A Study On Rho Moo-Hyun Administration's Foreign Policy Towards The United States

After president candidate Rho Moo-hyun became the 16th president of Republic of Korea (ROK) on his independent and progressive foreign policy principles, people kept guessing which kind of foreign policy he would choose toward the United States, self-reliant or alliance-reliant?In order to give a throughout analyses on the foreign policies of Rho Moo-hyun administration toward the United States, I choose to use the structure of the adaptation theory to shed a light on the cases in which Rho's administration agreed on dispatching troops to Iraq under the calls from the United States, once before the Iraq war and once after the Iraq war.For Rho's first decision on dispatching troops to Iraq, the external stress is rather stronger than the inner stress. In other words, the external stress is much more essential to the decision maker, since the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK) claimed to restart its nuclear program and the U.S.-ROK alliance has been weakened at the time. Rho has to choose the acquiescence adaptation toward the demand from external no matter the decision maker's personal tendency.For Rho's second decision on dispatching troops to Iraq, the external stress is rather looser than the first time since the opening of the 1st round of 6-ways talk light up hopes on taking the peninsula's nuclear crises under control. Meanwhile the mass situation in Iraq after war and the presidential election made the Bush administration much more anxious looking forward to ROK's additional ministry support. The looseness of external stress provides much more spaces for Rho to bargain with Bush for a softer approach to dealing with the DPRK's issue. As for the inner stress, although the public voice turned to be more negative than the first time, Rho had changed the decision flow to make sure much more public opinions could be involved in the political system. In this way, Rho's administration choose the promotive adaptation toward both external and inner environment.Finally, we come to the conclusion that according to the international situation and as far as ROK's national defense still relies on the United States, alliance-reliance policy will always be the first choice for the ROK's government towards the United States, and self-reliance policy can only be realized during the peaceful period.