By C. Raja Mohan
What India’s and South Korea’s dealings with Washington tell us about real and imagined U.S. peace initiatives in Asia.
Although there are striking similarities between the geopolitics of the Indian subcontinent and the Korean Peninsula, the international relations community rarely pays attention to their parallel trajectories. Recent events provide a useful starting point for a comparison: Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s troubled dealings with U.S. President Donald Trump contrast sharply with South Korean President Lee Jae-myung’s smoother handling of the White House’s real and imagined peace diplomacy during his visit to Washington last month. Modi’s difficulties and Lee’s successes also offer insights into the prospects for Trump’s peace initiatives in Asia.
In the 1940s, the subcontinent and the Korean Peninsula were both partitioned—under very different circumstances but with similarly lasting consequences. These divisions created two of the world’s most intractable conflicts: between India and Pakistan and between North and South Korea. The proliferation of nuclear weapons in both regions by the 1990s elevated them into major security concerns for Washington and the world.
Whereas the United States played a direct role in Korea’s division and has been deeply engaged in the peninsula’s security ever since, its role in South Asia was inherited from Britain and has always been less direct, if enduring. The rigidity of the Korean order was codified in Washington’s alliance with Seoul. In South Asia, by contrast, the United States kept ties with both India and Pakistan.