In a little noticed speech, President Roh Moo-hyun of South Korea has once again disparaged his nation's alliance with the US and cast doubt on whether this partnership should be continued or dissolved.
President Roh told graduating cadets at the Korean Air Force Academy that South Korea was fully capable of defending itself against North Korea, thus undermining the reason for posting US combat forces in his country.
At the same time, the president asserted that the US would not be allowed to deploy US forces out of Korea without his government's approval, thus putting a crimp into Pentagon plans to forge US troops in Korea into a flexible force that could be swiftly deployed to contingencies outside Korea.
The US government has evidently chosen to ignore President Roh's remarks as scant reaction has come from Washington. E-mailed queries to the US military headquarters in Seoul asking for reaction have gone unanswered.
The commander of US forces in Korea, however, has reinforced, perhaps inadvertently, President Roh's views on the capability of South Korea's forces against North Korea. General Leon LaPorte, coincidentally speaking in Washington the same day, March 8, that Roh spoke in Seoul, told a Senate committee that North Korea's military forces were poorly prepared for armed conflict.
In particular, he said North Korea's air force was antiquated and struggling with maintenance. Where US and South Korean pilots averaged 15 hours a month of flight training, North Korean may get only 12 to 15 hours a year. On the ground, a unit on maneuvers could operate only six of its 12 vehicles because of shortage in supplies and fuel.
The US has already begun to reduce its troops in Korea and to turn over more duties to South Korea's forces. Last year, the US had 37,500 troops in South Korea. That is down to 32,500 today, with increments of 2,000 to 3,000 to be withdrawn yearly to bring the level down to 20,000 in 2008.
In his address at the Air Force Academy, President Roh said that 100 years ago, Japan, China, and Russia fought on Korean soil while Koreans "had no choice but to just watch helplessly." Now, he continued: "We have sufficient power to defend ourselves. We have nurtured mighty national armed forces that absolutely no one can challenge."
Even allowing for the exaggeration of a politician, that was a resounding statement. Not content with that, the president went on: "The armed forces have been exerting efforts to bolster our self-reliant defense capabilities.We must press ahead vigorously with the reforms of our defense already begun."
Pointing to Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld's plans for "strategic flexibility" that would assign US forces in Korea the mission of responding to crises elsewhere, Roh said: "We will not be embroiled in any conflict in Northeast Asia against our will. This is an absolutely firm principle we cannot yield under any circumstance."
That was generally seen as an attempt to prevent US forces from deploying to the Taiwan Strait in the event of hostilities between China and Taiwan. Roh, who campaigned on an anti-US platform and called for more self-reliance in defense, has been drawing Seoul closer to Beijing, which has also raised the question of how long he intends to maintain South Korea's alliance with the US.
Under Rumsfeld's orders, US forces will be moved from their present camps between Seoul and the 241km long demilitarized zone dividing the peninsula. They will be posted in consolidated camps 120km south of Seoul with quick access to airfields and ports through which they would ship out to other places of conflict elsewhere.
President Roh further appealed to a long-standing South Korean irritation, which is US command of South Korean forces in combat. "Within 10 years," he said, "we should be able to develop our military into one with full command of operations."
That would include, he said, "the capability for planning independent operations."
Not everyone in Seoul agreed with the president. With a few differences between Roh and the Bush Administration having become increasingly testy, the Joong Ang Ilbo, a leading newspaper, editorialized: "We are curious why Mr. Roh mentioned the issue publicly at this particular moment."
The newspaper said Seoul and Washington had not agreed to revise the security treaty. The editorial concluded: "We thus ask Mr. Roh to study the issue in earnest and enhance mutual trust between the two countries rather than just mentioning it openly." That was a polite way of saying maybe President Roh should have kept quiet.
Richard Halloran is a senior journalist based in Hawaii.
Because much of what former US president Donald Trump says is unhinged and histrionic, it is tempting to dismiss all of it as bunk. Yet the potential future president has a populist knack for sounding alarums that resonate with the zeitgeist — for example, with growing anxiety about World War III and nuclear Armageddon. “We’re a failing nation,” Trump ranted during his US presidential debate against US Vice President Kamala Harris in one particularly meandering answer (the one that also recycled urban myths about immigrants eating cats). “And what, what’s going on here, you’re going to end up in World War
Earlier this month in Newsweek, President William Lai (賴清德) challenged the People’s Republic of China (PRC) to retake the territories lost to Russia in the 19th century rather than invade Taiwan. He stated: “If it is for the sake of territorial integrity, why doesn’t [the PRC] take back the lands occupied by Russia that were signed over in the treaty of Aigun?” This was a brilliant political move to finally state openly what many Chinese in both China and Taiwan have long been thinking about the lost territories in the Russian far east: The Russian far east should be “theirs.” Granted, Lai issued
On Sept. 2, Elbridge Colby, former deputy assistant secretary of defense for strategy and force development, wrote an article for the Wall Street Journal called “The US and Taiwan Must Change Course” that defends his position that the US and Taiwan are not doing enough to deter the People’s Republic of China (PRC) from taking Taiwan. Colby is correct, of course: the US and Taiwan need to do a lot more or the PRC will invade Taiwan like Russia did against Ukraine. The US and Taiwan have failed to prepare properly to deter war. The blame must fall on politicians and policymakers
Gogoro Inc was once a rising star and a would-be unicorn in the years prior to its debut on the NASDAQ in 2022, as its environmentally friendly technology and stylish design attracted local young people. The electric scooter and battery swapping services provider is bracing for a major personnel shakeup following the abrupt resignation on Friday of founding chairman Horace Luke (陸學森) as chief executive officer. Luke’s departure indicates that Gogoro is sinking into the trough of unicorn disillusionment, with the company grappling with poor financial performance amid a slowdown in demand at home and setbacks in overseas expansions. About 95