Jan. 20, 2003
NEW YORK - Whenever there is a new crisis with North Korea, many Americans and South Koreans ask if it isn't time for the 37,000 US troops based in South Korea to pack up and go home.
After all, American troops have now been stationed in South Korea since the end of World War II, over half a century ago. In 1953, at the end of the bloody Korean War, South Korea was ravaged, militarily weak, and poor as India, with per capita net income of $600. But today, with per capita income at US $9,000, a robust industrial base, and powerful armed forces of 686,000, South Korea would hardly seem to need a permanent US military garrison to protect it from truculent North Korea. Having been a guest of the crack ROK (Republic of Korea) 1st Infantry Division up on the DMZ, I can personally attest to the toughness, professionalism, and combat readiness of South Korea's soldiers.
So why does the US still maintain an army headquarters, naval units, the 2nd Infantry Division, and two Air Force wings with 90 combat aircraft in South Korea? Particularly when their presence causes friction with South Koreans, and occasionally dangerous incidents, like the recent accidental deaths of two school girls, which sparked anti-American riots across the nation.
Geopolitics, that much maligned science, is the answer. When I attended Georgetown University's Foreign Service School in Washington DC during the early 1960's, my class was the last ever to study 19th-century German and French geopolitical thought - geopolitics being the science of how geography influences strategic affairs and history. Without a firm grasp of geography, it is impossible to understand either history or current events. But after us, le déluge. Geography vanished from schools and universities, leaving ensuing generations of Americans shockingly ignorant of the outside world as well as its past and present.
Korea, we were taught, was one of the world's five most strategic nations, along with South Africa, the Soviet Union, Bulgaria, and Egypt. The pivotal Korean Peninsula dominates North Asia, and the air and maritime approaches to northern China, Japan, and Russia's Far East.
So long as North Korea maintains a 1.1 million man army, huge numbers of heavy artillery and missiles, at least two nuclear weapons, and trumpets the ruling Kim dynasty's `holy mission' to unite Korea under communist rule, any major withdrawal by US forces from South Korea would likely precipitate an invasion by the North. After all, if President George Bush can `liberate' Iraq, why can't North Korea's `Dear Leader' Kim Jong-il `liberate' South Korea?
If Korea were to peacefully reunite - possibly through the collapse of North Korea, what South Koreans dread as `unexpected reunification' - then there would be no more reason for US troops to remain. China, which sees itself as Korea's big brother and defender of Koreans, a feeling many Koreans reciprocate, would demand the immediate withdrawal of US forces.
American military forces in South Korea play a less obvious but even more important geopolitical role. They garrison an advanced bastion that gives militarily feeble Japan a sense of security. In fact, the US has long stationed 107,000 troops in north Asia precisely to ensure that Japan does not resume its old role as a major military and regional power. US security guarantees to Japan are the lynchpin of North Asia's strategic architecture.
If US troops left South Korea, they would come under mounting pressure to also leave Japan (including Okinawa). This, in turn, would remove the shield between Japan and China: the old confrontation between Beijing and Tokyo would likely resume. China has tacitly agreed to the continuing presence of US forces in North Asia as the best way to keep old foe Japan declawed and inoffensive. In spite of its growing power, China still has an exaggerated fear of what it routinely blasts as `reborn Japanese militarism.' Just this week, in a by now yearly ritual of anti-Japanese hysteria, China, South Korea, and the Philippines denounced Tokyo for Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi's annual visit to the national war shrine.
A US withdrawal from Korea would force Japan into a politically agonizing reappraisal of its pacifist defense policies. Pressure would grow for Tokyo to build offensive forces, an anti-missile system and, probably, nuclear weapons. Japanese, once a proud warrior people, might even wake from their comfortable sleep of 50 years and decide they no longer can accept being an economic giant but military and strategic midget.
A united Korea would also produce a potentially dangerous military and industrial rival to Japan, very likely nuclear armed and closely allied to China. Only intense US pressure in the 1960's stopped South Korea from going nuclear. US troops help keep Korea divided, which Japan greatly desires.
South Korea and Japan are the forward bases from which the US controls the Pacific Ocean and projects its power onto the Asian mainland. In Europe, Britain and Germany play a similar role as stepping stones of American strategic domination.
Withdrawal of US forces from South Korea could undermine the strategic architecture of North Asia, producing unpredictable consequences no one in the region cares to chance. Better, all have concluded, the status quo (what the US calls `stability') than the unknown. All, that is, except for `Dear Leader' Kim in North Korea, who might just upset North Asia's applecart.
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Foreign Correspondent