In Forbes, Doug Bandow asks—sit down for this, and grab some pills if you need them—why South Korea does defend itself. Read the thing in your entirety—here’s just a sample:
Alliance advocates occasionally defend the alliance in terms of China. Washington Times editorial page editor Brett M Decker claimed that “The rapid militarization of the People’s Republic of China makes the decades-old alliance between the Republic of Korea and the United States just as important as ever.” But the ROK is unlikely to act as a cheerful member of a new containment ring around the PRC. Seoul might like to be defended in the unlikely event that Beijing moved to swallow the peninsula. However, no South Korean government is likely to make itself a permanent enemy of the PRC by backing Washington in a conflict elsewhere, say over Taiwan.
Indeed, the Roh Moo-hyun government insisted that American forces based in the ROK could not be used elsewhere in the region without its consent. The Lee government has a better relationship with Washington and adopted an ambiguous compromise which might allow American forces in the South to deploy, though not operate, from their bases. But maybe not. The U.S. can count on nothing in a crisis.
Beyond China it is hard to imagine how the alliance could act like the “lynchpin of not only security for the Republic of Korea and the United States but also for the Pacific as a whole.” More sensible would be to leave the Japanese and South Koreans to overcome old antagonisms and create a relationship that could act as a security foundation for what is, after all, their region.
(HT to reader)
{ 23 comments… read them below or add one }
also, i look forward to your similarly pointed article arguing against military and welfare aid to israel – easily double the amount we spend on korea and an ally over which we have much less influence on.’ nick
yeah fat chance, nick.
the u.s. should withdraw troops from ALL countries, no exceptions.
RON PAUL 2012!!!
Yawn. Bandow? I wonder if he is aware yet that Korea has US-imposed restrictions on how much it can defend itself, e.g. limits on the range of its missiles.
How about this, Bandovians: you break, you pay?
And it is a good question that boofhead Pawi raises: does Bandow argue equally that the US should stop its expensive support of Israel? I am yet to hear someone who argues against military aid to both Korea and Israel.
And before you say “But the US has no troops stationed in Israel” I will say “I know that, but it doesn’t detract from my overall point about US propping up Israel militarily.”
I suspect Bandow would not object to the removal of any bilateral treaty restrictions on Korea’s defense capabilities; it sort of necessarily follows from the abrogation of the mutual [sic] defense treaty.
I happen to share the scepticism about the rather unconditional nature of US support for Israel but, really, there is no necessary connection between US support for Israel and Korea. If US perception of its interests dictates supporting one but not the other who has standing to object?
Well yes, abrogation of the mutual [sic] [sic] defense treaty would necessitate the removal of any such restrictions. The thing I was hinting at was that in an earlier piece, Mr. Bandow seemed to argue that no such restrictions existed at present. When apprised of the reality of the situation, he could have chosen to respond as you have, but chose to remain silent.
Good to hear it.
That is true, if you take each issue as it comes. If you are a spruiker for an ideology, however, it is best if you remain consistent to the ideology.
Not I. My argument, you will see, is not with US perception of its interests -which, thus far, are that maintaining the mutual [sic] [sic] defense treaty is in its best interests – but rather with Doug Bandow and other non-interventionist ideologues who appear to argue as a matter of principal that US forces should not be in Korea in order to save the US taxpayer billions of dollars, but may not be so vociferous about doing the same in the case of Israel. If Mr Bandow is even-handed with Israel, then that’s great. I want to be pleasantly surprised.
You go defend yourselves, I won’t do it for you anymore. But you can’t develop or use any of the weapons that I have deemed is off limits to you.
Well, that sounds hypocritical double standard to me too. The moment the US military leaves Korea, Korea should have every right to do whatever it takes to defend itself, including the big N word. If Israel is allowed to defend itself, then why shouldn’t Korea?
“But the ROK is unlikely to act as a cheerful member of a new containment ring around the PRC.”
