Korea-India Bilateral Relations

Going Beyond the Global Pivotal State Rhetoric

The Yoon Administration presents its foreign policy through a rhetorical frame. Its two guiding strategic documents, the Strategy for a Free, Peaceful, and Prosperous Indo-Pacific Region and the National Security Strategy: Global Pivotal State for Freedom, Peace and Prosperity are awash with the key terms of freedom, democracy, and human rights - all encapsulated around a single catchphrase, the “Global Pivotal State”.

Commentators are always quick to jump on the bandwagon. The catchphrase supports op-eds, a growing number of thinktank reports, and some (very important) conferences that keep everyone busy. Some have quite rightly been more circumspect. For policymakers and diplomats, seeing through this rhetorical frame is important - this is particularly true in the context of building bilateral relations. 

In a few years, the Yoon Administration will begin to wind down and many more will come to accept the Global Pivotal State rhetoric as ringing hollow. This short study first details the hurdles of concentrating on rhetoric over substance. It then turns to the rationale for taking a longer-term approach to building Korea-India relations beyond the rhetoric.

The pivot as a rhetorical frame

Language is critical to diplomacy. In Greek mythology, Hermes was not only associated with diplomacy, but also language, persuasion, and trickery. Language colors and contextualizes policy, but also persuades and deceives. Rhetorical framing constructs scaffolds to shape how individuals and/or social groups perceive, comprehend and react to communicative acts. In diplomacy, rhetorical framing seeks to color and contextualize policy in order to influence and persuade, and sometimes to trick and deceive, stakeholders and partners. The rhetorical framing of the Global Pivotal State is no different.

The Yoon Administration presents its catchphrase as a state that holds a significant role in maintaining the international order. Contextually, it characterizes Korea as an influential facilitator, a reliable partner state, and importantly, a promoter of freedom, democracy, and human rights. For those who follow South Korea’s diplomacy carefully, the genesis of the catchphrase follows a familiar path. It can be traced back through the early work of academics turned policymakers and/or advisors. Their ideas bubble up from graduate study; appear intermittently in op-eds, academic papers, and social media posts; touch the surface in earlier administrations; and then finally hit the sunlight. As is often the case with the initiatives of academic turned policymakers, there is more form than substance.

Academics routinely use international relations terms that pass language and time barriers with imperfect correlations. These terms can take on different meanings as they enter new linguistic, cultural and temporal settings. In extreme forms, representatives from partner states can use the same terms, but take away very different meanings. 

Reflecting this, the term “pivot” once related to a state that took on importance because, just like in engineering, it acted as a point on which pressure could be applied through a fulcrum to alter the condition of a system. Pivots turn, and herein lay the rationale to control them. In this way, when Zbigniew Brzezinski referred to Korea as a pivot in his 1997 text The Grand Chessboard. For Brzezinski, Korea was a state whose importance derived from its “sensitive location” and “potentially vulnerable condition” to primary power competitors. There’s a reason that Korea is divided, and that reason was its strategic location and vulnerability. Twenty-five years later and across the Pacific Ocean, what it means to be a pivotal state has transformed significantly to its current promoters. The term Global Pivotal State has no real meaning outside its use within Yoon Administration promotional materials.

On the positive side, the term Global Pivotal State is also ambiguous. It has a degree of semantic vagueness, which allows individuals to infer meaning based on linguistic practice, context, and sometimes, desire. This essentially allows individuals to hear what they want to hear - an important quality when sitting on the fence between two demanding partners.

However, here lies one reason to be cautious about buying into foreign policy rhetoric. It provides only a weak reed on which to build policy. Additionally, five-year terms with up to a year of settling in at the beginning and a year of winding down at the end mean that policy action occurs within a relatively narrow timeframe. To better understand and respond to South Korea’s foreign policy, we must first peel away the rhetoric.  

Peeling away the rhetoric

As much as its supporters would like to believe, the Yoon Administration’s foreign policy has not yet altered South Korea’s long-term foreign policy trajectory. Rather than a pivot, it pays to think of South Korea’s foreign policy in the context of a pendulum.

