Donald Kirk
Koreans have good reason to be concerned about Donald Trump. It’s fine for him to want to “make America great again,” to denounce his opponents, all of them, in the most scathing, insulting terms, but it’s hard to believe that this seemingly tough guy would actually betray South Korea.
That’s exactly what Trump threatens to do when he suggests the U.S. might as well pull its 78,500 or so troops from Korea and Japan. He wants to know what the U.S. is getting for this investment but doesn’t seem aware of the obvious responses.
Since the end of World War II, no power has risen that’s capable of upsetting the balance established by the defeat of the Japanese in August 1945. North Korea’s attempt to take over South Korea ended in failure after the deaths of 4 million people, the majority of them civilians. Since then the region has been at peace, at least for most of the time.
You have to wonder how anyone, much less a candidate for president of the United States, could be so stupid as to believe the U.S. military presence has not been a factor. Could someone please brief Donald Trump on the effect of withdrawal of U.S. troops before the Korean War? Does he understand that Kim Il-sung foolishly believed he could exploit the vacuum left by U.S. withdrawal and take over the South?
Okay, times have changed. The South Korean armed forces are now a formidable force, with air, artillery and armored units equipped to turn back any enemy. That’s in contrast to those dark days of 1950 when the South had virtually no planes or tanks or artillery capable of facing the North Koreans, fully armed by both China and then Soviet Union.
Nonetheless, in a crunch, South Korea needs U.S. air and naval power to keep a fresh invasion from turning much of the peninsula again into a tragic wasteland. That’s why the U.S. has 28,500 troops in the South, primed to respond and trained in regular military exercises to coordinate with the South Koreans.
But that’s not all. Those U.S. troops in Korea are backed up by about 50,000 U.S. troops in Japan, including an entire marine division on Okinawa. They could move quickly to Korea in case Kim Jong-un, like his grandfather, was stupid enough to try and invade then South by land.
But what if North Korea made good on its threats to launch missiles at South Korea or Japan. The THAAD batteries that the U.S. believes are needed in South Korea for “terminal high-altitude area defense” probably would never be used. North Korea is not going to fire missiles 150 kilometers above the earth’s surface, at least not the foreseeable future.
Counter-missile defense however, would be needed, including U.S. air strikes at North Korean launch pads. No way should South Korea be left to fight alone against North Korean missiles or several thousand artillery pieces ranged above the North-South line.
There’s yet another reason why the U.S. military presence is needed in the region. Who can say what Japan would do if left without U.S. forces? Certainly Japanese leaders would want to forget about Article 9 of the Japanese post-war constitution. No doubt Japan would want to rise again as a formidable military power for defense against China, North Korea and other potential foes, possibly including Russia.
So where would South Korea figure into Japan’s rebirth as a military power? That’s a critical question. The U.S. alliances with both Korea and Japan exercise a restraining influence on revanchist Japanese ambitions. One can imagine the Japanese, combatting China or North Korea, also making the South a battleground that they might never want to leave.
Donald Trump has never considered such scenarios. If he were to become president, he would have to learn the realities quite quickly. Presumably he would be briefed, as was Jimmy Carter when, after his election as president in 1976, he gave up his notion of pulling U.S. troops from Korea.
U.S. politics is not like Korean politics. Trump, the conservative, worshiped by far-rightists, nominated for president by the Republicans last week, would actually not be nearly as firm, as tough, as Hillary Clinton, the liberal, winning the Democratic Party nomination this week in Philadelphia.
Not that Hillary has all the answers either. It was while she was secretary of state under President Obama that the U.S. came up with the policy of “strategic patience,” in other words, doing nothing while North built up its nuclear and missile programs.
The basic idea behind “strategic patience” was that, by maintaining the status quo, by essentially doing nothing, perhaps North Korea would see the light and change its behavior. If anything, the danger posed by North Korea has increased during Obama’s presidency.
Under the circumstances, precipitous U.S. military withdrawal from Northeast Asian would be a recipe for tragedy. Let’s see if Hillary can come up with new ideas, anything but U.S. military retreat from the region for which U.S. forces fought so hard to stabilize in some of the bloodiest battles in Northeast Asian history.
Featured Image: Trump by IoSonoUnaFotoCamera on 2016-07-07 11:16:48