[Column] Armitage visits Korea once again

Han Sungdong, Senior Reporter

Richard Armitage came to Korea again, here for a conference about the U.S.-Korea alliance and transferring wartime operational control of the Korean military. The conference was organized by an organization called the World and Northeast Asia Peace Forum. Armitage had some very negative things to say about the control transfer and about dissolving the Combined Forces Command (CFC). The mainstream papers, almost as if they’d been waiting for something like this, gave big coverage to comments that were nothing especially new.

Who is this Armitage, other than that he graduated from the U.S. Naval Academy, fought in Vietnam, was deputy assistant secretary of defense during the Reagan Administration, and was an influential member of the current Bush administration who is recognized as an expert in Korea and Japan?

In October 2000 Armitage released a document titled, "United States and Japan: Advancing Toward a Mature Partnership," better known as the Armitage-Nye Report. It became a manual for the Bush Administration’s foreign policy, in particular policy toward Korea and Japan. The men who implemented it was none other than Armitage himself, who was deputy secretary of state for the entire duration of Bush’s first four years, and Defense Department neoconservative Paul Wolfowitz. The bipartisan document mainly discusses the Japanese rearmament and expanding the U.S.-Japanese alliance. It says that Japan is the cornerstone of American policy in Asia, and that the U.S.-Japanese alliance lies at the center of global American security strategy. It says the "special relationship" between the U.S. and the United Kingdom should be the model for America’s alliance with Japan. In other words, the U.S. is supposed to turn Japan into its Britain in Asia for the sake of its global strategy. There is discussion of reorganizing U.S. forces in Northeast Asia, including Korea, cooperation on missile defense (MD), a greater international role for Japan, and a permanent seat for Japan on the United Nations Security Council. It says that the prohibition on Japan’s right to collective self-defense is an obstacle to a cooperative alliance and that it should be lifted to make for closer and more efficient security cooperation.

It is Article IX of what is called Japan’s "Peace Constitution" that disallows the country from possession of a military, the right to wage war, and the right to collective self-defense. What the report is saying is that the U.S. should actually encourage the constitutional revision and rearmament the Japanese right has been thirsting for, and indeed that is what has been happening. It is wrong to claim that issues like the USFK’s move to Pyeongtaek, wartime operational command handover, friction between Roh and Bush over how to deal with North Korea, or anti-American sentiment in Korea are the root of the problems in the U.S.-Korea alliance, reducing Korea’s standing in U.S. policy towards Asia, and leading to a bigger role for Japan. Those who claim this are either utterly unaware of the facts or perhaps know the truth but are animatrons willing to put the interests of their political faction over those of the country.

A U.S. strategy that makes Korea even more subordinate to Japan - by strengthening the U.S.-Japan alliance, and classifying U.S. forces in Korea and the U.S.-Korea alliance as subordinate to the U.S. alliance with Japan - was determined well before the start of the Roh Moo-hyun administration, and has nothing to do with Roh’s views in any way.

In an interview with the Asahi Shimbun last April, Armitage said there were five issues facing Asia today: nationalism, the Taiwan strait, the Korean peninsula, territorial disputes, and rebel activity in Thailand and the Philippines. He then said that relations between the U.S. and Japan would be on more equal footing once Japan finally deals with its Article IX issue, and that Japan would benefit from involvement in guaranteeing security to all other nations in the region. As far as America is concerned, he said, the past is resolved, but that there are a few nations that incite nationalism against Japan to distract their citizens from domestic issues. Armitage went as far as to say that the Japanese prime minister should continue to visit and worship at Yasukuni Shrine as long as China expresses displeasure about those visits. It would appear that to Armitage, the anger felt by China and Korea due to Koizumi’s visits to Yasukuni is nothing more than an effort to distract citizens from domestic issues. Nationalism in Asia began in Japan, and yet Armitage says nationalism is one of the biggest problems facing the rest of Asia, as he all the while stirs up ultra-right Japanese nationalism. What might his motives be?