|
Peaceful confederal foreign policy
--From negative peace to ‘Carpet Peace’—
Professor Emeritus Heo Mane/Advisor of the Korea-EU Forum
P.S.: The upgraded article for larger readership
General Review of inter-Korean Provocations
Since the cessation of the Korean War in 1953, the Republic of Korea has long remained in a negative peace on the Korean Peninsula. The ROK has been ceaselessly been confronted by the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea. The latter has been intent on challenging the former, with the constant development of its nuclear weapons and missiles. Furthermore, the DPRK has challenged the ROK in the international community, trying to ensure its dominant position there, let alone its intervention in the ROK’s broad domestic affairs. The DPRK has violated frequently the Armistice Agreement and DMZ. It has also infiltrated its spies deep into the southern society. Such challenges of the DPRK have inevitably forged hostile foreign policy which has aimed to guaranteeing their own supports on the international stage, but to no avail until today. Its challenges drove the DPRK into international isolation, rather than a dominant position.
The ROK decided to be admitted to the UN simultaneously, with the DPRK in 1991, making further efforts to contribute to develop peace status, with its partner. The simultaneous admission took place as the tense ideology of the Cold War receded to some extent. The ROK has, since then, made significant contributions to the UN through peacekeeping operations, development assistance, and the promotion of human rights. In 2000 and 2007, the General Assembly adopted a resolution on ‘”Peace, Security and Unification on the Korean Peninsula”, welcoming and supporting the inter-Korean summit. Specifically in 2007, the ROK contributed to increase mutual respect and trust, decrease of military tension, transform the Armistice Agreement into peace agreement, and start broad cooperation in the international community. In 2018, the ROK and DPRK issued the April 27 Panmunjom Declaration, as a document of the General Assembly and the Security Council. And yet the ROK made the September 19, 2018 Pyongyang Declaration aimed at cooperation, co-prosperity, reunions of separated families, and cultural exchanges, denuclearization of North Korea, and Kim Jong-un’s visit to Seoul.
Nevertheless, the foreign policies of the two hostile parties have been antagonistic because they have differed drastically at the political, economic, ideological, and strategic levels. These policies entirely have failed to move toward ‘carpet peace’. Such differences have made hostile foreign policy over the past 70 years; peace on the Korean Peninsula is still fragile; security is in jeopardy; mutual distrust escalated; and broad cooperation has been mired until the present time. The DPRK has continued to test-fire nuclear weapons and launch short-medium-long range missiles many times, despite the UN resolutions of sanctions.
Four Models of Europe
Postwar Europe has constantly make institutional developments. Institutional developments sure are the milestone for sustainable peace and security strengthened by the Atlantic partner, the US.
At the beginning of the WW II, Europe evolved from confederal to federal model of integration. But this trend is reversible as things change. Four basic models were competing to shape the postwar Europe; America’s Atlantic Europe was shaped by the absolute US influence and by NATO in particular; Jean Monnet’s federal Europe was influenced by his own ideas of Community based on Brussels-centered bureaucracy; de Gaulle’s confederal Europe of nation states was based on the sovereignty of nation states which were the only source of democratic legitimacy in the postwar Europe; and an anarchic Europe of nation states is Europe in which practical, high authority for centralized governance does not exist. These models were competing to create a bigger, hybrid integrated Europe aimed at ensuring peace, security, and prosperity in the postwar systems. However, national foreign policy alone prevailed over a common foreign policy for a long time. Since the beginning of the 1970s, European Political Cooperation (EPC) was therefore launched by European leaders for the purpose of consulting on foreign policy of the member states of the Community as an intergovernmental mechanism named the 1970 Luxembourg/Davignon report. Contrary to expectations of the member states, EPC fell short of creating a common foreign and security of the Community, and consequently European leaders came to agree to the Maastricht Treaty that was aimed to create the Common Foreign and Security Policy.(CFSP) Later, the Amsterdam Treaty laid down new principles and responsibility in CFSP, with the emphasis on projecting the EU’s values to the outside world and to set common strategies by the Council acting by a qualified majority, and introduced a High Representative for EU foreign policy and defense policy.
It is viewed that four models contain partially confederal, partially federal elements, and partially elements of community and union. Despite these models’ long developments, the EU practically lacked the vital capacity of foreign policy that would guarantee and maximize regional and national interests as well. This situation has caused continued conflict at the EU level.
Historical Review: Ideas of peaceful confederal foreign policy for inter-Korea
As for a first recommendable point for a peaceful confederal foreign policy to be conceived, both parties have positive or coercive elements to implement it. Moreover, both Koreans have the resistant nationalism to the century-old Chinese domination and the 36-year old Japanese colonialism, all of which still linger in the minds of all Koreans. It is expected that the resistant nationalism will be a strong motivation to get over differences in foreign policy, as well as the current pressures of China, Japan and Russia, and to push forward with the peaceful confederal foreign policy which will be essentially benign and balanced in efforts to apply it. In other words, the resistant nationalism seems to mobilize inter-Korean energy in an attempt to prevent foreign influence from penetrating into the peninsula as in the 19th century and at the beginning of the 20th century. However, the DPRK has not, unhappily, complied with the ROK in this endeavor.
As for a second strong point to be considered, the U.S., the old Soviet Union and China violated the 1943 Cairo Declaration and the 1945 Yalta Declaration that had promised to liberate Korea from the Japanese colonialism in due course of time. Rather an immediate liberation, the Moscow troika foreign minister conference plotted to impose trusteeship upon Korea. Today, the three countries’ leaders must feel morale responsibility to help the peaceful confederal foreign policy to be applied.
