South Korea and the Indo-Pacific: the influence of domestic variables that concur in shaping the country’s foreign policy

Abstract

When Donald Trump became President of the United States in 2017, competition between China and U.S. significantly escalated, in particular when Trump introduced his “Free and Open Indo-Pacific” (FOIP) strategy, with the intention of countering China's Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), and to contain its rising power and influence in the Indo-Pacific region. The increasing competition between the U.S. and China, put South Korea in a very delicate position. Moon Jae-in, from the progressive Democratic Party, who became president of South Korea in May 2017, has had to walk a narrow policy line between Washington and Beijing. Strongly pressured from U.S. to adopt an Indo-Pacific strategy and align his policy with that of the United States, Moon pursued a policy of strategic ambiguity, maintaining a delicate balance with the United States, its main security guarantor, and China, its biggest trading partner and crucial North–South dialogue partner. Focused on containing China, Moon has been very reluctant to align with Trump’s FOIP strategy, he did not want to ruin relations with Beijing. However, when trying to understand Seoul’s political choices toward the United States and China, traditional approaches that focused on South Korea’s foreign policy tended to overlook the domestic variables that influence the behaviour and decisions of political actors, that variables that concur in shaping a country’s foreign policy. South Korean foreign policy is deeply shaped by a domestic debate that revolves around the presence of two main traditions: conservative and progressive. In general, conservatives tend to be more aligned with the United States, and to privilege deterrence over engagement towards North Korea. On the contrary, the progressives’ primary objective is to work towards reconciliation with North Korea, emphasizing inter-Korean dialogue and cooperation. Also, they tend to favour a more autonomous foreign policy from the United States, in particular at the regional level. Moreover, South Korea sees itself as a middle-sized power, it has branded itself as a middle power, and it has used middle power narrative, over the years, to gain global esteem as a multilateralist, as a international bridge-builder, and as good international citizenship. Thus the concept of middle power has been prominent in South Korea’s foreign policy, used by both political traditions - progressive and conservatives - as a framework for their foreign policy vision and strategy. The ambition to play a new and more active role in international affairs has remained as a constant feature of South Korea’s foreign policy with the principal aim to decrease its dependencies on the great powers and increase its political influence and international standing. Therefore, in order to understand Seoul's political choices toward the increasing U.S.-China competition in the Indo-Pacific context, it is necessary to analyze the global position that the country has assumed as a middle power over the years together with the progressive and conservative political traditions that have influenced the Korean foreign policy.