effort persuaded South Koreans that Americans would endure sacrifices in their defense and Americans that the South Koreans would do the same to ensure their freedom from Communist rule. By the last year of the war, ROK army units manned 70 per cent of the front lines, clear evidence of both their determination and their growing competence.¹⁵

Yet a giant cultural gap continued to exist between the two peoples – in language, in material well-being, and in social and political norms. That gap was strikingly apparent in the ongoing difficulties with verbal communication, most notably between members of the US Korean Military Advisory Group (KMAG), who numbered nearly 2000 by the end of 1952, and personnel in the ROK army they were helping to train, as well as between members of the Korean Augmentation to the US Army (KATUSA), over 20,000 strong for most of the war, and American soldiers in the US Eighth Army units in which they served. The disparity also existed in living conditions, whether between Americans and Koreans in their respective homelands or between Americans in Korea, including those in the armed forces, and the vast majority of the host population.¹⁶

The gap in political culture is illustrated dramatically by events in the spring of 1952, when, in South Korea, Rhee used the national police and other forms of intimidation to force the National Assembly to amend the Constitution to provide for popular election of the president rather than election by the legislature. The move assured him a second term as president. The United States, of course, was in the midst of a Red Scare at home in which hundreds of citizens were unfairly labeled security and/or loyalty risks and denied the ability to pursue their careers. However, when President Truman clearly overstepped his authority in seizing the steel mills to fend off a labor strike, the Supreme Court ruled against him, and the chief executive immediately accepted the decision.¹⁷ In the South Korean case, members of the US embassy were sufficiently appalled to argue for assistance to elements in the ROK army to remove Rhee from power. US military commanders vetoed the move, insisting that such a course might disrupt operations at the battlefront. Thus common needs in wartime trumped differences over political culture.¹⁸

The Americans again considered removing Rhee from office during the summer of 1953, when the ROK president tried to prevent an end to the fighting short of unification of the peninsula and even delayed an armistice six weeks by releasing 27,000 ROK prisoners of war. This time US military leaders were willing to join the conspiracy if he tried to remove ROK forces from the United Nations Command (meaning, in reality, the US Command). But Washington offered to cut a deal with the recalcitrant Korean leader, who in return for not disrupting an armistice was promised massive economic assistance, funding for the further expansion of the ROK army, and a military pact. Possessing an uncanny talent for gauging how far he could push his “elder brother,” Rhee accepted the compromise, although he refused to actually sign the armistice. US Secretary of State John Foster Dulles rushed to Korea immediately after conclusion of the armistice to negotiate the treaty. “Never,” one wit observed, had “so ragged a tail wagged so large a dog.”¹⁹

It was hardly the most propitious circumstances for the establishment of an enduring military alliance! Yet the war had greatly reinforced Washington’s concern about US credibility, the same concern that the Joint Chiefs had expressed in April 1947 and that had led to American sponsorship of an independent government in South Korea in 1948 and to American military intervention two years later. With the presence of over a million Chinese forces in North Korea and the buildup of Soviet air power in Manchuria, concer...