Future prosperity, security, even the realization of its full nationhood all depend on South Korea’s relationship with the isolated, rigid, fellow Korean nation to the north. North Korea may cooperate with the South for enhanced security and economic and development advances, but it will not accept anything that suggests surrender or the status of a supplicant. Complicating this is the iron determination of Pyongyang to have its security and access to international finance guaranteed by the U.S., South Korea’s main ally.
To these realities must be added the impact of the George W. Bush administration’s decision to pull back from diplomacy and deal-making, replacing those with pressure and what presumably looked to the North Koreans like plans for regime-change. U.S. President Obama and South Korean Presidents Lee and Park followed Bush’s lead. Realistic diplomacy has been off the table for 15 years. Today a negotiated way out seems unlikely.
Sanctions and Pressure
No country, no administration, no public, wants to be bullied, blackmailed, or intimidated by force or the threat of force. Without alternatives, any administration would respond to such behavior using tools of pressure, including sanctions, the threat of force, and even force if necessary. In the face of continuing missile and nuclear weapons tests by the DPRK, this is the public posture of the South Korean administration (with backing and support from its U.S. ally.) In this context, the South Korean administration has decided to take steps to invite the stationing of THAAD missile-intercepting batteries in the near future.
THAAD Symbolism
The THAAD system is designed to intercept short- to medium-range ballistic missiles as they descend at the end of flight. Since this is among the least likely methods for an attack from North Korea, and since it would not address the North’s Unha long-range rockets, five of which have been launched since 1998, the discussion of THAAD deployments, even apart from any decision to go ahead, is largely symbolic. This makes the system’s cost, approximately $1.6 billion each, more important. While the public may accept paying the cost if there were a practical impact on security, it may be less understanding if the interceptors are perceived as mainly symbolic.
U.S. strategists certainly know the system will not add much at all to South Korea’s defenses. For the U.S., the THAAD’s symbolism and value may differ from those of South Korea. From Korean territory, the U.S. could monitor Chinese and Russian missile launches with THAAD radar more closely than it could by using its assets in Japan or Guam. U.S. military planners have been eager to have THAAD batteries on Korea for some time.
Missile Defenses
The international ban on missile defense buildups, concluded in 1972, was practical. Without it, countries would be under pressure to continue amassing missile strike capabilities to overcome their opponents’ missiles, a pressure that would not end. The Bush administration unilaterally withdrew the U.S. from the Anti-Ballistic Missile (ABM) Treaty in 2002. Since neither China nor Russia wants more pressure to build up missile capabilities, a change in missile defenses, such as the contemplated THAAD deployment to Korea, would change the balance against them, increasing their vulnerability.
It is particularly curious that China’s leaders would seek to make the THAAD matter so important. They could have shrugged it off. However, it is likely that THAAD’s integration with other U.S. military platforms, such as the Aegis naval system, many of which are shared with Japan and Korea, that expand the military encirclement that China already feels. In this sense, THAAD may not be about North Korea at all and is rather more of the military component of the Obama administration’s policy of containing China.
Discussion of deploying THAAD in Korea thus puts strategic pressure on China and Russia, indicates closer alignment with the strategies of the U.S. and Japan – which is also considering THAAD deployments – and limits Seoul’s diplomatic power and influence. Because the interceptor’s military utility in the Korean theatre is speculative, President Park Geun-hye seems to have shot herself in the foot again. However, in the context of the conservative, nationalist administrations in Seoul and Tokyo, the THAAD issue may feel politically comfortable for now. Still, since both Park and Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe are controversial and divisive figures, this debate adds to social and political discord.
Elephant in the Room
The unwillingness of the ROK under President Park to engage in serious discussions with the North makes all military enhancements in reaction to the DPRK politically and strategically dubious. The sense that Park has been pursuing some kind of evolution of either the South-North conflict or the South’s relations with China, with one hand tied behind her back in a diplomatic sense, has undercut and made illogical her policies toward both. The one thing she has the power and opportunity to do, and the thing that would cost least, is the one she refuses to do.
This is one reason why her abrupt falling out with both North Korean leader Kim Jung-un and Chinese President Xi Jinping one month ago was inevitable. She had hoped that Xi would go against Chinese strategic interests to satisfy her political needs, and that Kim would allow her to pretend to be interested in dialogue. It is against this background that the THAAD discussions, and all military and pressure-based actions are viewed in the region.
Military and Diplomatic Costs
The short, medium, and long-term costs of the current precarious security environment surrounding the Korean Peninsula are real, if difficult to quantify. Added to these are the costs of Seoul’s shrinking leverage to influence Beijing’s policies, at a time when the Xi leadership is pulled in several directions. One of them is the aggressive Chinese military buildup and claims to contested islands in the South and East China Seas. While full-scale or even medium-scale violence is unlikely, the public rhetoric and saber-rattling of all parties worries everyone. In this sense, there is no adult in the room at the moment.
For investors, the lack of strategic cohesiveness and logic within the Korean and U.S. leadership is therefore expensive. Their choice seems to be between an uneasy and insecure arms and rhetoric buildup on one hand, or a return to sincere deal-making that would inevitably unlock a long menu of infrastructure enhancements on the other. The U.S. election at the end of this year will probably not change the current equation. The Korean election at the end of 2017 could bring change, but the outcome is far from clear today.
