What are the arguments for and against US forces in Korea?

[yavoon]

Originally posted by Q Cubed

1) SK should provide the meat for their grinder, not the US;

wtf? i'm sick and fcuking tired of people thinking that it's the 37k troops that are physically protecting skorea. that's a load of bull**** and you ought to realize that. why?
1. 37k troops will not last long against over 1 million enemy troops.
2. skorea has 600k active troops with over 2 million more in reserve. in the event of any armed conflict, the united states would be unable to deploy such numbers in fast enough to become the primary provider of force, or "meat" for grinding as you put it;
3. american troops are there for psychological deterrent: as if to inform any agressor that the instant a single drop of american blood is shed, good old uncle sam will roll up his sleeves, and you sure as hell don't want that;
4. in the first korean war, most of the military casualities were south korean. in any future war, with the majority of the fighting forces being composed of korean elements, the casualties will be mostly korean as well. unlike the countries in europe which forked over the bill for their defence onto the americans under the guise of nato, skorea did not have that option. they're the ones who will by and large be the meat, not us americans. granted, they might all be ground into a sausage that we won't be able to tell which is which, but most of it will be korean, not american.

4) A substantial portion of the population doesn't want us there, and our continued presence inflames nationalist passions against the US;

or so the media would make it seem.
most of this visible discontent seems to be more anti-bush than anti-american.

5) Our troops aren't treated well (racism, hypernationalism, etc.);

they're not being treated any differently than before. northeast asia is one of the most ethnically homogenous regions in the world, and it shows in their behavior. japanese and koreans tend to be quite racist.
that said, it depends on where you go and who you talk to. there are plenty of places where they're treated quite well.
one man's hypernationalism is another man's patriotism.

7) Our interests with regard to China are adequately met with our bases in Japan.

yes, i'd like to see you try to project power in northeast asia from islands. japan couldn't do it without a foothold. nor will america be able to, particularly with a resurgent and a increasingly strong china.

Conquering the RoK isn't the worry. Crippling it is.

dd is right on the spot here. any invasion of skorea would cripple its economy for a good long time. i haven't the foggiest idea why skorea decided to put so many of its eggs in one basket so close to enemy artillery. imagine the cities of new york, washington, chicago, and la all bundled up into one, and you'll see how important seoul is to skorea. destroying it will cripple korea. crippling the world's 13th largest economy isn't a happy thing. stupid, stupid, stupid, sticking one's achilles heel within bayonet's reach.

fez happens to be right about the ability of skorea's military. it outguns and outspends the nkorean military at a fraction of the cost to gdp. it's fortified itself and hunkered down. it would win any coming war, but not without great cost.

Great Strong Unified Korean People. or whatever that line was.

not everybody buys into that.

It will liead to China annexing both Koreas, Taiwan, maybe Japan, definitely Vietnam etc.

this is a good solution for you? jesus fvcking christ. my respect for your opinion on this matter has shriveled up and died like tissue paper in a bonfire.
you _do_ realize that nobody in korea is going to go willingly, not so soon after being annexed by their eastern neighbor...

We have to do the job, but SK won't help. It's a real problem.

a military solution? unless you can convince sk that its ny-chitown-la-dc hybrid won't be decimated, you won't get any support in that matter. and frankly, i don't see how seoul could be protected, even a little bit.

Put loads of Air force into SK to defend their cities.

you do realize it's not nkorean planes that will be laying the devastation, but hardened artillery points less than 40 km away?

and as for your ironic comment, it's easy to say when you're just nuking zipperheads, isn't it? japan, korea, and then china. equal opportunity asian nuking.

Best thing is to swallow pride and just spend a good 20-30 billion over the next decade to buy him off (just make sure to ge a good deal) far cheaper in all respects than "not giving up to blackmail": crime pays, live with it.

wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong, so wrong. buying him off is only deferring a horridly pricey bill for later. course, the entire region's been ****ed up ever since the west decided to shove its huge ****ing ass in there.

and now i'm going to be branded as either naive, idiotic, commie-loving, anti-american, stupid, or a windbag. that's fine by me. i won't ever be able to convince any of you with your minds completely set on the idea that koreans on both sides of the dmz hate you and on a military solution to this thorny fifty-eight year old issue that you're wrong, and i've given up trying. so ignore this post, as most of you are wont to do anyway.
good ****ing night.

good flame, lacked one thing. a suggestion. I was waiting for one but then at the end nothin=[. u would convince more people if "continue to be blackmailed" wasn't the suggestion. which I think is why u r running into the resistance.

[MichaeltheGreat]

Originally posted by Lancer
I've been on the line with an M16 GePap, did my duty. Kiss my ass, k?

And now you push boxes in a warehouse and have your overgrown adolescent fantasy about someone else fighting a war you won't be at risk in.

DanS had an intelligent topic going until it got hijacked by a couple of teenage trolls. Since he's either gone to bed for the night, or abandoned the thread, I'll wait to hear from him before doing anything, since it's his thread.

[Ecthy]

MtG, I'm actually trying to understand geopolitics. In Europe you only hear pu$$y-talk. I wasn't (only) trolling.

