Recently the mass media and public opinion makers have raised some questions about the competence of the Foreign Ministry in dealing with the issues of THAAD and the AIIB. They argue that these two issues seriously affect South Korea’s relations with the U.S., China and Japan and therefore have serious implications for its national security interests, but the Foreign Ministry has simply maintained a policy of “strategic ambiguity.” Some go further to assert that this kind of wayward attitude reveals that the Foreign Ministry is incompetent to deal with great power dynamics in Northeast Asia and does not have a long-term national security strategy. 

The conflict between the foreign policy establishment and the public in a democracy is a common phenomenon, mainly because the people are entitled to know and criticize what the government does. But in the case of national security issues, the government discloses the result of its decision on a certain issue, not the processes of decision-making and negotiation. Although, it can issue and publicize its long-term national security strategy for the benefit of both its own people and foreign countries.

There are two main reasons why the government should not disclose its decision-making and negotiating processes in a democracy. One is that in diplomatic negotiations the parties involved are states and no state prefers open negotiations to secret ones. Most of the subjects of negotiations involve their respective national security interests and therefore the negotiators do not want their citizens and the outside world to gain access to their negotiating strategies and processes.

The negotiators are also in possession of the information and intelligence which are not available to the public. Another reason is that the foreign policy of a country should not be influenced by public opinion.

First, national security interest is not a matter to be determined by a majority vote of the people. National security involves the survival of a state and is greatly influenced by that state’s power relations with other states. In the contemporary world the nation-state is the basic unit of international relations. Under this international system, the citizens of a state are obligated to put top priority on the survival of their country.

Ordinary citizens tend to confuse national interest with public interest, and some claim that they themselves have the right to participate in the foreign policymaking process despite the fact that do not have the expertise and accurate information or intelligence on concrete diplomatic issues. It may be desirable in theory but very dangerous in reality because people are likely to be divided on national security issues as in domestic issues, and the division of public opinion on serious national security issues often endangers the very survival of their country.

This is the reason why most scholars and experts oppose the interference of the general public, the mass media, civil society organizations, and opinion makers in the foreign policymaking process. In a democracy the people give a mandate for foreign policymaking to the government. Here the government includes the executive and legislative branches. Within the executive branch the foreign ministry is exclusively in charge of diplomacy, while the legislative body can deliberate and recommend certain foreign policies but cannot participate in the decision-making and negotiating processes.

A competent foreign office, through its diplomatic missions and relevant government agencies, collects all the necessary information on international issues to formulate foreign policies. Unless it obtains all the available information on a particular issue, evaluates various policy options, and assesses the short- and long-term implications for each policy option, it would not submit its proposal to the head of state or government for his or her final approval. The whole process should be kept secret from the public and the outside world.

One problem in foreign policymaking in a democratic state is that the incumbent government tends to adopt foreign policies on a short-term basis. In a presidential system the president tends to adopt foreign policies that are likely to make him or her popular during his or her tenure. The foreign office, therefore, has an important duty to persuade the political leadership to pursue foreign policies from a long-term perspective. But the foreign office itself suffers from this kind of nearsighted thinking.

In the case of Korea, the foreign minister’s average length of service is less than half of the presidential term. This makes the foreign minister become more concerned about or interested in the short-term impact of a policy. The very nature of the bureaucratic system also creates a culture of shortsighted decision-making because each foreign ministry official is assigned with a compartmentalized task and is too preoccupied to pay attention to its long-term implications for national security.

One good solution to this problem is to establish an office which can overcome these shortcomings and maintain a channel to public opinion. The Korean Foreign Ministry has the Office of Policy Planning modeled on the Policy Planning Staff of the U.S. Department of State. But its functions are limited to policy planning, coordination and analysis.

The office should be revamped in terms of membership and functions. Its membership should be composed of experts from outside the government as well as foreign ministry officials. Its functions should also include the evaluation of long-term strategies for certain issues; a liaison with the academic community, think tanks, and civil society organizations; and a dissent channel to bring dissenting or alternative views on important foreign policy issues to the foreign minister.

Relating to long-term national security strategy, the presidential office can issue a statement or report on the Korean national security strategy regularly as the U.S. and Russian presidential offices do.

By Park Sang-seek

Park Sang-seek is a former rector of the Graduate Institute of Peace Studies at Kyung Hee University and the author of “Globalized Korea and Localized Globe.” ― Ed.