Is the United States preparing to withdraw, downsize, or reconfigure its military force presence on the Korean Peninsula?
According to a May 3 report in the New York Times, President Trump has ordered the Pentagon to study options for such a contingency. In any other administration, these types of commands would not at all be out of the ordinary; defense planners and strategists, after all, plan and strategize. Indeed, the U.S. military is the finest fighting force in the world, in part because the people who work in the armed forces are constantly updating existing plans and studying different scenarios.
This administration, of course, is different from prior administrations in that the man at the top only half-heartedly subscribes to the bipartisan foreign policy worldview. Though he has so far followed the Washington playbook (and expanded America’s involvement in every war he inherited from Presidents George W. Bush and Barack Obama) his rhetoric and instincts are at odds with the establishment. So, when stories suggest that the Trump White House is seriously looking at redeploying 28,500 U.S. troops from the Korean Peninsula and reformulating the seven-decade U.S.-South Korean alliance, national security analysts in Washington, Tokyo, and Seoul are inclined to get nervous.
The White House and the Defense Department quickly rejected the Times report as untrue — national security adviser John Bolton called the story “utter nonsense.” Trump’s instinct to reduce American involvement in some of these alliances, however, is largely correct, even if he doesn’t fully articulate the supporting rationale. While these discussions will unquestionably cause a lot of concern among our wealthy allies that have benefited greatly from U.S. largesse and protection for decades, restructuring and improving our alliances based on today’s geopolitical circumstances is long overdue.
During his 1796 farewell address to the nation, President George Washington counseled the country’s political leaders against the establishment of permanent alliances. While the United States should strive for positive, harmonious, and mutually beneficial partnerships with as many governments as possible, Washington emphasized that “it is our true policy to steer clear of permanent alliance with any portion of the foreign world.”
The architecture of world politics in the 21st century is radically different than the 18th century, when America’s first commander in chief made that recommendation. And yet Washington’s advice to the nation 220 years ago is still a wise concept: not because long-term partnerships are bad or undesirable, but because no alliance relationship should be immovable or beyond fixing or changing. Our enduring interests — our homeland security, economic prosperity, and our way of life here at home — should guide our foreign policy. Alliances are a means to achieve those appropriate ends, something today’s Washington has lost sight of almost completely. Maintaining alliances just for the sake of maintaining them (even if the alliance is no longer beneficial for the United States or is worth the military, economic, and diplomatic investment to keep it functioning) would be the geopolitical equivalent of tying one’s hands.
Some partnerships have proven to be more valuable than others. Some have lasted for a few years, while others, like the U.S.-France relationship, have lasted for centuries.
The tactical alliance between Washington and Moscow during World War II was instrumental in overstretching Adolf Hitler’s army and contributing to Germany’s surrender, but the arrangement collapsed shortly after the war ended. The warm relations the U.S. possessed with dictators in South America and Asia were useful against Soviet-backed communist movements throughout the Cold War, but many of those relationships changed considerably once the Soviet Union dissolved. And there was a time in the 1950s and 1960s when the U.S. and Iran were strategic allies, two countries that decided to work together in order to contain an expansionist Soviet Union from becoming an energy hegemon in the Persian Gulf.
None of the alliances lasted. They either dissolved into decadesold ideological and great power rivalries, were downgraded in importance, or disappeared when a common enemy was vanquished. Scrambling for a relationship with the post-shah government in Tehran was not a major priority for the U.S. after Saudi Arabia and the Gulf Arab states softened their approach towards the West. The tinpot military regimes in the Western Hemisphere were no longer recipients of generous military aid packages once the Berlin Wall fell.
It should also be noted that formal alliances, while certainly important, are not the whole story. Some of America’s strongest relationships around the world involve countries that do not have mutual defense treaties with the United States.
The U.S.-Israeli relationship, for instance, is built on many aligned interests, a shared sense of regional dynamics in the Middle East, and an invaluable intelligence partnership against mutual adversaries. Washington’s partnership with Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, and Bahrain is concentrated almost exclusively on the desire to contain Iranian behavior in the region. Indeed, there was a time in the not-so-distant past when Washington and Damascus were considered grudging but convenient counterterrorism partners against al Qaeda, two countries that were by no means friends but nevertheless saw value in working together on a near-term threat. Before NATO assisted Libyan rebel forces in the overthrow of Moammar Gadhafi, the erratic Libyan dictator was brought in from the cold precisely because Washington believed he could be an ally in the war on terrorism.
The one underlying element to all of these relationships is a transactional pragmatism.
When our perceived interests coincide, the U.S. extends a hand to countries, like Saudi Arabia, Libya, and Syria, who have dubious or atrocious human rights records. But when the interests undergirding those relationships change or dissolve, U.S. policy adjusts (or should) to account for that reality. In some cases, political alliances or ad hoc partnerships lose their value or prove to be too burdensome. Just as the world environment changes at a frenetic clip, the U.S. should adapt just as quickly.
That U.S. foreign policy hasn’t changed to account for new realities is one of the primary causes of our strategic failures and that has contributed greatly to the erosion of support among the public. When U.S. policies fail to improve our security and prosperity, we tend to notice, much to Washington’s chagrin.
The U.S.-South Korean alliance is not immune to changing facts on the ground, and Washington and Seoul should recognize that and adjust accordingly — not because we will no longer have shared interests at stake, but rather because South Korea is a prosperous country with a formidable military that is already capable of defending itself from a North Korean attack. Planning for when that day comes is not a sign of demeaning our alliances, it is clear-minded common sense in a world that is never on the same axis for long.
Daniel DePetris (@DanDePetris) is a contributor to the Washington Examiner’s Beltway Confidential blog. He is a fellow at Defense Priorities.
