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11. Challenges for Feminist-Informed Foreign Policy: Militarisation and Australia’s engagements via AUKUS and NATO

Author:
Christine Agius, Annika Bergman Rosamond, Toni Haastrup, and Katharine A.M. Wright
Publication Date:
12-2023
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
International Women's Development Agency (IWDA)
Abstract:
In recent years, Australia has assessed the global and regional security environment as increasingly unstable.i The rising economic and military power of China and broader challenges to the ‘rules based international order’ seemingly signal a period of instability, prompting a reconsideration of Australia’s defence capacity and role in the region. Meanwhile, new forms of cooperation with like-minded states have emerged, most notably the AUKUS agreement, announced in 2021 by then Prime Minister Scott Morison with bipartisan support, which binds Australia more closely with the United Kingdom (UK) and the United States (US) militarily. Australia has also strengthened its relations with NATO, aspiring to play a central role in the Indo-Pacific region as a NATO partner, alongside Japan, South Korea, and New Zealand. In this AFFPC Issues Paper, we explore the contradictions and tensions that emerge in the framing of national security threats and whether there are opportunities for more inclusive peace and security as promoted by the principles of feminist-informed foreign policy. For example, amidst this focus on militarisation, when the Australian Labor Party (led by Prime Minister Albanese) assumed power in 2022, Foreign Minister Penny Wong articulated a new foreign policy direction, which seemed to leverage broader attention towards feminist-informed acts and commitments. Wong promised that Australia would focus more attention on listening to its regional Pacific partners and committed to enacting a First Nations foreign policy.
Topic:
Foreign Policy, NATO, International Cooperation, Feminism, Militarization, and AUKUS
Political Geography:
Japan, South Korea, Australia, New Zealand, and Indo-Pacific

12. Strengthening South Korean Value Diplomacy for U.S.-South Korean Normative Alignment

Author:
Sook Jong Lee
Publication Date:
08-2023
Content Type:
Commentary and Analysis
Institution:
East Asia Institute (EAI)
Abstract:
The foreign policy of any state is formulated by calculating national interest and normative ideals. If national interest is based on tangible economic and security gains, normative ideals are often understood as universal and transformative values. However, this distinction is often blurred in reality, as normative choices are made in the context of long-term national interest. Furthermore, a state’s normative alignment can change due to ideologically different new governments or contentious domestic challenges. The worst-case scenario occurs when a strong state withdraws from leadership of a normative coalition of like-minded states. Like-minded states tend to disperse when they lose their leader; the decline of the Community of Democracies after the United States’s neglect is such a case. States fail to pursue consistent foreign policy because normative politics are in flux domestically and internationally. Despite this complexity, a strong power can exercise normative foreign policy more effectively than a weaker power, as it can employ both hard and soft power. The United States played such an enforcement role during the post–Cold War unipolar world. A newly emerging strong state, such as China, can challenge an existing norm or establish a new norm. What about middle powers? Lacking unilaterally exercisable power, middle powers frequently champion multilateral rules and norms that can protect their interests from great power coercion. Professor Andrew Cooper characterizes a middle power as normatively more virtuous and trustworthy in the global order and describes its preferred diplomacy as pursuing multilateral solutions to international problems, embracing compromise positions in international disputes, and adopting the notions of “good international citizenship” (Cooper et al. 1993, 116). The government of former South Korean President Lee Myung-bak pursued middle powermanship under the Global Korea slogan, emphasized value-based international contributions by expanding foreign aid, and hosted the Group of Twenty (G20) and other global meetings. Now, the Yoon Suk Yeol government has scaled up its middle-power ambitions to those of being a global pivotal state by highlighting South Korea’s international contributions and values-based diplomacy (Yoon 2022a). Like the Lee government, the Yoon government is building its proactive multilateral diplomacy while deepening its long-standing alliance with the United States. But the U.S.-China relationship has changed significantly between the Lee and Yoon governments: geopolitical competition between the United States and China has intensified during the intervening fifteen years, expanding beyond the economic and military spheres to include technology and ideology. Under U.S. President Joe Biden and Chinese President Xi Jinping, an ideological narrative dividing the world between democracies and autocracies has set in. The Russian war in Ukraine has caused Western European countries to merge democratic unity and collective security. In Northeast Asia, North Korea’s nuclear capabilities now threaten not only South Korea but also the faraway United States. Facing all these high-risk challenges, the Yoon government has tightened military and economic ties with the United States. The two countries’ shared democratic values and liberal norms have emerged as a crucial component of deepening bilateral ties. This normative alignment has invited criticism from Beijing, but the Yoon government has so far not rolled back its advocacy for those values—although it has carefully dubbed them as “universal values” rather than liberal or democratic values. The national confidence gained by globally successful popular Korean culture and deteriorating public opinion against China have helped fuel this value assertiveness.
Topic:
Foreign Policy, Diplomacy, Human Rights, Norms, and Freedom
Political Geography:
Asia, South Korea, and United States of America