So I have to ask the author of this article, what “new containment ring against the PRC” ??? Which Asian nations do the author thinks that will get involved against the PRC and will help out America, if they are not directed attacked by the PRC? Even I have a hard time believing that the US itself will get involved militarily over Taiwan. I don’t quite understand the author’s point. Is he arguing for complete disengagement from Asia, or just from Korea? By the sounds of it, he’s arguing the latter.
cm: it sure does sound like that. At least several times a year Mr. Bandow issues another screed, arguing that America should withdraw all its troops from Korea because defending the ROK is not in its national interests. He also has (at least) one book out saying the same thing – a book that Mr. Koehler blogged positively several years back. I think it might be the topic he returns most frequently to.
Ok, so let’s say for a moment that it is not in America’s interests to defend the ROK. How about it being simply the right thing to do? Seeing a past commitment through to the end? Fulfilling an obligation?
As I said earlier: you break, you pay.
i think mr bandow was an ET in korea and now he wants revenge. i don’t see him writing reams about the ‘free ride’ japan is getting. and cm brings up a good point; who in asia will join america in an attack on china?
None, they make more money now selling to China
cm asks:
YangachiBastardo responds:
I don’t know of any Asian nations that will side with America to get “involved against the PRC,” but I can think of a few (Southeast Asian ones, Japan, Australia) that would lean toward the US to hedge against a rising China. Yeah, the want to sell to China and still make a lot of money. But by the same token, the also want some sort of insurance policy so that they’re not putting all their eggs in one basket.
And I agree with some of the other comments about how Bandow seems to harp only on the US military commitment to the ROK. While I don’t think that all US military commitments globally need to be brought up by Bandow, it would be nice if he could make some regional considerations about his proposed cut off of US commitment to the ROK. After all, the US-ROK alliance isn’t simply some bilateral thingamachig. It exists and operates within a particular US regional strategy.
Sure. And that’s smart, isn’t it? You want to make money by feeding the lion, but you don’t want to feed him so much that he bites your arm off, or moves into your house.
I’d like to see a Noam Chomsky in Manufacturing Consent-style column space comparison of inches of text Bandow has written, eviscerating the KORUS alliance, as opposed to any of the other military and financial commitments America has. Pawi is wrong in saying that Bandow was an ET in Korea, but he does seem to have Korea pretty fixedly in his sites. I wonder why? In all the column inches he has written, I don’t recall him mentioning 1945, the Cairo Conference, etc etc. That would help contextualize America’s commitment a bit more.
True. It would be nice if our host at this blog would make the same considerations, and stop advocating a US drawdown from the peninsula, and be a little critical of Bandovian writings.
“Yeah, the want to sell to China and still make a lot of money. But by the same token, the also want some sort of insurance policy so that they’re not putting all their eggs in one basket.” – Charles Tilley
Yeah but that describes just about every non China Asia today, including South Korea. But I highly doubt there are any Asian nation that will get involved in joining with the US to militarily help defend Taiwan, against the PRC for example. Maybe Australia, but I highly doubt Japan would. And I don’t count Australia as really an Asian nation though.
Ironically, South Korea is the only Asian nation that has ever fought with the US in Asian theaters against the North Koreas, PRC, North Vietnamese, and sent troops to Iraq and Afghanistan. Let’s see which Asian nation will come to the military support of the US in Asia, against the growing power of the PRC. If the US wants to weaken itself further in Asia, and lose even more influence in Asia, then withdrawing from South Korea should do the trick. That will at least save a few billion per year that gets spent in couple of weeks of war in Iraq. Once the US withdraws from South Korea, then Bandow’s predictions that South Korea will Finlandize will probably quickly come true, with growing internal and external pressure on Korea to get closer to the PRC, at the expense of estranged and strained relationship with the US. This will only strengthen the gleeful PRC even further, I’m afraid.
Welcome to International Politics. Enjoy your stay with us.
This is a lazy criterion. Sure, lets say for the sake of argument that there aren’t any Asian nations that will help the US in the event of a Taiwan contingency (assuming there’s a high probability of one happening). What about in other areas? Over territorial disputes, trade issues, and other military matters that have nothing to do with the Taiwan issue? Start looking in those areas and then your argument that there aren’t many Asian nation willing to side with the US in Asia in the face of a rising China starts to look a bit silly.