[DinoDoc]

Originally posted by MichaeltheGreat
DanS had an intelligent topic going until it got hijacked by a couple of teenage trolls.

I don't know about that. I think Q^3's post will go a little ways toward redeaming this thread.

How popular is the Sunshine Policy in the RoK at the moment, Q^3?

[MichaeltheGreat]

The issue of keeping troops there or not, is distinct from the idea of how to solve the present mess with Dear Leader Kim. Ultimately, the Chinese have the leverage, because virtually all of the DPRK's energy resources are imported from China.

The flip side is he has enough rocket and tube artillery dug into the DMZ (and in many cases, into the sides of mountains), that virtually all ROK and US forces on the DMZ will eat it in short order, as will much of Seoul. If Kim is rational, he wouldn't want to take out Seoul because any delusions of conquest would presumably include wanting to take as much of the ROK industrial capacity intact as possible.

If he foresees the inevitable collapse of the DPRK, and continues to escalate, then the risk goes up. Kim has a result in mind, and that is getting everyone to back down and give him something to keep playing nice. Trouble is, if you do give him something, he just has an incentive to try the same BS again.

Getting back to DanS subject, the troops we have in ROK are really not useful for power projection. We're never going at it with the Chinese on land, not now, not a decade from now, not a century from now. In the long run, we're better off having those troops elsewhere, but in the short run, any move is going to be viewed through the very paranoid glasses of the north.

[DinoDoc]

Forgetting the DPRK for a moment how would moving our forces out of the RoK be viewed in Japan? Would it increase tensions at Okinawa?

[Drake Tungsten]

Forgetting the DPRK for a moment how would moving our forces out of the RoK be viewed in Japan? Would it increase tensions at Okinawa?

I don't think it would have any effect, if the U.S. spun the news properly.

[Ecthy]

I don't even think keeping troops there would be necessary at all. I mean if there actually is some combat about those lands, you can still let the SK guys control the north. What Lancer said up above was about whether or not the south will actually support military action. But if the **** eventually hits the fan, they won't reject annexation of the north just for their past opinion, at least I doubt it. Q^3?

[Ned]

From JFK:

"The world is very different now. For man holds in his mortal hands the power to abolish all forms of human poverty and all forms of human life. And yet the same revolutionary beliefs for which our forebears fought are still at issue around the globe--the belief that the rights of man come not from the generosity of the state, but from the hand of God.

We dare not forget today that we are the heirs of that first revolution. Let the word go forth from this time and place, to friend and foe alike, that the torch has been passed to a new generation of Americans--born in this century, tempered by war, disciplined by a hard and bitter peace, proud of our ancient heritage--and unwilling to witness or permit the slow undoing of those human rights to which this Nation has always been committed, and to which we are committed today at home and around the world.

Let every nation know, whether it wishes us well or ill, that we shall pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship, support any friend, oppose any foe, in order to assure the survival and the success of liberty."

When I contemplate these words I realize that we cannot abandon our ally South Korea.

Also companies like Samsung produce critical circuits for all sorts of products. The loss of Samsung and other such Korean companies would have worldwide effect. The damage to the world economy be so great as to pale in comparison with the cost of maintaining troops in South Korea.

But what are we to do?

Donald Rumsfeld is right to consider redeploying our forces away from the DMZ. 37,000 troops on the border are not on the last very long as an effective fighting unit against massed artillery. So positioned, the US forces would be in a much better position not only two react to a North Korean invasion, but also to be in a position for an offensive into North Korea.

I think that we must work closely with the Chinese to resolve the situation. The Chinese must be convinced that either North Korea stands down from its nuclear program or there will be war. If the Chinese understand that the alternative to a North Korean diplomatic stand down is a war that may spin out of control, I believe the Chinese will put enough pressure on North Korea to resolve the current situation peacefully. If the Chinese are not convinced that the alternative to diplomacy is war, they will be unwilling to apply the necessary diplomatic pressure, which perversely makes war the only alternative.

Based on what happened with Iraq, I also believe that we need a United Nations Security Council resolution imposing on North Korea an ultimatum. As I said before in other threads, such a resolution could only pass if China does not veto it. Such a resolution would clear the decks for a combined US/South Korean offensive into the north permanently solve the issue of North Korea.

[GePap]

wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong, so wrong. buying him off is only deferring a horridly pricey bill for later. course, the entire region's been ****ed up ever since the west decided to shove its huge ****ing ass in there.

So I assume you accept that war is inevitable?

There was in interesting op-ed in the NY Times today, and at its core, it says that when the US thinks about KOrea, they don;t really give a damn about Korea. In essence, korea is just space between Japan and China, both of which, obviosuly, matter to the US, so because Korea is where it is, we defend it, but we could actually not give a damn about IT, only what it represents to what actually matters (Japan, China). And I have to say there is something to that: how much of even this thread cares more about China and Japan than whether Korea ends up a flattened glassy strech of wasteland?

[MichaeltheGreat]

Well, you have to exclude some dumbassed trolling from the serious discussion.

Simple fact is that China is our geopolitical rival* of the next century. Japan is both a potential threat to stability (if the Japanese decide to rearm in a big way, or ever decide to go nuke, it'll make people in east Asia go nuts.), and a major trading partner of the US.

