Changing of guard, changing of tide?

Ryu Ji-yong, research fellow of Korea Institute for Defense Analyses

By Ryu Ji-yong

It is a rare opportunity to see the rise of multiple leaders at the same time, especially when those leaders are sure to be of significant importance for security on the peninsula. In about a month, we will not only see another U.S. presidential election, but a Korean one as well. These two elections come on the heels of the emergence of a new leader in North Korea, and will in turn have at their heels a handing down of power in China to a fifth generation of Chinese Communist Party (CCP) members.

The leaders ― potential and predetermined alike ― each have a vested interest in East Asian security and their own varying stances regarding how to achieve security in East Asia. If any of them wish to be successful, however, they will have to smooth out their differences in their stances and work together to create a more holistic paradigm that incorporates their visions into the visions of the other leaders in the region. However, the necessity of this approach doesn’t mean that it will be taken. A close look at some of the candidates hoping to direct the course of events in East Asia will show us just how unstable the situation is.

The world has only a few days left before it either welcomes or is faced with the next U.S. president. On the one hand, there is the incumbent President Barack Obama; on the other, there is Mitt Romney, the former governor of Massachusetts. The intense rivalry between these two candidates has made it clear to the world that opposites do not always attract. Even when Obama and Romney seem to agree, such as on the issue of North Korea, a gulf of strife still separates them.

Obama, amid criticizing North Korea, and urging it “to live up to its own commitments,” still expresses the need to “engage constructively” with North Korea; however, Romney thinks of such a soft approach as only “emboldening” North Korea, and thinks it highlights the incompetence of the Obama administration. Although both Obama’s and Romney’s perceptions of North Korean intentions and consequently the way to deal with North Korea are different, they do both claim that North Korea must be addressed multilaterally. They both consider the efforts of China to be essential, and the collaboration with South Korea to be of vital importance in addressing North Korea. But just how Romney, if he becomes president, would seek to collaborate with a China that he plans to denounce as an unfair trading partner from his first day in office (as he has often sworn to the American people) remains to be seen.

The elections in South Korea, though not marked by the bitter rifts that characterize the U.S. election, can still pose as varied a potential future for security in East Asia. Just as with the candidates in the U.S. election, the three major Korean candidates all have their own individual courses of action planned for the country, throughout which they are currently campaigning. Yet, like the U.S. candidates they also have some points in common. Not the least among those points is the need to strengthen the Korea-U.S alliance while at the same time softening any lingering resistance to a deepening relationship with China. Another point in common, albeit an indirect one, is the attention that the North Korean leadership will be paying to these candidates’ campaigns. It’s clear that any South Korean or U.S. leader would go out of his or her way to improve relationships with North Korea, were the obstacle of potential future provocations by North Korea removed.

Where defusing any North Korean motivations for further provocations are concerned, the relationship South Korean and U.S. leaders intend to develop with North Korea are of utmost importance, and should be in the back of everyone’s mind when following each candidate’s campaign.

Such a time, when the “changing of the guard” of so many players in the East Asian region coincides, potentially changing the entire dynamic of the region in a seeming instant is truly rare ― as rare as a miracle, or perhaps a natural disaster. Therefore, worrying about who will become the leader of one’s own country is not enough; for all of us, subject to the whims of security as it tosses and turns in East Asia, how all the leaders in the region will come together to form a mutual solution to our region’s benefit or detriment should be treated as the genuine matter of concern.