Australia has deep political, economic, and cultural ties to the Asia-Pacific region. They may not be yellow in complexion, enjoy rice, and flock to Seoul for plastic surgery tours. But by those three are areas alone, or even just going on two of the three, they’re an Asian-Pacific nation. Just like the US.
You’ve fallen under the spell of the bandwagoning chimera. Bandwagoning isn’t usually the case in international politics. Balancing is. Simple rule of thumb: it’s not balance of power. It’s balance of threat.
Abramoff!
(There, I got it out of the way! How much of the preceding comments are just a long-winded condemnation of libertarians by conservative realists?)
1. Realism is a limiting tool for analysis, not the whole game. 14 comments, and not one mention of another paradigm!
2. China is not the threat it was under Mao. China was the source of nearly a thousand conflicts from its founding to Mao’s death. Since Mao’s death, that peak has literally plunged, and looks similar to Russia’s, Japan’s, both Koreas, and Vietnam. For whatever reason, even considering that most of those conflicts concerned Taiwan and the South China Sea, China considers other policy tools than war just as important.
3. Stephen M. Walt’s offshore balancing
4. China has developed a defensive strategy against the US. It seeks to counter American carrier and air assets with land-based missiles, while developing littoral capabilities to push the US farther off shore. The troops on the DMZ are worthless. They are nothing more than praetorians for the KOSPI. The US now also has assets at Darwin, Australia 9although they are probably there to guard the oil deposits in PNG and Timor that Australia could not deal with. But keeping the praetorians on the DMZ hinders Navy and AF modernization. This is mostly an issue based on an abuse of Korean corporate lobbying exacerbating inter-service rivalries in Washington.
5. Speaking of which, get over it! Israel is so far up Washington’s (and New York’s) ass, only Israel can smell sweet. Korea will never be so score so well. Israel got there first and it has a better operation. This is another reason why realism fails. It cannot take into account “politics”. The state is not a black box It’s Swiss cheese, and it stinks like Stilton.
Oh, and North Korea….snicker….
The US shouldn’t withdraw because of a philosophical commitment to anti-imperialism, but because the troops are too expensive for a mission that actually puts them in more danger than their service demands. The old mission retards force modernization. The issue that will dominate regional politics is trade routes and energy supplies. The rest of this is just old rhetoric in new skins by hacks who pine for the solidly stable concepts of the Cold War. And, Israel.
Pardon me, but would anyone care to interpret Hume’s Bastard’s comment for me?
Alternatively, would HB be interested in meeting over a beer?
To hamel – HB’s comments are indeed quite….abstract. A few of the comments I could interpret were oversimplifications, and a few were 180 degrees from correct. Hopefully he communicates more effectively in the spoken word.
I think I got sort of a handle on Hume’s Bastard’s comments. Let me try and address his points.
Fair enough.
Well aware that realism has its limits and isnt’ the whole game. As for not mentioning other IR paradigms, that’s probably because I see realism as the more appropriate theoretical lens by which to understand and predict future outcomes of international politics in the Asia-Pacific. If HB feels that another IR paradigm (liberalism, constructivsm) or something along an analytic eclectic variety is worth contributing, then he should do so.
And….? Were you going to finish the thought?
I don’t think US troops along the DMZ are entirely worthless. I do think they’ve done a pretty good job of deterring the DPRK from trying to re-invade the southern half of the Korean peninsula. Praetorians for the KOSPI? Listen, I enjoy Bill Williams style analysis of foreign relations as much as the next guy, but “praetorians for the KOSPI” is a bit too sweeping. Where are your other paradigms?
Furthermore, while US troops on the DMZ might not do too much to deter a rising China, I think that the US’ cooperation with the ROK on the naval and air power front do the trick.
True. The Israelis clearly have played the game far better than the ROK ever did. Results are results.
While I don’t agree with the assertion that “realism fails,” I do take your point about how realism gives too little attention to domestic politics. Although, I think you’re failing to differentiate between different strands of realist thought. Back to not taking account of “politics,” I’ll just say this: While a country’s domestic politics does play an important role in determining its action on the international stage, I would still argue that decisions and actions emanating out the turmoil of domestic politics are determined by larger, global structural factors.
