A Troops for Nukes Trade? U.S. forces in South Korea do far more than protect Seoul.
https://www.wsj.com/articles/a-troops-for-nukes-trade-1529264016
President Trump sowed confusion in Asia last week when he called U.S.-South Korea joint military exercises “very provocative.” He suspended them until further notice and mused that he’d eventually like to bring all U.S. troops in Korea home. North Korea, Russia and China were pleased—American allies not so much.
“We will be stopping the war games which will save us a tremendous amount of money,” Mr. Trump said in Singapore, but which exercises does he mean? Vice President Mike Pence met with GOP Senators last week and suggested that Mr. Trump meant two annual combined exercises, the Ulchi Freedom Guardian in August and the Foal Eagle in late winter or early spring. But the Pentagon hasn’t confirmed that, and U.S. allies were caught off guard.
Mr. Pence’s spokeswoman later said regular training exercises and exchanges would continue, which is essential. The U.S. and South Koreans are constantly working to sharpen their skills in using weapons and responding to enemy tactics. This includes amphibious landings, parachute drops and responding to North Korean artillery. Stopping those drills would be military malpractice.
Canceling the two giant exercises will also reduce readiness, since they are timed to coincide with North Korea’s exercises and involve allied troops and U.S. forces from other theaters. Mr. Trump made the offer as a unilateral concession, but it’s notable that Kim Jong Un has offered no comparable military gesture. Returning three Americans his government took as hostages and promising to return veterans’ remains aren’t threat-reducing.
If Mr. Trump wants to remove provocations from the peninsula, how about asking Kim to pull North Korean forces back from the Demilitarized Zone and take Seoul out of artillery range? That would justify the exercise cancellation as a goodwill offer.
Beyond the exercises is Mr. Trump’s interest in using U.S. troops in South Korea as a negotiating tool in nuclear talks. U.S. forces working alongside a democratic ally aren’t the same as the illegal development of nuclear weapons by a state sponsor of terrorism.
Mr. Trump seems to think the South Koreans are getting a free ride on the U.S. taxpayer, but that’s false. Nearly all of the 28,500 U.S. troops on the peninsula have begun moving to Camp Humphreys, a giant new U.S. Army base south of Seoul. The base cost some $11 billion to build and South Korea paid more than $10 billion. Seoul also pays for roughly half of the operating costs of U.S. forces in the country.
Then there’s the larger strategic picture in East Asia. U.S. forces don’t merely deter a North Korean invasion of South Korea. They also prevent China, which has considerable economic sway over Seoul, from exerting more political control over Seoul’s foreign policy. The troops are also a forward deployment to protect regional democracies like Japan and Taiwan, and the U.S. alliance with Japan is crucial to containing China’s ambition to dominate the Western Pacific.
The good news is that Congress is waking up to Mr. Trump’s troops-for-nukes predilections. Republican Senator Dan Sullivan of Alaska added a sense of the Senate amendment to the National Defense Authorization Act that says “the significant removal of United States military forces from the Korean Peninsula is a non-negotiable item as it relates to the complete, verifiable, and irreversible denuclearization” of North Korea.
Secretary of Defense Jim Mattis called his counterparts in South Korea and Japan Thursday to reaffirm America’s “ironclad defense commitments” and “determination to maintain the readiness of its forces in the region.” But with Mr. Trump you never know.
U.S. deployments overseas are part of a global strategy of alliances to deter war, prevent the emergence of a dominant regional power like China, and keep threats as far as possible from the U.S. homeland. The size and nature of U.S. forces in Korea can be rethought if North Korea completely and credibly gives up its nuclear program and ceases to threaten the South. But in the meantime U.S. forces should not be a chit in a trade with Kim Jong Un.
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