Sen. Andy Kim (D-NJ) appears to have forgotten who he is supposed to represent. Kim criticized the Trump administration’s new National Security Strategy, complaining that it “would abandon American global leadership.” He was upset that the NSS doesn’t mention North Korea: “Certainly, I am concerned about its deprioritization when it comes to the Korean Peninsula.”
Kim’s extra-friendly attention to the Republic of Korea likely reflects his personal connection as the son of South Korean immigrants. While foreign familial and cultural relationships are common in America, in a case like this they dangerously distort U.S. policy. It is not in America’s interest to continue defending the ROK more than seven decades after the conclusion of the Korean War.
As a nation of immigrants, the United States long has dealt with the phenomenon of “hyphenated Americans,” people who retained some affection and even loyalty to their ancestral homeland. This phenomenon wasn’t much of a problem in the 19th century, since Washington generally avoided overseas misadventures. The Mexican–American War and Spanish–American War reflected imperialist expansion rather than ancestral politics.
However, that changed with World War I, when one-third of Americans had at least one foreign-born parent, mostly from Europe. As the conflict raged, Theodore Roosevelt insisted that real Americans could only support the U.S. “A hyphenated American is not an American at all,” said Roosevelt, speaking as a former president. He worried that people would seek to influence Washington’s policy in favor of the nation whence they ultimately had sprung. Said Roosevelt: “The man who calls himself an American citizen and who yet shows by his actions that he is primarily the citizen of a foreign land, plays a thoroughly mischievous part in the life of our body politic.”
He was right to be concerned, but as a shameless warmonger who wanted America to intervene in Europe’s continent-wide murderfest, he criticized only opponents of U.S. intervention. The political establishment, dominated by pro-British sentiment, was a soft target for London’s expansive and expensive misleading propaganda campaign, which helped turn Washington into a combatant.
Although the U.S. had no compelling interest in joining, British agents found President Woodrow Wilson to be an especially easy sell. A vainglorious megalomaniac who imagined himself reordering the entire globe, Wilson dragged a reluctant nation into a terrible battle among imperialist powers, none of whom represented humanity well. Glorious paragons of democracy the members of the U.S.-backed Entente were not. France wallowed in revanchist lust for the territories of Alsace and Lorraine that Prussia had seized in 1871—and which France had taken from German principalities a couple centuries earlier. Tsarist Russia was a despotic autocracy marked by antisemitic violence. Italy traded its soldiers’ lives for a promised share of the territorial spoils of victory. The UK was the globe’s primary colonial power, holding much of humanity in bondage.
However, none of this mattered to Wilson, who offered grandiloquent rhetoric on behalf of the war while demonizing proponents of peace. He too spewed particular scorn against “hyphenated Americans,” especially ethnic Germans, but also the Irish, for supposedly putting their ancient homelands before his egotistical fantasies. Contrary to Wilson’s inflated reputation, he proved to be a naïve simpleton at the negotiating table, easily manipulated by the other combatants, who used the Versailles Treaty to loot the losers, while constructing a new international order intended to guarantee their winnings well into the future. Alas, the effort collapsed disastrously in the 1930s and ended with the far more deadly and destructive World War II.
History proved the hyphenated Americans—in which Wilson did not include those of British descent—to be right. These people’s political activities had been mainly defensive, attempting to prevent others from turning the U.S. into an offensive geopolitical weapon in an overseas conflict that not only targeted their old lands but endangered their new homes. Had American politics been dominated by the Midwest rather than Northeast, the U.S. would not have entered the European abattoir in which some 117,000 Americans died and a couple hundred thousand more were injured or sickened, all the while planting the seeds of World War II.
However, as U.S. power increased, the influence of hyphenated Americans metastasized, expanding in scope and turning to offensive purposes. No longer were children of long-ago immigrants stubbornly opposing Washington warring on their homelands. More often, recent refugees—from Eastern Europe, China, and Cuba during the Cold War, and an increasing potpourri of other nations in later years—have been pushing Washington to promote foreign interests that they still counted as their own, using military force to do so, if necessary.
For instance, for six decades ethnic Cubans have held a malign stranglehold over U.S. policy toward Cuba. Included in their number is Secretary of State Marco Rubio, who backs continued economic sanctions on the island state despite six decades of failure. Refugees from other nations, too, turned into potent opponents of U.S. reconciliation with previous enemies, such as Vietnam. Albanian-Americans openly pressed the U.S. to intervene militarily against Serbia to free Kosovo, a territory with an ethnic-Albanian majority. Ethnic Eastern Europeans were among the most vocal proponents of NATO expansion, which did much to trigger Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, undermining U.S. interests in Europe. Naturally, many Ukrainian-Americans have turned into fervent advocates of supporting Kiev today. American-born Natalie Jaresko even served as finance minister in Ukraine’s government following the 2014 Maidan Revolution. The most dramatic example is, of course, Israel. However, in this case religion may be a bigger fount of loyalty than ethnicity, with evangelical Christians constituting the largest share of seeming “hyphenated Americans.”
Less well publicized but also important is the impact of this phenomenon on U.S. policy in Asia. Indeed, while Asian-Americans have received less attention than Cuban-Americans, their impact could turn out to be much greater, given the growing danger of a nuclear conflict involving the U.S. China is commonly seen as the greatest threat to America—internationally, only Beijing is a “peer competitor” to the U.S., with a large economy, population, and military.
