Why did South Korean Government send troops to the Middle East?- Focusing on Level of Analysis -

Abstract

While national interests are interpreted according to varioustheories, national interests are first policies regarding a nation andthe public’s survival and second economic developments or welfare. In this perspective, that national interests coming from dispatchingtroops to the Middle East reflects how much the nation’s security,economy, welfare areas should be valued as opportunity cost. Tosatisfy this condition, this paper takes a look at the contemporarymodel by which foreign policy to sending troops is decided tomaximize national interests and verifies it, finding out which factorsare important in deciding foreign policies or the issue of deployment. On the basis of limitations of previous studies, this paper explainsregularity and rationality that are noticeable in the process ofsatisficing for interaction and agreement of various factors putforward by limited rationality model and non-rationality model. Thispaper is to reconsider the meaning of international relationship’sinteraction by verifying exactness of Two-Face Game theory,supplementing to Two-Level Game and complementing thelimitations. As we can see before, I use the most flexible analytic frame,explaining the process of South Korea’s decision to send troops byslightly modifying Two Face Game theory. This effort has a meaningin that the new model will be able to secure theory’s explanationpower, strengthening the link between the theory and the reality inanalyzing other troop deployment decisions or economic tradenegotiations. That is, it is an analytic model, which provides anotherflexibility to us, helping explain international negotiations and foreignpolicy variables. Accordingly, it simultaneously makes up for abstractness of Two Level Theory –only two level, domestic leveland international level- and shortcomings of Two Face Theoryunderestimating the meaning of the international community. As aresult, the above model based on Two Face Theory is suitable forexplaining ever changing and various policy decisions by consideringother internal plane’s effects and examining intervention variableswith regard to decision makers’ win-set. Discussions about how toenhance South Korea’s troop deployment diplomacy and measures areunderway. It is timely appropriate to take a close look at what kindsof matters we have in making decisions to send troops and figure outwhat we can do to fix them.