WANTED: Global Leadership.

• Author: CIRINCIONE, JOSEPH
• Position: South Korea's relationship with Europe and United States in view of North Korea's military policies - Brief Article

Europe tries to play a role abandoned by the United States.

Koreans were not the only ones appalled by the cold shoulder President Bush gave South Korea's president and democracy hero, Kim Dae Jung, who worries that Washington might sink his "sunshine policy" of peaceful reconciliation with the North. Current EU President Goran Persson announced on March 23 that he would soon go to the region to expedite ways to defuse the nuclear missile threat posed by the North. Persson, who is also Sweden's prime minister, planned to visit both Korean capitals before the end of May accompanied by the EU's foreign policy czar, Javier Solana, and its external affairs commissioner, Chris Patten.

Although the mission represents a continuation of the EU policies adopted by the EU General Affairs Council last November, this is still a new role for the Europeans--and one that is long overdue. In effect, European leaders are stepping into a critical global crisis spot and providing the solution-oriented leadership that the Bush administration is apparently abdicating. Over time, the EU could gain stature as a weighty and independent global actor. The EU's greater activism in foreign affairs points to Europe's unease with the Bush administration's hardline approach toward North Korea.

Asians may welcome the EU's intervention. Kim Dae Jung came away from his March talks with President Bush deeply disappointed. Still, he understands the necessity of good relations with the U.S. president. So, after returning to Korea, he shook up his foreign policy team. To firm up his relations with Washington, Kim appointed a new foreign minister, Han Seung Soo, who was Korea's ambassador in Washington during the presidency of Bush's father. But to shore up his position on the peninsula, he has turned to the EU.

Europe shouldn't expect much appreciation from the U.S. administration for its diplomatic efforts. Beneath the bromides of alliance solidarity, Washington has a cool contempt for its allies. It doesn't take more than a few drinks at Washington dinners to start a round of smug jokes at the allies' expense. Conservatives in and around the new administration refer to the allies as "feckless." That is how the ascendant conservatives think the foreign policies of their European and Asian allies compare to the "new realism" the Bush team is bringing to U.S. international positions.

But where the new administration officials see...