And then there are the Koreans. That Sen. Kim presumably feels affection for his parents’ birthplace is unexceptional. Indeed, he is not the only ethnic Korean legislator promoting his ancestral homeland. Rep. Young Kim (R-CA) is a South Korean immigrant and also an active advocate on behalf of the ROK. Earlier this year she declared that “both Congress and the current and incoming administrations must work to ensure our continued commitment to the U.S.-ROK alliance and a free and democratic South Korea.” She added:
The U.S.–Republic of Korea (ROK) Alliance is ironclad and built upon our shared values of freedom and democracy, human rights and the rule of law. However, with the recent political turmoil in South Korea, our economic and security alliance must remain strong. Despite facing one of its greatest challenges, I have faith in the democratic commitment of the Korean people.
The United States must pay attention. Why? Because South Korea is a key ally in keeping the Indo-Pacific free and open. As growing aggression from North Korea and malign influence from the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) threaten a free and open Indo-Pacific, the U.S.–ROK alliance is more important than ever to deter these threats and promote peace through strength.[
This political boilerplate contributes to a policy mindset that Washington’s potpourri of allies around the world are more important to Americans than we are to them, which is of course nonsense. There was a good argument after World War II and the Korean War for the U.S. to extend a temporary security guarantee and provide a temporary military garrison, until its allies in those conflicts recovered. After that, Washington should have turned responsibility for their defense back to them.
Instead, the U.S. has kept the increasingly prosperous and influential ROK from taking over its own defense. For years Seoul has remained a welfare client of Washington, even as it raced ahead economically. South Korea escaped immiserating poverty during the 1960s. Since then, it has dramatically surpassed the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea and now possesses a GDP around 50 times as large, along with twice the population, a vast technological lead, and an expansive global presence. Yet Washington continues to garrison the South, promise intervention in the case of war, and prepare to use nuclear weapons if necessary.
The fact that the ROK spends a larger share of its GDP on the military than do most other U.S. allies is not much of an accomplishment, given how badly most of them lag behind, having spent decades expecting Americans to do the heavy lifting. If Seoul believes that its survival is threatened, rather than begging for Washington for protection it should be spending more—whatever seems necessary—to protect its people and preserve its state. South Korea’s survival matters a lot more for South Koreans than for Americans. There is no reason that the U.S. should continue to defend the ROK, along with Japan, Europe, a gaggle of Middle Eastern states, and whoever else hires a DC lobbyist or two.
Indeed, Washington’s Korea commitment is becoming increasingly dangerous. The peninsula has long teetered on the brink of renewed hostilities, The two Koreas have never signed a peace treaty, instead living under an armistice. Although the latter has mostly held, violent provocations have been frequent. At least for the U.S., the costs were originally limited, since the DPRK had no means to reach the American homeland. No longer. With North Korean development of nuclear weapons and ballistic missiles, perhaps aided by Russia, Pyongyang almost certainly will eventually be able to target U.S. cities. While Supreme Leader Kim Jong Un would likely strike only in extremis, the probability of an American victory might push him, like Samson, to bring down the temple upon himself along with everyone else. Nothing in the peninsula is worth the U.S. taking that risk.
Of course, the Washington establishment remains reflexively and overwhelmingly committed to today’s policy bankruptcy, with Uncle Sam subsidizing the rest of the world while borrowing wildly, $2 trillion and more annually as far into the future as the Congressional Budget Office can see. Legislators elected by the American people effectively represent foreign governments. For instance, the House recently voted to limit any withdrawal of troops from South Korea despite the latter’s increasing defense capabilities.
Yet the ROK, like Europe, vastly outranges its potential adversary. There is no reason for Americans to do Seoul’s defense job for it. Washington should wind down its force presence and end its security guarantee over time, working with Seoul as it increases its capabilities and acquires the means to deter Pyongyang from invading and to defeat the latter if war nevertheless ensues. If that requires a major increase in military outlays and expansion of military manpower, so be it. South Korea’s security is a vital interest for the ROK, not America.
Along the way the U.S. should abandon thoughts of retaining bases in the peninsula for use against China. Seoul is unlikely to commit national suicide: Backing Washington would turn the South’s huge neighbor into a permanent enemy and invite preemption in a Sino–American conflict. What of nuclear weapons? Advocates of “extended deterrence,” who promise to go nuclear on Seoul’s behalf, routinely insist on sustaining nonproliferation while ignoring the growing danger facing the U.S. homeland if America goes to war against the DPRK. The better option—albeit second best which, unfortunately, is all that is available—would be to bless and perhaps even aid Seoul’s acquisition of its own nuclear deterrent. That would have the secondary benefit of constraining any Chinese adventurism, admittedly unlikely, directed at the ROK.
There is much to celebrate in America’s historic willingness to accept immigrants, especially refugees from overseas conflicts. However, so-called hyphenated Americans should abandon the interests of the old world even as they celebrate continuing family and cultural ties. Legislators, especially, should leave their ethnic backgrounds outside the Capitol when they vote. Too many unnecessary military commitments have been advanced by too many Americans representing too many foreign countries. When it comes to risking the lives of Americans, U.S. policymakers should unequivocally put America first.
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