South Korea's Dependency on Washington Comes at a Heavy Price

Doug Bandow

Security, Asia

Washington sends a clear message that it makes defense policy for the benefit of Washington, not for South Korea.

The Trump administration said it was rushing a second carrier group to Northeast Asia. White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer explained that “the forward deployment is deterrence.” But it turns out that an aircraft carrier strike group led by the USS Carl Vinson headed off into the Indian Ocean instead. Anxious South Koreans were not pleased.

One newspaper headline stated “Trump’s lie over the Carl Vinson.” The paper compared Washington’s strategy to the North’s use of fake missiles in its military parades and asked whether the administration was “now employing ‘bluffing’ as its North Korea policy?”

U.S. officials responded that it all was an unfortunate misunderstanding. But that offered little comfort to South Koreans. In fact, they have cause to worry both about North Korean provocations and American threats to bomb the North. Either approach could misfire and result in full-scale war.

Still, residents of the Republic of Korea shouldn’t complain. They have turned their defense over to Washington, so they inevitably will be held hostage to America’s assessment of the Korean Peninsula’s geopolitical importance and how best to manage inter-Korean confrontation. There’s no reason to assume that Washington and Seoul emphasize the same factors or weigh them the same, which means America could easily do too much or too little from the ROK’s standpoint.

For instance, former South Korean president Park Chung-hee worried about America’s commitment, especially with the United States heavily involved in Vietnam and President Richard Nixon’s determination to get client states to do more in their own defense. Park sent troops to Vietnam to aid Washington in order, he hoped, to preclude proposals to withdraw U.S. forces from the ROK. He also began a nuclear program to strengthen the South’s defense.

But despite Park’s concerns, the Nixon administration withdrew an army division from the peninsula. And very strong U.S. pressure forced Park to end the nuclear program. Today’s threat from the North would look very different if the South had its own nukes.

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