Five years of the Moon Administration swung South Korea’s foreign policy pendulum to a height that strained relations with Japan and the US. Through a series of policy actions, the Yoon Administration restored relations. The foreign policy pendulum thus currently sits at its original resting position. The Yoon Administration will likely allow the pendulum to continue on its path. It will seek to strengthen relations until they reach a height at the opposite arc. Relations with Japan and the US will improve, relations with China will deteriorate, and then in the next administration, the pendulum will swing back to its original position.     

Beyond this pendulum swing and its five-year bouts of foreign policy rhetoric, lie South Korea’s three longer-term foreign policy aims: First, the defense of the nation and the security of its citizens. Second, the maintenance of prosperity and economic well-being - in the context of an economy structured around a small number of highly dominant conglomerates. Last, and more relevant in the context of Korea, the pursuit of a capacity to support independent action. This last long-term aim is a powerful driving force in South Korea’s foreign policy and is often overlooked in assessments (especially in Washington), despite it being the driving force in decisions ranging from the late 1940s to today. It is from these longer-term aims that we need to assess Korea-India relations. 

Beyond the pivot

India has a long foreign policy tradition as an independent actor built upon systemic conditions that restricted its relevance to global competition. For better or worse, this tradition is transforming as India becomes an increasingly relevant actor. India’s recent foreign policy, epitomized by the “here, there, and everywhere” summitry of Prime Minister Modi, highlights that the prominence of India in global affairs, including in East Asia, is set to grow. This presents opportunities for South Korea.

Secondary states, such as South Korea, must ultimately overcome primary state opposition and/or indifference to their objectives. It is inimical to think that Seoul’s diplomatic objectives will always align with China, Japan, Russia or even the United States. Independent action for a secondary state relies upon the capacity to influence and/or persuade its primary state partners. 

To do so, secondary states must build coalitions. They must pursue “snowball” coalition building - secure the support of smaller states, other secondary states, regional and multilateral bodies, as well as NGOs, until opposing the initiative becomes that much more difficult for their primary state partners. India as an increasingly influential state in global affairs, adds weight to any snowball. It pays to recall the role that India played as an independent diplomatic actor at the height of primary power competition during the Korean War. Today, India’s role as an economic partner could not be clearer - its role as a potentially independent diplomatic partner deserves a lot more attention. 

South Korea faces significant challenges in improving bilateral relations with India. Chief amongst these challenges is the lack of domestic constituency. Domestic constituency in a bilateral relationship relates to the willingness of individuals within the epistemic community, foreign ministry, executive, and wider government to see the partner state as a credible and ideal partner. 

For many multicultural states, the domestic constituency that supports the bilateral relationship with India rests in the diaspora. It’s significant that on each of Prime Minister Modi’s recent overseas visits he has engaged with diaspora communities, which are increasingly acting as building blocks to strengthen bilateral relationships. 

Korea lacks a significant Indian diaspora. How can South Korea increase the likelihood that its policymakers see India as an example and/or willing participant to address policy problems? The answer lies in targeted two-way public diplomacy with a focus on education (university MOUs, faculty exchanges, joint courses, joint degree programs), people-to-people links (sister city relationships, cultural exchanges, working holiday and labor agreements) and public service exchanges (parliamentary, civil service, and executive office exchanges). 

Building a domestic constituency to support bilateral relations is not easy. It requires both a visionary outlook and long-term commitment. Seoul has started the ball rolling with initiatives such as the establishment of the Center for ASEAN-Indian Studies at the Institute for Foreign Affairs and National Security (IFANS), and the establishment of a Delhi Office for the Korea Institute for International Economic Policy (KIEP), but more needs to be done.

Foreign policy rhetoric that highlights aspects of superficial similarity, be it ‘pivotal state’, ‘balancer’ or ‘middle power’, does attract attention. It presents epistemic communities with a justification to pay more attention to the bilateral relationship. However, ultimately this attention is short-lived, can distract attention from long-term relationship building, and can even breed cynicism. South Korea needs to build domestic constituency that supports the India-Korea bilateral relationship in the longer-term. It needs to go beyond the rhetoric.

As published August 2023 at the Institute for Security & Development (ISDP)