The US involvement in Korea after WW2 was such that as of the invasion, the senior US advisor in country was a long in the tooth captain who'd made a senior officer's ****list. Since that time, it's been framed in terms of the cold war, and the US policy has never really changed in it's most fundamental terms since then.

I wouldn't go as far as saying US policy has never cared about what happens in/to the Koreas, but it would be absurd to view them outside their global geopolitical context. The Koreans are certainly aware of their historical geopolitical position wrt Japan and China.

War is far from inevitable, and IMO, reunification is inevitable, but avoiding one and achieving the other (ideally, Dear Leader would fall and break his Dear Neck and take himself quickly out of the picture) is going to take a lot of work, particularly with the Chinese, who have Dear Leader on a choke chain.


* I don't mean enemy, necessarily, but there will certainly be more competition in geopolitical interest than there will be alignment of interests.

[DanS]

Some good discussion.

wtf? i'm sick and fcuking tired of people thinking that it's the 37k troops that are physically protecting skorea. that's a load of bull**** and you ought to realize that. why?

Don't put words in my mouth. The SKs should provide the entire meat for the grinder. Of course, I know that SK is already providing most of it.

3. american troops are there for psychological deterrent: as if to inform any agressor that the instant a single drop of american blood is shed, good old uncle sam will roll up his sleeves, and you sure as hell don't want that;

Uncle Sam provides different capabilities. If SK is attacked, we provide air support, for instance. Can you imagine SK being attacked, but the US not responding? Indeed, we are obligated by our security arrangement with SK to respond.

4. in the first korean war, most of the military casualities were south korean. in any future war, with the majority of the fighting forces being composed of korean elements, the casualties will be mostly korean as well. unlike the countries in europe which forked over the bill for their defence onto the americans under the guise of nato, skorea did not have that option. they're the ones who will by and large be the meat, not us americans. granted, they might all be ground into a sausage that we won't be able to tell which is which, but most of it will be korean, not american.

The difference now is that the Cold War is over. We have to create an alliance that is self-sustaining and realistic in dealing with opportunities wrt NK. Also, SK has arrived as a strong country that can stand mostly on its own.

most of this visible discontent seems to be more anti-bush than anti-american

There is no indication that this is primarily anti-Bush. There seems to be a large cadre of those who want to rewrite history to be anti-US, especially in the governing party. This attitude is in the ascendancy and it really isn't in our power to fight. Best to deflect it.

they're not being treated any differently than before. northeast asia is one of the most ethnically homogenous regions in the world, and it shows in their behavior. japanese and koreans tend to be quite racist.

Well, maybe the balance of considerations is different than in the past. This has a lot to do with US attitudes too. Racism state-side is becoming less kosher than it once was.

yes, i'd like to see you try to project power in northeast asia from islands. japan couldn't do it without a foothold. nor will america be able to, particularly with a resurgent and a increasingly strong china.

We have no territorial ambitions in northeast Asia. We are not like Imperial Japan. As for SE Asia, there's even some talk about building bases in Vietnam (yes, it surprised me a lot).

[GePap]

The problem I see MtG is that to assume that China can at will just reing in NK is just part of the view of Korea as space for China and Japan (and the US) to bicker about.

NK has a huge lever they can use aginst the Chinese: the same lever they have against the US, making trouble. A huge war on the Korean penninsula would not do much direct damage to China, but the after effects (massive economic disruption, particularly among some of the principle foreign investors in China, japan and SK, and a flood of refugees, plus a Sinlge Korea, as opposed to Two) would be very dangerous to China's current leaders. As much as everyone hates the current status quo, everyone also benefits from it (except the NK people). Q is right that in just keeping the status quo, you invite a huge explosion later. But no one wants to bear the cost of the huge explosion it would be NOW anyways, except perhaps a few people who think that the North will just cave in and die ala Iraq. I am not so sure about that.

[DanS]

I don't think China has any intention of reigning in NK yet. Inasmuch as NK depends on any outside forces, they rely most on China. About $600 million in fuel and about the same in trade. China could stop this support immediately if on balance NK didn't do what China wanted.

China doesn't mind to see NK as a thorn in the side of the US. It only costs them $600 million a year.

[Ned]

Originally posted by DanS
I don't think China has any intention of reigning in NK yet. Inasmuch as NK depends on any outside forces, they rely most on China. About $600 million in fuel and about the same in trade. China could stop this support immediately if on balance NK didn't do what China wanted.

China doesn't mind to see NK as a thorn in the side of the US. It only costs them $600 million a year.

Hopefully, Chine does not want a war with the United States. If they come to realize that their support of NK will eventually mean just this, they may change their tune.

Imagine, if you will, the reverse situation in Taiwan. Imagine if Taiwan were developing nuclear weapons. China would try to get the US to tell the Taiwanese to stop. The Chinese would make it clear that if they did not stop, it would me war with Taiwan and possible war with the US.

The situations are very comparable. Major power war is possible if the minor powers under the protection of the major powers act irresponsibly and are not controlled by their protector.