Trilateralism and Beyond
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Trilateralism and Beyond

Great Power Politics and the Korean Security Dilemma During and After the Cold War

Robert A. Wampler

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Trilateralism and Beyond

Great Power Politics and the Korean Security Dilemma During and After the Cold War

Robert A. Wampler

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About This Book

A new study that sheds light on the history of a critical Cold War flashpoint

The fall of the Berlin Wall more than two decades ago brought an end to the Cold War for most of the world. But the legacy of that era remains unresolved on the divided Korean peninsula, which still presents a clear danger for the United States and its allies. Two triangular alliances—one comprised of the United States, South Korea, and Japan, and the other of Russia, China, and North Korea—lie at the heart of the security challenge and all efforts to pursue a final peace treaty.

Trilateralism and Beyond brings together a collection of essays by leading American, South Korean, and Japanese scholars that probe the historical dynamics formed and driven by the Korean security dilemma. Drawing on newly declassified documents secured by the National Security Archive's Korea Project, along with new archival resources in China and former Warsaw Pact countries, the contributors examine the critical relationship between the United States and South Korea, exploring the delicate balancing act of bolstering the security alliance and fostering greater democracy in South Korea. The volume expands its focus to include Japan and a look at the history and future challenges of trilateral security cooperation on the peninsula; impending difficulties for security cooperation between the United States, South Korea, and Japan; and the trials that Russia and China have experienced in dealing with an often demanding, unpredictable ally in North Korea. The authors move beyond simple images of ideological support by the two great powers to draw a more complex and nuanced picture.

Trilateralism and Beyond offers an essential historical perspective on one of the most enduring challenges for U.S. foreign policy—ensuring stability on the tumultuous Korean peninsula.

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Year
2011
ISBN
9781612775340
Part I
U.S. Policy Toward South Korea—The Base of the Triangle