Red herring.
Well done, CT. Kudos to you.
#16: Ah, no.
#18: No, I said “limiting” as in (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Limiting). There’s a tension between parsimony and description in theory. Realism provides a limiting function on description. When offensive realists and defensive realists get stuck in game theory and structuralism, though, they can overshoot into sterility. There’s a need to find the sweet point in the middle, and that’s one reason I prefer the complex interdependence approach (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Complex_interdependence). I still find the three-level chess metaphor compelling (and Anne-Marie Slaughter has added a fourth, collaborative power (http://josephjsteinberg.tumblr.com/post/13586609024/people-with-the-power-of-water). The original formulation in Keohane’s/Nye’s “Power and Interdependence” even had a formula for quantifying power. OTOH, those who claim trade will ameliorate relations overshoot as much as realists do with China’s supposed bellicosity.
As for my original #3, look at the Correlates of War database at militarized interstate disputes (MIDs). I actually love looking at those charts. They are instructive and corrective especially when not all MIDs get media attention. If that is what #17 is referring to, you are wrong. There is also an argument, that China’s has moderated its behavior as it urbanizes, but that’s not online (at least not behind a paywell). I would also present this Attackerman article (http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2011/11/china-hawks/). Add to this the USN’s problems with developing new vessels, the scraping of the F-22, the debate over UAVs vs. manned aircraft, and China’s space program, and I really don’t care what the Army wants – and I say this as a former soldier – it’s got nothing to give.
I offered Walt as a realist alternative to the neocons and lib internationalists (http://walt.foreignpolicy.com/posts/2011/12/01/a_bandwagon_for_offshore_balancing). I would enjoy discussing it.
As for troops in South Korea, again as a two-tour vet whose grandfather survived the Battle of the Choson Reservoir, the North Koreans started the fight and the burden is on both Koreas to justify what was for the Truman administration a moral decision only. The onus is on South Korea to demonstrate it is a sovereign state that has something to offer the world other than re-engineered imitations that have forced American firms to innovate, but with very little to show except low wage McD jobs. I recall my BCT drill sergeant, a gyopo, who told us that he wished the North Koreans would drive the South Koreans into the sea, because South Koreans had lost the old ways. I’m disgusted by the spectacle of younger generations using credit to consume while making little effort to challenge the bloated corporations and conscription that keeps them unemployed for most of their early 20s. I also think the withdrawal of contingent in Japan could shakeup Japanese politics for the better. So, yes, the troops are part of the problem.
@Hume’s Bastard (#20):
I know what you meant. I addressed adequately.
First, a quibble: Both Korea’s? I don’t think the DPRK is going to be doing that anytime soon. But getting to the point, I don’t think the Truman administration’s decision to get involved in the Korean conflict was a “moral decision only.”
Thanks for that book link. I read a Kindle sample this morning, and I have the book on my wish list now. One can never put enough links in a post or comment.
I read McCullough’s biography of Truman, and in there, Acheson and Truman went back and forth about intervention. They argued about the pragmatic matters, i.e., containment, collective security, the UN’s authority, etc. But, the final word according to what I read came down to “We can’t let states invade other states.” And, that’s a moral argument.
To Hume’s Bastard – I agree re: moral argument. Truman was one of the last US Presidents who actually had a moral compass that prohibited him from compromising ethics. He was faithful to his wife. Although he was borne out of a corrupt Missouri political machine, he was himself absent traces of it. He took over the Presidency upon Roosevelt’s death and gave the decision to release atomic fury on Japan to bring the war to a less costly end for the US, Japan AND the world and as horrible as it was, it ultimately saved lives. During the Korean War, he fired MacArthur on the advice of Marshall and Bradley, when MacArthur showed utter disrespect for the office of his Commander-in-Chief. And finally, he is the one who placed the phrase “The Buck Stops Here” on his desk in the Oval Office. There have been only a few times in succeeding presidencies when any of the sitting Presidents could honestly place that sign on their desk and and/or leave it there for their entire time in office.
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