The Fetish of "Self-Reliance"

There's an interesting post up on The Asia Pages about the desire on the part of South Koreans (especially the youth) for "independence" and "self-reliance", and the way in which this desire is manifested by a reluctance to conclude a free-trade agreement with the United States.

I find this sentiment interesting because the unspoken assumption that economic "independence" is in any way a good thing is one which can only be regarded as bizarre, especially in light of the modern history of the Korean peninsula: taken to its logical conclusion, the "best" way to ensure "self-reliance" by avoiding economic entanglements would be to simply not trade with foreign countries at all, in order words, to aim for economic autarky, or the policy South Korea's neighbor to the north knows as "juche". An even greater irony is that this self-same policy of "self-reliance" - which in the case of North Korea remains feasible only as long as China suffers to overlook NK smuggling while handing out free fuel - is in fact the very same policy followed by Choson Korea, leading to it to the enfeebled and extremely impoverished status which made it helpless to do anything but stand by as Russia, China and Japan fought over who would be its future master, while no stronger Korean state has existed in the last 1,000 years or so than today's heavily trade-dependent South Korea.

If anyone should know better than to equate economic isolation with independence, one would think the South Koreans would be at the head of the class, but when nutty nationalism has you in its grip all sense goes out the window. The desire for "independence" and "self-reliance" is nothing but a dressed up excuse for base xenophobic impulses, not something rooted in any kind of logic, and it makes no more sense in military terms than it does in an economic sense: South Korea has been a security free-rider on the United States ever since the Korean War, and to the extent this has obviated the need for Korea to spend much more on its own defenses, this has been almost entirely a positive thing for the Korean population (though perhaps less so for American taxpayers): even at this stage of South Korea's development, it is almost a certainty that the marginal cost of South Korea paying for its own security would be much, much more than the marginal cost to the United States of extending its security blanket from Japan towards Korea, and even if the Korean people were willing to bear any costs whatsoever, it is doubtful that any South Korean government would ever be able to provide as credible a defense capability against all potential threats as the United States currently does, whatever the sums put forward.

The Japan-US alliance shows the benefits that are possible when an obsessive desire for "independence" is not allowed to get in the way of rational thinking and a willingness to cultivate useful friendships. Japan has a much bigger domestic economy than does Korea, and its naval and air forces are much stronger as well, but even so few mainstream Japanese politicians or thinkers are under any illusions as to the supposed desirability of severing the defense agreement with America in order to "go it alone" in such a volatile neighborhood. Modern Japanese history is also instructive on the non-existent value of "self-reliance", "independence", "non-entanglement" and all the other fetishes of isolationist nationalists - while the Anglo-Japanese alliance existed, Japan knew enough of a sense of assurance about its place in the international order to prevent it from wishing to force any drastic changes on said order, but with the alliance's lapsing (at the insistence of the United States), the ground was set for the crises of the 1930s, as Japan too sought to create its own autarkic sphere in imitation of the other empire builders during the Great Depression: I needn't explain how that all turned out. Similarly, the current US-Japanese alliance has made possible for Japan a peace lengthier than any the country has seen since the fall of the Tokugawa, and a level of affluence undreamt of in the nation's history, and both the Japanese political consensus and the general public seem to have drawn the correct conclusion from all of this: Japan is strongest and most independent when it is closely allied with the greatest power of the day, not when it goes it alone, while economic and military isolationism are the stuff of which poverty and incessant warfare are made.

In all fairness, I doubt that Korea's politicians are under any delusions about the value of "self-reliance" (at least outside the shrinking coterie of the Uri Party and other objectively pro-North Korean elements): what gives me cause for doubt is whether Korean politicians have the stones to actually lead nationalistic public opinion to where it ought to be, instead of merely acquiescing to mass irrationality in the hustle for votes. Someone needs to make the South Korean populace face the fact that however much the nation's GDP grows, they can never hope to outarm China, Japan and Russia, that the best guarantee of their independence will long continue to be what it has been, namely the United States, and that as such it pays to cultivate as close as relationship with the USA as possible in order to give the United States as strong an interest as possible in seeing South Korea remain free and prosperous: as difficult as it may be for Korean chauvinists to grasp, proposals like the US-Korea FTA actually strengthen the independence they claim to seek, not just by increasing South Korea's wealth but by giving Americans more of a direct interest in protecting that wealth.

Comments

[Jim]

Interesting how you mention the US-Korean alliance is a bit of a compromise in the regard that the Koreans benefit from maintaining a decent military force and a competitive economy at the expense of US taxpayers. Bloggers like Marmot often bring up the point that the US-Korean alliance needs to be cut, mainly due to the constant stone-throwing by the Korean nationalists. It does tend to bruise the American belief that our support is creating a stronger ally in the East.

I find it ironic however that the stronger ally of the Americans, the Japanese, are currently under fire by American politicians due to the Korean comfort women hearings in congress. Abe and Aso could whip up a huge anti-American frenzy if they wanted to, but they and other Japanese policymakers prefer to keep their responses low-key.

Granted, I think the hearings are a waste of time on behalf of congressman Honda and his constituents, especially since America's current record in terms of human rights doesn't really give them the right to shake their fingers at Japan over events that happened over 60 years ago.

I guess it is all about ignoring the pain and focusing on the gain.