13. Where next for the Australia–South Korea partnership?

Author:
Afeeya Akhand and Alex Bristow
Publication Date:
10-2023
Content Type:
Special Report
Institution:
Australian Strategic Policy Institute (ASPI)
Abstract:
The strategic partnership between Australia and South Korea holds great potential in an increasingly challenging time. The two nations have many common strategic interests and both can rightly claim to be regional powers. However, the relationship remains a relative underperformer compared with other key regional relationships and has suffered from inconsistency. When Canberra’s contemporary relationship with Seoul receives attention from Australian analysts, it tends to be framed largely in the context of the threats posed by Pyongyang. While some uncertainties remain over the long-term trajectory of South Korea’s foreign and security policy due to concerns that Seoul’s current vision is tied to the Yoon government as opposed to being embedded in longer-term statecraft, the structural basis for deeper engagement between Seoul and Canberra is sound. Investing in the relationship is in both nations’ interests. Building bureaucratic and commercial frameworks for cooperation now would help ensure that bilateral strategic alignment is less prone to future changes in government. This paper assesses the Australia–South Korea partnership through the three-pillar structure outlined in the 2021 Australia-South Korea Comprehensive Strategic Partnership and offers recommendations for strengthening the relationship. These recommendations include furthering strategic cooperation by incrementally aligning key trilateral formats, developing bilateral cooperation in critical technologies including those relevant to AUKUS Pillar 2, and nurturing collaboration with respect to the Indo-Pacific clean energy transition.
Topic:
Foreign Policy, Defense Policy, NATO, Partnerships, Artificial Intelligence, ASEAN, AUKUS, and ANZUS
Political Geography:
Asia, South Korea, and Australia

14. Seoul Searching: Lessons from South Korea's Experience with Sanctions against Russia

Author:
Maximilian Hess
Publication Date:
12-2023
Content Type:
Special Report
Institution:
Foreign Policy Research Institute (FPRI)
Abstract:
Russia and the West have found themselves enmeshed in an expansive economic war as a result of Russian President Vladimir Putin’s decision to launch the full-scale invasion of Ukraine on February 24, 2022. While the conflict on the ground in Ukraine is undoubtedly—and tragically—the primary front of Russia’s aggression, and where its aggression reaps its most dramatic horrors, Western powers have joined with a wide swathe of the international community to support Ukraine’s resistance and hold the Kremlin to account. But as with the kinetic war in Ukraine, the conflict did not begin one evening last February. It was first launched by Russia in response to Ukraine’s pro-Western, anti-corruption Maidan Revolution that raged through the winter of 2013–2014, ultimately resulting in the ouster of Viktor Yanukovych after he sought to capitulate to the Kremlin and refuse protesters’ and the wider Ukrainian public’s demands for continuing the country’s pro-European and pro-Western agenda. Russia was the first power to use sanctions and trade restrictions in the conflict, namely against Ukraine in 2013.[1] Russia also first sought to use Ukraine’s future to bring the international economic order into the scope of its fight even before Yanukovych’s ouster.[2] However, economic and technology restrictions on Russia have been at the core of the wider West’s strategy of support for Ukraine throughout that period. The target of these tools has changed significantly, initially aimed at deterring Russia from further aggression after 2014 to seeking to restrict its state capacity and ability to wage the war since 2022. But their global impact and Putin’s attempts to undermine the international order through his own weaponization of Russia’s economy and its commodities base have left the world in a new era of international economic competition, and other powers, great and small, are being impacted in ways unforeseen. States are, in turn, also learning lessons from this new era of economic warfare for the future, and the risks they might face from such conflict. This paper examines the impact on one often overlooked but deeply affected country, the Republic of Korea (or South Korea). Seoul has a unique position in the economic war in that it was arguably the largest Western ally that did not join the sanctions regime against Russia after Putin’s annexation of Crimea and fomenting conflict in eastern Ukraine in 2014. In fact, as we will see, a number of crucial economic ties between Russia and South Korea grew significantly thereafter; although this was also the case for a number of countries that induced sanctions—Germany’s gas linkages with Russia in the Nord Stream 2 pipeline are perhaps the best known example. This paper will examine Seoul’s strategic considerations in doing so, and the reasons that the West did not put substantial pressure on South Korea to join the sanctions regime at the time. Seoul did, however, join the sanctions regime fully in 2022. The domestic political considerations in South Korea played a key role in that shift and will also determine how the policy’s effectiveness is judged and, in turn, how South Korea may be positioned for future similar economic conflict between the West and China.
Topic:
Foreign Policy, Sanctions, Economy, Strategic Interests, and Russia-Ukraine War
Political Geography:
Russia, Asia, and South Korea

