Korean Endgame: A Strategy for Reunification and U.S. Disengagement

By Selig S. Harrison. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 2002. 409 pages. $29.95. The core message of this closely argued book is that American military presence in the Korean peninsula will gradually wane in the near future, and that thoughtful preparations for this should be considered now. Whatever the readers of Korean Endgame think of Selig Harrison's ideas, his message should be considered seriously because of his decades-long access to North Korean, Chinese, and Japanese decisionmakers. Korean Endgame has strong chess overtones, given the China/Russia/Japan/ North Korea/South Korea/US grid as the arena where all country actors have only hawks and pragmatists (no doves fly in this six-dimensional space). A fascinating aspect of the book is the ping-pong dominance of hard-liners in Seoul, Pyongyang, and Washington, intent upon sabotaging their own sides' negotiating efforts. Part I, titled "Will North Korea Collapse?," is a welcome presentation of relevant facts about the North. Part II deals with the postponed dream of reunification. Part III, "Toward U.S. Disengagement," centers on the "Tar Baby Syndrome." Nuclear policy is the concern of the six chapters in Part IV, and "Korea in Northeast Asia," as a well-argued Part V, concludes the book. Some degree of urgency pervades the text. Harrison notes that "Koreans on both sides of the thirty-eighth parallel regard a rearmed Japan as their major potential security threat." Chapter 15, "Guidelines for U.S. Policy," presents a reasoned approach, with safeguards to protect US interests, and shows that Harrison is not a cat's paw for North Korea. The author points out that Beijing and Moscow have moved to positions as "honest brokers" as their comradely enthusiasms have waned. He notes, "Both Moscow and Beijing are increasingly attempting to play the role of honest broker between the North and South. That is what they want the United States to do, and that is what the North also wants the United States to do." Harrison offers "U.S. as an honest broker" as the leading concept in the peninsula's short-term future. The phrase is not listed in the Index, but it appears a handful of times in the text. Relations between South Korea and North Korea, as one would expect, form a central theme in the book. It may surprise Parameters readers that both sides in the peninsula think that the United States is mostly responsible for the division of the Koreas, that they both think that Japan has no interest in the reunification of the peninsula, and that both regard Japan as their common enemy. …