By Philip Iglauer
United States President Barack Obama, the candidate, goes into the November presidential election with a stronger foreign policy record than any previous Democratic Party candidate in recent history, a party traditionally vulnerable to allegations of being weak on defense and foreign policy.
On foreign policy, Obama has confounded critics ― and even some supporters, with a tough no-nonsense approach. Obama surprised the world with finally killing Osama Bin Laden, something former President George Bush admitted was his greatest regret; Obama authorized hundreds of drone attacks in Pakistan; and he “led from behind” to depose Libyan strong man Muammar Kaddafi.
Obama’s tack on Iran, however, has meant pressing Korea hard on implementing new anti-Tehran sanctions.
Pressure from American-led sanctions has sharpened, too, since the end of 2011 when Obama signed into law the National Defense Authorization Act.
Obama’s tough new sanctions target Iran's oil industry, and they coincide with Iranian legislative elections scheduled for March 2 and Korea’s Nuclear Security Summit, which is also in March, as well as the U.S. presidential election in November.
Elections or not, sanctions have consequences. The U.S. has no economic relations with Iran, but Korea is a different story.
Korea imports 10 percent of its total crude oil from Iran and the Middle East country is an important trading partner with some $18 billion in annual bilateral trade. As Korea does not produce a drop of oil by itself, it is obliged to consider what would happen if its relations deteriorate with Iran, which holds the world’s second largest crude oil and natural gas reserves.
“We want to try to balance the impact reducing Iranian crude oil imports will have on the economy with our desire to support the new sanctions the United States seeks to impose,”said Cho Byoung-jae, Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade spokesperson. “But it is too early to elaborate on exactly how we can balance these two interests. Let's wait and see.”
“Nonproliferation is always important to the Korean government, and we take it very seriously,” he added.
Korea will feel the pinch hardest if it joins the new U.S. sanctions, because it is energy dependent like no other country in the world on oil from the Middle East.
Korea not only gets 10 percent of its oil imports from Iran, but transports more than 80 percent of the oil it gets from the Middle East through the Strait of Hormuz. This puts Korea in danger of losing the hard-won economic and cultural bridgehead it has secured in the Middle East through relations with Iran.
Moon Chung-in, professor of political science at Yonsei University, questioned whether Korea should join the new and tougher sanctions. “Koreans are not happy about this. After all, why should we Koreans sacrifice ourselves for something that is really an initiative of the U.S. Congress, not the United Nations Security Council.”
As the presidential election in the U.S. heats up, Republican candidates will likely plumb well tread ground in conservative political circles: tough talk on foreign policy.
“If we re-elect Barak Obama, Iran will have a nuclear weapon,” Mr. Romney was quoted by The New York Times declaring in South Carolina in November. “And if we elect Mitt Romney, they will not have a nuclear weapon.”
Nearly all Republican candidates have threatened to use military action to prevent Iran from developing nuclear weapons, assailing Obama’s new sanctions as too little too late.
After fierce lobbying by the White House, Congress agreed to modify the legislation to give Obama the flexibility to delay action if he concludes the hard sanctions would disrupt the oil market. He may also invoke a waiver to exempt any country from sanctions based on national security considerations.
Mr. Obama retains two important levers: he can delay sanctions if he determines there is not enough oil in the market, and he can exempt any country that has “significantly reduced its volume of crude oil purchases from Iran.”
Administration officials, seeking to preserve flexibility, said they would not quantify “significant,” according to media reports.
Korea has already asked the U.S. to consider the impact to sanctions will have on its economy.
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