15. Building a Quad-South Korea Partnership for Climate Action

Author:
Kristi Govella
Publication Date:
07-2022
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
German Marshall Fund of the United States (GMFUS)
Abstract:
Climate change is a pressing global problem that requires action at the local, national, and international levels. While most policy has logically focused on creating international pacts to address and mitigate climate change, interest in regional or minilateral cooperation among smaller groups of countries has also grown in recent years. When the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue—more commonly known as the Quad—convened its first leader-level summit in March 2021, its member countries Australia, India, Japan, and the United States identified climate change as a priority for the grouping and for the Indo-Pacific. They established a Quad Climate Working Group to strengthen implementation of the Paris Agreement and to cooperate on climate mitigation, adaptation, resilience, technology, capacity building, and finance.1 Since then, the Quad has continued to expand its climate activities. In September 2021, the grouping added the formation of a green-shipping network and the establishment of a clean-hydrogen partnership to its goals.2 In May 2022, the four partners took the additional step of launching the Quad Climate Change Adaptation and Mitigation Package (Q-CHAMP).3 Why have the Quad countries decided to include climate change on their agenda? They share serious concerns about climate change, which poses a significant threat to themselves and to the Indo-Pacific as a whole. In recent years, climate change has risen in prominence on the domestic political agendas of the four Quad partners, and there are gains to be achieved through coordination and cooperation of their separate national efforts. At a time when many countries feel that international institutions simply are not working quickly or effectively enough, minilateral initiatives such as the Quad have gained appeal as a more flexible way to facilitate joint action.
Topic:
Foreign Policy, Climate Change, Partnerships, Quad Alliance, and Defense Cooperation
Political Geography:
Asia, South Korea, United States of America, and Indo-Pacific

16. Expanding Engagement among South Korea and the Quad Countries in the Indo-Pacific

Author:
Kristi Govella, Garima Mohan, and Bonnie S. Glaser
Publication Date:
06-2022
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
German Marshall Fund of the United States (GMFUS)
Abstract:
Since its revival in 2017, the quadrilateral dialogue among Australia, India, Japan, and the United States known as the “Quad” has become a stronger, more institutionalized grouping with a broad and growing agenda. As a leading economy, a vibrant democracy, and a key US strategic ally, South Korea stands out as one of the most promising potential partners for the Quad. With a new administration in office in Seoul, the time is ripe for South Korea to expand its engagement with the Quad countries in the Indo-Pacific. Even without formally expanding the membership of the Quad, which is currently not under consideration by its members, there are pragmatic and effective ways for these five countries to pursue their shared interests and values through a flexible set of mechanisms across a wide variety of crucial issues. After a brief review of the debates about the Quad in South Korea, this paper presents a framework for the country to consult, coordinate, and cooperate with Quad members through distinct institutional pathways: bilateral mechanisms, sub-Quad minilateral mechanisms, issue-specific engagement to achieve a specific functional goal, and more formal Quad Plus engagement on a broad strategic level. The paper offers the following recommendations for South Korea and the Quad countries to deepen their engagement in eight areas that correspond with Quad working groups and activities: critical and emerging technologies, infrastructure, health, climate change, education and people-to-people exchange, maritime safety and security, cybersecurity, and outer space.
Topic:
Foreign Policy, Quad Alliance, and Defense Cooperation
Political Geography:
Asia, South Korea, and Indo-Pacific

