The latest challenge for President Trump as he gets set to visit East Asia: Is South Korea going wobbly on us?
Visiting Japan, South Korea and China, Trump will push trade talks while working to keep the tenuous anti-Pyongyang coalition together. And the goo-goo eyes South Korean President Moon Jae-in is making at Chinese leader Xi Jinping should worry us.
This week, Xi and Moon ended a year-old dispute over the deployment of American-made Terminal High Altitude Area Defense systems in the southern part of South Korea. The systems will stay and China will cool its kvetching.
What changed? Compare this quick retreat to the stink Beijing kicked up when President Barack Obama and Moon’s predecessor, Park Geun-hye, initially signed the agreement to deploy the missile-defense system.
Commerce between China and South Korea’s top corporations crawled to a halt. Chinese tourists all but stopped visiting Seoul. Xi took his public snit show global: His diplomats stopped cooperating with their US and Western colleagues.
Yet, this week — poof — the crisis is already over.
By Nov. 10, both sides announced Tuesday, Moon and Xi will seal their newfound friendship with a bilateral summit. Commerce between the two countries will be revamped and, hooray, kids in Beijing will once again dance to tunes by Psy and other catchy Korean pop stars.
And, miracle of miracles, Seoul hasn’t even backed away from the current phase of THAAD deployment. To listen to Korean diplomats, they managed to finally convince their Chinese counterparts that the anti-missile systems truly are defensive and meant strictly to counter threats from their northern neighbor, rather than (as Beijing long contended) to confront China.
At the same time, South Korean officials are insisting that their rapprochement with China is coordinated with their American partners and that the Trump administration should, in fact, take a victory lap. A cake is had and eaten, too.
State Department spokeswoman Heather Nauert confirmed that America is “pleased” that “our Korean friends, and also the Chinese are forging a closer relationship.”
If something seems too good to be true, look under the hood. And indeed, there’s more than meets the eye here between Seoul and Beijing.
On Monday, South Korean Foreign Minister Kang Kyung-wha gave a noteworthy speech to the National Assembly. Kang, who until recently was a senior official at UN headquarters in New York, vowed South Korea would oppose a US-led initiative to connect all East Asian anti-missile systems. She also swore Seoul’s joint exercises with the American and Japanese navies won’t develop into an outright military alliance. (China’s biggest fear is being surrounded by US-allied adversaries.)
In reality, the dovish South Korean government is much more in tune with China’s approach to North Korea than with the more aggressive thinking among Trump’s top advisers and their steely partner in Tokyo, Prime Minister Shinzo Abe.
Unlike his (regrettably disgraced) predecessor, President Moon is an instinctive appeaser. He opposed Park’s deal with Obama to deploy THAADs from the start. And he seems to be in tune with China’s approach to North Korea: Exert some pressure, then move quickly to a peace-for-our-time deal, under which dictator Kim Jong Un will promise to be on his best behavior.
Xi, therefore, is a much more natural ally for Moon than are Trump and Abe. They advocate new and more aggressive tools — diplomatic, economic and even military, if necessary — to force Kim to swear off his increasingly menacing war toys.
And remember: Unlike past presidents, Trump has to deal with a Kim that not only menaces his neighbors but has the capacity to hit parts of the United States — and will soon be able to hit all of it.
Trump’s task will be to convince our traditional Asian partners — mostly South Korea — that America and not China is their most reliable ally and best friend. So forget tariffs and trade wars. Instead, find ways to show them why China’s interests don’t coincide with theirs — and ours do.
Twitter: @bennyavni