Ambivalent Occupation

U.S. Armed Forces in Korea, 1953 to the Present

WILLIAM STUECK

In his annual report to Congress in March 2008, General B. B. Bell, the American commander in Korea, noted that the U.S. alliance with the Republic of Korea (ROK) continued to serve “its original purpose of deterrence against north Korea.” He added, however, that it was “in our best interest to cultivate and expand the Alliance into one that more fully serves our two nations by contributing to a broader strategy for the promotion and enhancement of regional security.”1 This chapter traces the American view of the purposes of the alliance from the Korean War to the present with special emphasis on the size, nature, and positioning of U.S. forces in Korea, perceptions of North Korean and Chinese intentions and strength, and conditions within the United States and the ROK.
Numerous interconnecting themes emerge from the analysis that follows. Although the security of the ROK has persistently held primacy among U.S. goals, Washington has striven to reduce the cost of its commitment to South Korea and at some points has done so in dramatic fashion. Congress has played an integral role in this process. The legislative branch became especially assertive with the cold war’s end, the increased disparity in economic strength between the two Koreas, and the regularization of relations between the ROK and China. Yet the rise of the nuclear issue in relation to North Korea countered Congress’s preoccupation with a “peace dividend” during the early 1990s. The nuclear issue, in turn, dramatized not only the ongoing threat to South Korea but the possibility of nuclear proliferation in the region with its potential for destabilization.
Official ROK attitudes have consistently favored maintaining substantial forward-deployed U.S. forces in South Korea but have shifted over time on their relationship to the ROK military and the South Korean government and people. The democratization of the ROK as the cold war scaled down added considerable complexity to the alliance relationship that continues to require sophisticated management on both sides. Democratic politics in Japan, Taiwan, and the Philippines complicated the military presence of the United States in other parts of the region as well, and these complications impacted U.S. perceptions of its mission in Korea.
During the George W. Bush administration, the United States moved toward integrating American forces in Korea into a larger plan of regional security, which was motivated as much by growing concerns over the power and intentions of China as by increased fears of terrorism in the aftermath of 11 September 2001. Among other things the U.S. move entailed a retreat from the forward deployment of military forces in South Korea. That planned retreat joined with differences over the proper approach to North Korea to create considerable stress on the U.S.-ROK alliance. Despite those strains, which peaked during the administrations of Bush and ROK president Roh Moo Hyun, the governments made considerable progress toward adapting the relationship to the changing realities of the early twenty-first century. Although some difficult issues remain, that progress is likely to continue over the next several years, and with less public acrimony under the current leadership on both sides.
U.S. Forces in Korea, Truman through Johnson
In June 1950 the United States intervened to repulse the North Korean attack on South Korea to deter “aggression” elsewhere and reassure U.S. allies of American reliability. The containment of North Korea and then China from 1950 to 1953 more or less accomplished those purposes, but Washington held no illusions that the military effort during those years alone would ensure their achievement in the future. North Korea and China were perceived as aggressive powers intent on destroying the ROK whenever the opportunity arose. The need for U.S. forces in Korea was a given, therefore, and establishment of a military alliance with South Korea was readily accepted when ROK president Syngman Rhee insisted on it as a condition for accepting (if not signing) an armistice.
Nonetheless, looking forward from 1953, the size and nature of U.S. forces in Korea was under almost constant examination. Korea was not a strategically vital country, and the United States had many and growing commitments elsewhere. Thus, between July 1953 and the end of 1955, the United States reduced its forces in Korea from over 300,000 to just below 60,000.2 The retention in Korea of most of the remaining forces was not presumed to be permanent. Over the previous two years, in fact, consideration had been given to proposing to the Communists a neutralization of the peninsula, with a joint withdrawal of foreign forces after reunification under UN auspices and the ROK. Neither Rhee nor the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff liked the idea, but President Dwight D. Eisenhower believed that long-term occupations were bound to fail and also feared that the costs of the U.S. presence abroad would ruin the American economy.
In April 1955, even after the failure of the Geneva conference on Korea the previous spring made clear that peaceful unification of Korea was not in the cards, General John E. Hull, the U.S. Far Eastern commander and UN commander in Korea, opined that the remaining two American divisions in Korea should be withdrawn to Japan, leaving merely token units on the peninsula. Eisenhower appeared to agree, saying that the token units might become part of a combined UN division.3 Less than two months later, Hull’s successor, General Maxwell D. Taylor, declared that “the withdrawal of U.S./UN forces from Korea and their concentration elsewhere in [the] FEC would free them from the restrictions of the armistice on their modernization as well as provide a sounder strategic distribution of force to meet U.S. commitments in the Far East.”4 This position largely reiterated the one he had expressed the previous year while the Eighth Army commander in Korea: “The real deterrent [to the Communists in Korea] was our determination to defend the ROK,” not the presence of troops there.5 With the United States now committed to defending Japan, Taiwan, the Philippines, Australia, and New Zealand, not to mention its growing involvement in Indochina, American planners naturally wanted to distribute their forces in a manner that provided a measure of flexibility. As late as 20 September 1956, Eisenhower spoke of the possibility of keeping only token forces in Korea, and Secretary of Defense Charles Wilson indicated that U.S. ground forces there might be reduced to one division.6