As for a third merit to be reckoned with, the Koreans have lived in the artificially divided land resulted from the violation of the two declarations. Consequently, the division of the peninsula has deepened all through the long Cold War order. All Korean leaders have failed to prevent the division from being produced by a stronger foreign policy. The ROK and DPRK already had fallen under the absolute influence of the US and the old Soviet Union respectively.
As to a favorable point to be considered, the DPRK attacked the ROK, with full support of the old Soviet Union and Communist China, driving the south into a stalemated dilemma. Inter-Koreans truly need a foreign policy to be able to lead to national reconciliation, not a distrustful one to eventually move to another Korean war. Essentially, the peninsula is one single, integrated land in a geographical viewpoint. Neverthelss, South and North Korean high-profile decision-makers failed to profit most from favorable geographical conditions.
Viewed from the historical conflicts of the opposed parties, the ROK is now in dire need of creating a peaceful confederal foreign policy that would ameliorate relationship between the two parties, ultimately turning the present negative peace into ‘carpet peace’.
Eight considerations of the peaceful confederal foreign policy
The word confederation is no longer of use today, and it is a much looser system which is not relied on a strict centralized governance of modern federal states. The confederation is an agreement, a treaty, or a strategy aimed to search for specific fields. The confederation can then be used to be applied to inter-Korean wishes for a more peaceful and future-looking move toward ‘carpet peace’.
What would be the procedures the ROK is first obliged to make? And what are the elements for the peaceful confederal foreign policy for consideration in the years to come?
First, the peaceful confederal foreign policy would, among other things, be relied on the creation of an Inter-Korean Supreme Council. It would be a highest central post to set the basic characters and directions of inter-Korean confederal foreign policy to be devised. The Inter-Korean Supreme Council would be assisted by Inter-Korean Foreign Ministers. The Supreme Council can proactively deal with foreign and security affairs by adjusting differences in these matters roughly as the European Council now does.
Second, an inter-Korean organization, such as a Council of Foreign Ministers badly would need to create common foreign and security policies that are aimed to pursue common strategy, as well as democratic values in peaceful confederal foreign policy as the international standards, through which the two parties will be mandated to follow the common and security policies agreed upon. And then, a common defense policy should start as a second device to promote the peaceful confederal foreign policy.
Third, both parties must be ready to make intensive efforts to end the Korean War that would step up peace, instead of challenges or provocations, with the help of the Big Four Powers of the U.S.. China, Russia and Japan.
Fourth, as the next step, the Council of Inter-Korean Foreign Ministers must reach an agreement of denuclearization of the DPRK, with the support of the Big Four Powers. They should acknowledge that the denuclearization is the essential issue in implementing the peaceful confederal foreign policy of inter-Korea and will be a beneficial policy in favor of peace in Northeast Asia as a whole. This is the most hotly argued security matter that has persisted over the past 30 years or so between Seoul, Washington, Beijing and Pyongyang. Recent summit diplomatic deals between Seoul and Pyongyang on the one hand and Washington and Pyongyang on the other have made little results.
Fifth, inter-Korean leaders are required to apply horizontal, partial subsidiarity that can increasingly reduce, under the centralized governance, the heterogeneity rooted in the established foreign policy models that Seoul and Pyongyang have long applied since the birth of their respective governments. The horizontal, partial subsidiarity, more democratic and censnsual, is, in principle, closer to the EU model of foreign policy than the U.S.’s. By doing so, both would be committed to horizontal, partial transfer of sovereignty to the Inter-Korean Supreme Council. This transfer of sovereignty is expected to balance central governance by the Inter-Korean Supreme Council assisted by the Council of Inter-Korean Foreign Ministers. As such, this transfer of sovereignty is expected to launch a peaceful confederal foreign policy.
Sixth, as the next doubt of this type of foreign policy, both parties will be strikingly at odds with democratic deficit in the decision-making process. Specifically speaking, how will decision-makers of DPRK be accountable for their decision-making, their implementations, and their results?; in most cases, they are not directly elected representatives, and they are not reliable negotiators ordered and dispatched by Pyongyang; they lack majoritarian decision-making power relied on popular support; however, they will easily threaten our own government or take a surprise attack on the ROK. Nevertheless, in the end, it remains to be seen how democratic deficit will influence and coordinate decision-making process through the horizonal, partial subsidiarity. It is still doubtful if democratic deficit will complement, through it, representation and majority in decision-making process as it does in the EU today.
Seventh, the peaceful confederal foreign policy to be practiced later should not distort the traditional model of nation state; the ROK is the only legitimate state recognized by the UN in 1948 and by the entire West later, maintaining global standards; the DPRK is not legitimate and is simply an isolated communist state; both states carry their own particular political traditions. Considering these backgrounds, the peaceful confederal foreign policy must be restricted to contrive ways to construct a firm foundation for peace on the peninsula that in turn would be transformed into ‘carpet peace’. So it carries in itself rather functional arrangements –-- specifically functional linkage -- for ‘carpet peace’ in the end.
In the last chapter, both parties could agree to create ‘carpet peace’, a supreme, sustainable stage of peace that eventually could empower Seoul and Pyongyang to implement the peaceful confederal foreign policy, with the guarantee of the Big Four Powers acting as balancers of power on the peninsula. The environment of ‘carpet peace’ will lead to a decralation of ending the Korean War with the support of the Big Four Powers and later a peace agreement to be set between both sides, with much less difficulty. In other words, Both achivements are a stable bridge toward the 'carpet peace'.
It is therefore anticipated that with a close cooperation of the DPRK, faithfully implementing the peaceful confederal foreign policy designed as a specific peace function will grant the two opposed parties greater credibility and hope for ‘carpet peace’, in which all Koreans can live happier and more stable lives, with peaceful mind. Consequently the peaceful confederal foreign policy will create 'carpet peace' envrionment in Northeast Asia as a whole. In a word, it practically is worth a higher option in the ROK’s future foreign policy directions.