South Korea Must Learn to Defend Itself—Without America

Doug Bandow

Security, Asia

They're a burden to America, full stop.

Despite the success of America’s post–World War II policy, its advocates act as if it is an abysmal failure. Consider analyst Khang Vu’s argument for continuing to treat the Republic of Korea as a helpless dependent. No matter that the Seoul took advantage of Washington’s defense shield to develop into one of the world’s most important, largest and advanced economies. The United States must continue to protect South Korea from the latter’s decrepit northern neighbor.

Notably, Vu offers no argument that South Korea is vital for America. He refers to another Korean war posing “an adverse prospect for future U.S. administrations.” That’s about right. It would be a human tragedy, source of instability and all-around inconvenience. But it wouldn’t matter much for American security. The next step would not be a North Korean task force sailing on Hawaii and conquering the West Coast (despite the hysterical plot of the movie reboot Red Dawn). Frankly, most Americans wouldn’t even notice the Republic of Korea’s fall.

But why would South Korea lose? Indeed, why couldn’t it deter a North Korean attack? Vu does not deny that South Korea is capable of defending itself. After all, South Korea possesses an economy around forty times as large and population about twice as large, and has neutralized North Korea’s two traditional military allies, China and Russia. Unless the peninsula has a special gravitational field which prevents South Korea from building as many tanks and fielding as many soldiers as the northern nation, Seoul could easily match, indeed overmatch, the so-called Democratic People’s Republic of Korea.

Yet Vu worries about a “vacuum of power,” apparently fearing that South Korea would not bother to build up its own forces. Like the Europeans who, though possessing far more military potential, don’t see any need to spend more on their own defense. Rather, they want to rely on the United States, apparently forever. America therefore must spend more, deploy more troops and repeatedly “reassure” its helpless allies.