Yet discussion in top-level meetings of further reducing U.S. forces in Korea quickly petered out. Even the final withdrawal of Chinese troops from North Korea in 1958 did not add new momentum to the idea. Indeed, the State Department and Joint Chiefs both accepted the need to maintain forces levels in Korea.7 Why?
Any answer must begin with President Eisenhower, who was the ultimate decision maker on all major decisions involving Korea. Clearly the chief executive feared that expenditures on national security matters could severely damage the American economy and recognized that more U.S. aid was being spent on Korea than any other country in the world. He recognized that from a purely physical/material standpoint, Korea was of limited importance. In fact, he had been a member of the Joint Chiefs of Staff in September 1947 when it concluded that the United States had little strategic interest in maintaining troops there.8 Still, Eisenhower was a flexible, sophisticated thinker comfortable with balancing conflicting interests and living with unresolved dilemmas. By 1953 he believed that Korea was vital for political and psychological reasons. When frustrations over dealing with President Rhee led subordinates to suggest the possibility of withdrawing from the ROK, Eisenhower pulled them up short, declaring that simply negating all that the United States had fought for in over three years of war was out of the question.9 Thus, any consideration of withdrawing U.S. forces in Korea took place in the context of an understanding that protecting the security of the ROK held highest priority.
What were conditions in Korea and its surroundings during the late 1950s, as perceived in Washington? First it must be understood that in the United States the Korean War left great bitterness, hostility, and fear toward the People’s Republic of China (PRC). In the aftermath of the armistice in Korea, the Eisenhower administration did explore the possibility of developing a less adversarial relationship with the PRC through a “two-China” approach—that is, agreement on the separation of Taiwan from the mainland—and from 1954 to 1957 Beijing did show moderation on such issues as Indochina and relations with non-Communist states in the third world. The PRC refused to accept the two-China approach, however, and even appeared willing at times to use force to prevent its de facto continuation. By the time it withdrew the last of its troops from Korea in 1958, the PRC had initiated the Great Leap Forward at home, shifted to an aggressive revolutionary strategy in the third world, terminated discussions with the United States in Warsaw and peace initiatives toward the Guomindang, and provoked a second crisis in the Taiwan strait.10 Such developments could not help but give pause to American policy makers, who never lost sight of the fact that Chinese forces could be reintroduced to the peninsula on short notice. Nor did Washington forget that the North Koreans and Chinese had failed to abide by either the spirit or the letter of the armistice agreement regarding inspections and the buildup of military forces in the North.
Concern about China gained reinforcement from uncertainty regarding the U.S.-Japan alliance. Consistent with its “New Look” defense strategy of massive retaliation, the Eisenhower administration cut in half its armed forces personnel in Japan to approximately 100,000 in the two years following the Korean War, and it hoped to reduce the number by half again in the foreseeable future. Even so, Japan was the great strategic prize of the western Pacific, and, as with Korea, Eisenhower had no intention of implementing cuts that might undermine security there. Furthermore, Japan and the Ryukyus—Okinawa in particular—were focal points for security operations in the entire region from Northeast to Southeast Asia, and the Japanese refused to build up their own forces or to amend their constitution to make possible a contribution to regional security, thus leaving the task largely to the United States. What’s more, neutralism grew in Japan as people resented the unequal treaty of alliance imposed on them in 1951, feared it would entangle their country in another war, and looked anxiously to develop markets with China and the Soviet Union. During the second half of the 1950s, the survival of the alliance and of American base rights in Japan and Okinawa was not a sure thing, and a buildup of U.S. forces there to compensate for further reductions in Korea might only exacerbate Japanese sensitivities, especially if it meant modernizing those forces with atomic weapons.11
Conditions within the ROK reinforced concerns about China and Japan. By 1956 Rhee’s support at home was in decline. In May elections Rhee won a mere 55.6 percent of the popular vote in his bid for a third term, despite the death of his principal opponent days before the balloting. His vice presidential running mate actually lost. Rather than reform his government to cultivate broader support, Rhee became more autocratic than ever, leading American officials to fear increasing popular discontent and augmented subversive activity from the North. The presence of sizable U.S. forces in the ROK, Washington believed, contributed to internal stability. Moreover, Rhee never abandoned talk of a march north to unite the peninsula under his control, and American officials never discounted the possibility that the erratic old man would at some point convert talk into action. This concern heightened Washington’s determination to keep ROK forces in the UN command under an American general, which would be much easier if sizable U.S. forces remained on the peninsula.12
In addition, considerable worry existed about the ROK economy, which continued to struggle despite massive U.S. aid. American planners recognized that much of the problem was due to corruption, inefficiency, and a lack of vision on the Korean side, but they also believed that maintenance of ROK armed forces approaching 700,000 men was a major impediment to economic development. Military expenditures consumed a large portion of counterpart funds, diverted money toward consumer goods that otherwise might be directed toward economic development, and contribu...

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