17. Sustaining Democratic Unity for Ukraine’s Victory and South Korea’s Roles in This

Author:
Yang Gyu Kim
Publication Date:
11-2022
Content Type:
Commentary and Analysis
Institution:
East Asia Institute (EAI)
Abstract:
The war situation regarding Russia and Ukraine seems to be changing, as Kherson has recently returned to Ukraine. Yang Gyu Kim, a principal researcher at the East Asia Institute, considers the Russia-Ukraine war a “war of value,” and stresses that Ukraine’s victory is highly important, since it involves the restoration of global governance and has strategic implications in various regions around the world. Considering the post-war measures, Kim argues that the most contentious issue to be addressed is the genocide committed by Russian troops toward Ukraine civilians. While various reports confirm the allegations of genocide, he explains establishing its allegations and filing the case to the International Court of Justice remain challenging. Finally, Kim suggests three things that the Korean government can consider to help Ukraine: closely cooperating with the United States and Japan to sanction Russia, providing further humanitarian aid to Kyiv, and supporting Ukraine to win the legal fight in proving the war crimes as genocide.
Topic:
Foreign Policy, Genocide, Democracy, and Russia-Ukraine War
Political Geography:
Ukraine, Eastern Europe, Asia, and South Korea

18. Foreign Policy Recharged after Defusing MAGA: Biden’s Indo-Pacific Strategy and the Korean Peninsula

Author:
Byoung Kwon Sohn
Publication Date:
11-2022
Content Type:
Commentary and Analysis
Institution:
East Asia Institute (EAI)
Abstract:
Byoung Kwon Sohn, Professor at Chung-Ang University, predicts that the Biden administration will likely stick to its stance on foreign policy, with the Senate secure in Democratic hands and the inter-party House seat margin found to be smaller than expected. Encountering the recent escalation in North Korea, he claims that Washington will keep the Korea-U.S.-Japan trilateral security cooperation in place and strengthen its commitment to extended deterrence to its two Asian allies. Professor Sohn also highlights that the United States will continue to pursue its current Indo-Pacific strategy to contain Chinese influence in the region whilst attempting to maintain the status quo in the Taiwan Strait.
Topic:
Foreign Policy, Bilateral Relations, Domestic Politics, and Joe Biden
Political Geography:
Asia, South Korea, North Korea, and Indo-Pacific

19. The Biden Administration’s Economic Security Policies and ROK-U.S. Relations

Author:
Wang Hwi Lee
Publication Date:
11-2022
Content Type:
Commentary and Analysis
Institution:
East Asia Institute (EAI)
Abstract:
Wang Hwi Lee, Professor at Ajou University, claims that United States’ move to exclude China from global supply chains will likely benefit Korean semiconductor and secondary battery businesses as Beijing’s aggressive push to become a world leader in high-tech industries poses a systemic threat to Korea. However, it is difficult for South Korea to drastically lower its economic dependence on the Chinese market to the level that the U.S. government desires, and thus not to be eligible for subsidies that the U.S. government provides. In this regard, Professor Lee points out that Korean firms are about to lose their share and returns in both the American and Chinese markets in the short run. Yet, he also emphasizes that economic tension between Seoul and Washington must not affect their military alliance, given that the security threats from North Korea are getting intensified.
Topic:
International Relations, Foreign Policy, Supply Chains, Economic Security, and Semiconductors
Political Geography:
South Korea, North Korea, and United States of America

20. The Road to Denuclearization of the DPRK: The DPRK’s Strategy and the ROK-U.S. Response Plan

Author:
Won Gon Park
Publication Date:
09-2022
Content Type:
Commentary and Analysis
Institution:
East Asia Institute (EAI)
Abstract:
Won Gon Park, a professor at Ewha Woman’s University, appreciates that the Yoon government’s “Audacious Initiative” reaffirms the goals and methods of denuclearization. However, Dr. Park points out that Pyongyang refuses to accept President Yoon’s proposal to receive economic incentives in return for denuclearization, as DPRK has recently passed a radical law enshrining the right to automatically use preemptive nuclear strikes to protect itself. In addition, given that DPRK continues its offensive posture refusing to have any negotiations with Washington or Seoul, he highlights that South Korea and the United States should first agree on a precise definition, goals, and approaches to denuclearization.
Topic:
International Relations, Foreign Policy, Nuclear Weapons, and Denuclearization
Political Geography:
Asia, South Korea, North Korea, and United States of America