For the Love of Christ, PLEASE Don’t Delay the Transfer of Operational Command!

This is bad. Very, very bad:

Seoul has been considering delaying the scheduled 2012 transfer of wartime operational control from the United States to South Korea since North Korea’s nuclear test last spring, the South’s Foreign Minster Yu Myung-hwan said yesterday.

Yu’s comment came days before South Korean President Lee Myung-bak and U.S. President Barack Obama meet this weekend at the G-20 Summit in Toronto to discuss pressing issues, which may include delaying the transfer of wartime operational command. Yu said Seoul, which in 2007 agreed with Washington to the 2012 deadline, started to have second thoughts in May 2009.

”What’s important in implementing the strategic shift [in wartime operational control] is considering situations in the Korean Peninsula and have them factored into the process,” Yu said. “We started to recognize changes in the situation when North Korea conducted its second nuclear test.”

Note to Yu: North Korea’s second nuke test didn’t change a damned thing, other than creating a second irradiated hole in North Korea, as opposed to just one when the agreement was signed in 2007.

Good grief. It’s not everyday that I find myself in agreement with the Hankyoreh, but alas, I do here:

South Korea remains a military power in strong standing, as it ranks 10th in the world in overall military spending and maintains the world’s sixth largest military. Most security experts believe South Korea has sufficient military strength to deter North Korea. In fact, the National Intelligence Service (NIS) reportedly told Cheong Wa Dae last August that its research into a comparison in both countries’ military strength showed that even without USFK or wartime U.S. reinforcements, the South Korean military was 10 percent stronger than the North Korean military. Internationally recognized U.S. military expert James Dunnigan also once evaluated North Korea’s fighting strength as about 40 percent of South Korea’s capacity based on a 1995 assessment.

One reserve general said Thursday that the fluster the command experienced during the sinking of the Cheonan was largely the fault of the absence of independently planned or managed operations for around 60 years. He said the transfer of command could be turned into an opportunity to boost South Korea’s operational planning and management capacity.

Sure, it could be argued (and I would) that late President Roh brought up the transfer issue as a populist ploy and wasn’t prepared for the US side to, like, actually accept it, but if Donald Rumsfeld did one good thing and one good thing only, it was the deal to hand over operational command and get the hell out of Yongsan. My fear is that, given the history of the issue, if there’s no political will to see the transfer/move to the end, it won’t happen.

BTW, the Hankyoreh discusses a bit of the history behind the issue… which points to a very good (and contemporary) reason for the transfer:

Some conservatives consider the transfer of wartime operational control to have started with the warped “anti-American, self-reliant” ideology of the Roh administration and a populism reliant on nationalism. The first president to raise the issue of wartime operational control, however, was former President Park Chung-hee, who did so in the late 1960s. The South Korean and U.S. governments clashed over a response to North Korea’s commando assault on Cheong Wa Dae (the presidential office in South Korea or Blue House) on Jan. 21, 1968 and the North Korea’s capture of the U.S. intelligence gathering ship USS Pueblo two days later. This was because the United States issued no response to the attack on Cheong Wa Dae, but went to DEFCON 2 in response to the seizing of the Pueblo. Furious, Park asked the United States to transfer operational control to South Korea.

The Hani should have noted, however, that neither the seizure of the Pueblo nor the shooting down of an American spy plane the following year led the Americans to do jack squat, or as Kushibo notes:

Here and there in the K-blogosphere I have read claims that the US would have reacted far more harshly than ROK President Lee Myungbak’s lack of attack, but when we see the hypothetical as a real situation, that doesn’t seem to be the case.

The reluctance of the Americans to “rock the boat” is something I think the North Koreans understand well. I also think they understand that if the Americans are unwilling to do anything to the North when their own guys get killed, they sure as hell won’t do anything if the North were to, say, sink a South Korean ship, killing 46 of their guys. And they’ll do everything they can to make sure the South Koreans won’t do anything that could start a war, either. To re-quote Doug Bandow on this point:

…American analysts have been producing articles and studies carrying such titles as “America Must Show Resolve over North Korea” and “U.S. Must Respond Firmly to North Korean Naval Attack.”

The question is: why? No American forces were attacked. None are likely to be targeted. The U.S. military already is very busy, especially in Afghanistan. There’s no reason for Washington to risk war over an assault on another state, especially one well able to defend itself.

Were the ROK still a helpless economic wreck, one could concoct an argument for American aid. But the South vastly outranges the DPRK on every measure of national power. The ongoing debate about whether Seoul is ready to take over operational control (“OPCON”) of its own forces along with any U.S. troops during a war is symptomatic of the extreme dependency in which South Korea finds itself. For the ROK to cower fearfully before Pyongyang is roughly the equivalent of the U.S. running to Brussels to request European troops to deter a Mexican attack.

At least the alliance provides an obvious benefit to Seoul: a source of military reinforcement from the global superpower. Still, the South finds its decision-making, even on the question of its national survival, affected and directed by American policy makers half a world away. Virtually every American, from think-tank analyst to Obama administration staffer, has called on South Korea to exercise “restraint.” They say the ROK’s response should be “measured.” They urge Seoul to be “cautious.” And so on.

That makes sense from America’s standpoint. Indeed, the Obama administration has reason to be making much stronger representations privately. It would be folly for the United States to get into a war over the sinking of the Cheonan.

It doesn’t matter that the act was criminal; it doesn’t matter that the deaths have greatly pained South Koreans; it doesn’t matter that Seoul might calculate the costs and benefits of a tough response differently.

Washington’s top priority is avoiding another war, one that likely would be costly, brutal, and bloody — and of no conceivable benefit to America. Obviously, South Koreans have an even greater incentive to avoid war, since their nation would be the principal battleground. However, they might decide that to exhibit weakness in the face of the North’s provocation would make the chance of war even greater in the future. If Pyongyang believes that it can sink a South Korean ship without consequence, what might the Kim regime do next?

Tagged as: USFK