The 66-year alliance between the U.S. and South Korea is in deep trouble
By Richard Armitage and Victor Cha
The 66-year alliance between the United States and the Republic of Korea is in deep trouble. The U.S.-China trade war, the South Korean government’s quiet leaning toward Beijing and President Trump’s transactional view of alliances have created a unique constellation of forces. The result could be a premature withdrawal of U.S. troops from the peninsula at a time when North Korea’s nuclear threat and China’s regional dominance grow unabated.
The 11th-hour decision by South Korean President Moon Jae-in’s administration on Friday to postpone its planned termination of an intelligence-sharing agreement among the United States, Japan and South Korea was wise, but damage to the reservoir of trust in the relationship had already been done. Seoul’s apparent leveraging of the valued agreement to compel Washington’s involvement in economic and historical disputes between South Korea and Japan — the United States’ two major democratic allies in the Pacific — was an act of alliance abuse.
The threat to end the intelligence cooperation not only degrades the ability of the three to respond to North Korean nuclear or missile tests but also represents a potential decoupling of South Korea’s security interests from those of Japan and the United States, in a significant sign of alliance erosion. Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe regards North Korea’s nuclear weapons as an existential threat, but Moon — whose party will face challenging national elections in the spring — prefers to play down the threat. He focuses instead on inter-Korean economic engagement projects to boost the flagging South Korean economy.
Trump added to the friction in the U.S.-South Korea relationship on Nov. 19 when he demanded that South Korea pay more for the cost of stationing 28,500 U.S. forces on the peninsula. Seoul is likely to reject the demand. The current defense burden-sharing negotiations, with a $5 billion price tag set by U.S. negotiators, had just completed another round this week where the U.S. team walked out of the talks early. It was a rare public acknowledgment of an open rift in the alliance.
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But Kim Jong Un and Trump are in love.