Secretary of State John Kerry announced that the United States will proceed with a plan to deploy anti-ballistic missile defenses in response to North Korea’s recent nuclear weapons and missile tests.
“There should be no doubt that the United States will do whatever is necessary to defend ourselves and to honor the security commitments that we have made to allies, including to the Republic of Korea,” Kerry told reporters on Wednesday. “And we will deploy as soon as possible a Terminal High Altitude Area Defense battery to our Korean ally.”
The decision could exacerbate tensions with Russia and China, which worry that the defenses could be used against their military in a conflict. But it comes as South Korean officials are in Washington to sound the alarm about their vulnerability to an attack from the north.
“What is most important is to continuously demonstrate our capabilities … with our commitments and actions, so that Pyongyang can feel the panic under their skins,” South Korean Foreign Affairs Minister Yun Byung-se said after Kerry’s remarks.
President Obama agreed to deploy the defense battery months ago, but China and Russia have protested the decision due to fear that the defenses could be used against their militaries. “The THAAD system has far exceeded the need for defense in the Korean Peninsula and will undermine the security interests of China and Russia, shatter the regional strategic balance and trigger an arms race,” Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi said in July. “[W]e can’t understand and we will not accept why they made a deployment exceeding the need.”
Obama has responded to those complaints by urging the Chinese to use their influence over North Korea to restrain the regime’s nuclear program, but the missile tests have continued. Kerry offered an implicit rebuke of China immediately after making the THAAD announcement, although he also hinted that the deployment could be reversed if the North Korean threat were mitigated.
“Every country has a responsibility to cooperate in rigorously enforcing sanctions that have been imposed by the UN Security Council and we need to ensure working together that the DPRK pays a price for its dangerous actions, even — and I want to emphasize this — even as we work for the peaceful denuclearization of the Korean peninsula,” Kerry said.
American officials maintain that the THAAD system, made by Lockheed Martin, is designed to counter the North Koreans, but they are also worried about China’s apparent desire to weaponize artificial islands that it has constructed in the South China Sea.
