The domino effect
Chris Wells takes a cursory clatter through what the world's English-language press is saying about Poland
Bypassing the enjoyable stories this week dealing with the 25th anniversary of John-Paul the Second's pontificate, there's an interesting set-to bubbling away on the Asia/Pacific rim citing, at least in part, Poland's raised international profile.
South Korea's The Korea Herald reported that the South Korean Ambassador to the U.S., Han Seung-joo, had publicly urged his government to accede to Washington's request to send combat troops to Iraq unconditionally. The article pointed out what an unusual, not to say risky, challenge this was. Especially as only the previous day his boss, the Korean President Roh Moo-hyun, had said that any deployment was dependant on a peaceful solution being found to the current standoff over North Korea's nuclear weapons program.
As benefits, the Ambassador Han highlighted better relations with the U.S. and, as a result, that credit agencies, such as Moody's, would improve Seoul's sovereign credit rating. As reasons, he cited the sacrifices Americans had made to keep South Korea free in the past and that, in its hour of need, Poland had so far been the only country to send a noticeable number of combat troops, apart from the U.K. The Korea Herald's article was balanced and thoughtful, acknowledging that sending troops would be a courageous decision.
However, a couple of days later The Japan Times took an altogether harder line. It suggested that Roh's public agonizing over making the decision was as important an indicator of his leadership skills as the decision itself. The article, entitle "Roh's dangerous game of equivocation" centered, as the headline suggests, on the Korean President's prevarication over whether or not to commit a 5000-strong brigade. Part of the ruling Millennium Democratic Party has broken away to form a new political party, and the article stated that Roh is now a lame duck President, reliant on support from opposition parties to govern. Worse, that's also how he is viewed in Washington. By linking any deployment to the complicated talks surrounding the situation in the North, The Japan Times claimed that Roh had turned a difficult decision into a lose-lose situation for South Korea. The article again highlighted Poland's deployment, but this time as the black sheep, saying that all other potential troop-contributing nations had made participation conditional on a new U.N. Security Council resolution. The central problem is that Roh fears damaging the delicate negotiations with the North by sending troops to Iraq, whereas without concerted diplomatic effort and support from America, it is unlikely that a solution will be found soon.
Perhaps the most revealing piece of information is that the South Korean Army is in fact larger than the U.S. Army. If Roh chose to send 5000 troops to Iraq, it would constitute less than one percent of the total number of the South Korean government's men under arms. However, whether that would be enough to get Moody's to improve the country's credit rating is still debatable. After all, Poland sending troops to Iraq didn't have much of an impact on Standard & Poor's decision to downgrade Poland's rating recently.
