The U.S. Indo-Pacific Strategy and the Korean Peninsula

[Current Issues and Policies 2019-12]

Dr. Lee Daewoo

Director of the Department of Security Strategy Studies,

the Sejong Institute

delee@sejong.org

On June 1, 2019, the U.S. Department of Defense clarified its strategy by releasing the India-Pacific Strategic Report (IPSR). The key point of the strategy is that allies and partner countries must cooperate to make India and the Pacific a free and open region. Through the National Security Strategy (NSS), National Defense Strategy (NDS), Nuclear Posture Review (NPR), Missile Defense Review (MDR), and India-Pacific Strategic Report (IPSR), the U.S. consistently stresses that China and Russia are strategic competitors or revisionist countries, and North Korea and Iran are rouge states so that it will actively deal with these challenges. More specifically, the U.S. is not hiding that this strategy is aimed at China. The U.S. has clearly stated its reasons of distrusting China. Moreover, it clarified the principle of strategy as its critical stance on China's aggressive actions in the South China Sea, unfair agreements between China and investment-seeking countries within the process of implementing “One Belt, One Road” policy, and China's unfair practices in international trade.

South Korea, as an ally, needs to actively join the U.S. strategy for India and the Pacific. This region is the world's largest market and emerging as a new global growth engine as the center of international trade and investment. And considering that South Korea's share in the U.S. global strategy is on the decline and that threats from North Korea and potential challenges from China and Japan are on the rise, it is believed that there is no alternative to securing the nation except for "strengthening the ROK-U.S. alliance" along with close cooperation for North Korea policy, Furthermore, a shift within national defense strategy seems also necessary. South Korea needs to consider altering the target of military build-up from North Korean provocations to military threats from neighboring countries.

Finally, South Korea needs to change its view on the U.S. as an ally. A new ROK-U.S. relationship that reflects the nation’s enhanced power and status should be formed. In other words, the relationship should be transformed into a new kind of bond based on fairness, reciprocity and responsibility sharing, which President Donald Trump consistently emphasizes, since the ROK-U.S. relationship is no longer a patron-client relations.