An Alternative to the Autonomy-Security Trade-off Model: The Case of the ROK-U.S. Alliance

Abstract

Most of the alliances that were formed during the Cold War period were knownas a so-called “asymmetric alliance,” which means strong states provide one-sidedsupport for the partner in a relationship at the expense of the weaker power’sautonomy. In an asymmetric alliance, a weak state gets full security support fromthe superpower, but in return, the weak state loses its autonomy. In this case, thereis a trade-off between security and autonomy of the weaker state. This is what theAutonomy-Security Trade-off Model suggests. However, after the end of the ColdWar, the weak powers, especially the developing country, have tried to increase itsautonomy without any loss of its security—unlike what the Autonomy-SecurityTrade-Off Model argues. In this case, there may not be necessarily a trade-offbetween autonomy and security if a weak state decides to increase both autonomyand security simultaneously. The weak state does not usually want to lose itssecurity, therefore it tries to find a strategy that can increase its autonomy withoutdecreasing its security. In this sense, this paper argues that the Autonomy-SecurityTrade-off model has limitations to explain the above kind of national action afterthe Cold War. In line with this, the goal of this paper is to offer an alternativemodel to explain an asymmetric alliance relationship by looking at the case of theROK-U.S. alliance at the turn of the twenty-first century.