American Nuclear Hegemony in Korea
| Date | 01 December 1988 |
| DOI | 10.1177/002234338802500403 |
| Author | Peter Hayes |
| Published date | 01 December 1988 |
| Subject Matter | Articles |
American
Nuclear
Hegemony
in
Korea
PETER
HAYES
Nautilus
Pacific
Research,
Leverett,
Mass.
The
author
draws
on
Cox
and
Schurmanns’
differing
conceptions
of
hegemony
to
analyze
the
exercise
of
American
nuclear
power
in
the
Pacific.
American
hegemony
was
nuclear
because
strategic
weapons
were
integral
to
alliance
ideology,
institutional
integration,
and
force
structures.
In
many
ways,
nuclear
weapons
became
the
military
pnnciple
around
which
regional
security
alliances
were
organized,
just
as
capitalist
production
was
the
essence
of
economic
hegemony.
By
the
same
token,
he
argues
that
allied
elite
consent
is
the
key
characteristic
of
a
system
of
hegemomc
nuclear
alliances
While
the
South
Korean
military
is
increasingly
integrated
with
American
nuclear
strategy,
the
South
Korean
state
has
not
publicly
legitimated
the
strategy.
To
mimmize
public
opposition,
the
South
Korean
and
American
military
have
kept
secret
details
of
American
nuclear
forces
in
Korea.
The
United
States
especially
values
nuclear
weapons
in
Korea
for
the
message
they
send
to
the
Japanese
security
elite,
itself
unable
to
overcome
public
opposition
to
ground-based
nuclear
weapons
in
Japan.
Across
the
Pacific
as
well
as
in
Korea,
the
hegemomc
alliance
ideology
of
nuclear
deterrence
is
increasingly
contradicted
by
the
American
strategy
of
nuclear
war-fighting.
As
a
result,
American
nuclear
hegemony
in
the
Pacific
is
vulnerable
to
counter-hegemonic
challenges.
In
the
short
term,
however,
Korea
is
arguably
the
only
place
where
an
irreparable
fracture
could
emerge
in
the
American
system
of
regional
nuclear
hegemony.
ISSN
0022-3433
Journal
of
Peace
Research,
vol
25,
no.
4,
1988
1.
Introduction:
On
Hegemony
The
intellectual
problem
posed
by
the
inter-
national
politics
of
the
nuclear
era
is
not
balance-of-power
politics,
but
nuclear
bloc
politics.
As
Edward
Thompson
puts
it,
’nuclear
weapons
are
the
supreme
weapons
of
sustained,
external
confrontation
between
power
blocs,
but
are
useless
for
exploitation
within
the
blocs’
(Thompson
1982,
p.
24).
Nuclear
weapons
only
keep
the
two
blocs
from
leaping
at
each
other’s
throat.
In
such
a
world,
what
may
be
called
nuclear
politics
continues
in
two
ways.
One
realm
is
the
politics
of
managing
conflicts
between
the
two
blocs
to
avoid
nuclear
war
and
to
regulate
the
nuclear
arms
race.
The
other
is
how
nuclear
weapons
structure
each
bloc-the
subject
of
this
paper.
On
the
latter,
there
may
not
be
much
to
say
in
the
case
of
the
Soviet
Union.
The
Soviet
Union
has
thousands
of
nuclear
weapons.
It
only
recently
stationed
them
on
the
territory
of
its
allies,
although
its
effort
to
do
so
in
1962
ended
in
the
Cuban
Missile
Crisis.
It
does
not
share
the
slightest
control
over
its
nuclear
weapons
or
strategy
with
its
allies.
As
Soviet
alliances
are
based
on
military
intimidation
and
occupation,
its
allies
rarely
demur
at
Soviet
policies.
Until
the
INF
debate,
there
was
little
evidence
that
the
Soviet
Union
paid
much
attention
to
its
allies’
views
on
its
nuclear
strategy.
In
short,
there
are
no
nuclear
intra-bloc
politics
on
the
Soviet
side,
just
the Soviet
politics
of
its
nuclear
strategy.
The
American
side,
however,
is
very
different.
American
nuclear
weapons
have
motivated
and
structured
bloc
politics
in
Europe
and
Asia
since
the
start
of
the
nuclear
era.
The
United
States
has
shared
nuclear
weapons
with
its
allies
to
varying
degrees.
It
has
accommodated
and
co-opted
the
British
and
French
independent
nuclear
forces,
as
they
were
barely
credible
without
American
guarantee,
implicit
or
not.
The
United
States
has
institutionalized
and
legit-
imated
its
own
nuclear
strategy
in
alliance
relations,
while
preserving
its
overwhelming
dominance
in
nuclear
affairs.
In
short,
it
has
pursued
a
distinctly
hegemonic
nuclear
politics
within
its
own
bloc.
1.1
Political-Economic
Hegemony
For
Robert
Cox,
hegemony
means
the
exer-
cise
of
power
by
a
state
in
which
cooperation
of
less
powerful
states
is
gained
by
rewarding
their
consent
rather
than
coercing
com-
pliance
by
the
threat
or
application
of
pun-
ishment
(Cox
1984,
1987).
States
Cox:
[A]
hegemonic
order
is
one
in
which
power
takes
a
primarily
consensual
form,
as
distinguished
from
a
non-hegemomc
order
in
which
there
are
mamfestly
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