Okinawa Marines fallback to Guam mere precursor for SoKorean troops???

Korea-US: Swan song for an alliance
By Sung-Yoon Lee

South Korean President Roh Moo-hyun's summit with President George W Bush on Thursday is likely to go down in the annals of US-South Korea relations as an epoch-making event, but not quite in the way one might think. It may be the swan song of the US-South Korea alliance.

On its face, Roh's meeting with Bush was a routine, even forgettable exercise in ordinary summit diplomacy. The two men had already enjoyed five cordial if unmemorable meetings since Roh's inauguration in 2003, and neither side issued a press-stopping communique out of the scheduled hour-long conversation followed by an obligatory luncheon.

Nonetheless, Roh's visit may inadvertently prove to be a defining moment for the US-South Korea alliance, presaging its sunset, for beneath the public smiles and handshakes between the two leaders and optimistic-sounding but inscrutable pronouncements, such as seeking a "joint comprehensive approach" to restarting the six-party talks, unmistakably flowed an undercurrent of unfriendly distrust.

The alliance has proved to be one of the most successful and durable in the world. But today Roh wishes to destroy its time-tested dynamics by wresting away from the United States wartime operational control of the two countries' armed forces, the result of which will be the complete and virtually irreversible dismantlement of the US-ROK (Republic of Korea) Combined Forces Command.

This will set the stage, at the cost of broader US interests in Northeast Asia and to the detriment of South Korea's security, for the withdrawal of US troops from Korea. With an inter-Korean summit pageantry of his own in mind, Roh has been offering North Korean leader Kim Jong-il unconditional gifts throughout his presidency: massive shipments of rice, fertilizer, and other blandishments. Now it looks as if Roh is preparing to give the Northern dictator the ultimate gift of evicting US troops from Korean territory.

President Roh believes he has little to lose by insisting on the transfer of wartime operational control, which he pointedly defined recently as the "essence of sovereignty for any nation". A refusal would mean to Roh's supporters and an emotional South Korean public - for whom the Northern threat has become a mere abstraction - reaffirmation of US imperialism and bellicosity, perhaps even "proof" of long-held suspicions that the United States secretly wishes to draw South Korea into a costly war with the North.

A US consent would chalk up a milestone in Roh's oft-proclaimed "self-reliant" foreign and defense policies, with the added bonus of pleasing the North Korean regime by achieving on its behalf one of its oldest and most important policy objectives. Roh could peddle each scenario at home for political gains in the time leading up to the South Korean presidential election in December 2007.

President Roh has proved to be different from his predecessors. During his three and a half years in office, Roh has followed through on his words with actions. True to his rhetoric, "So what if I am anti-US?" or "Yes, my anti-US stance has been good to me," Roh has unflinchingly and systematically aided the enemy of the United States - and incontrovertibly the main enemy of the US Forces in Korea (USFK) - the totalitarian North Korean state that is bent on increasing its arsenal of weapons of mass destruction (WMD).

Roh's offering to the North Korean regime of food, cash and material is financing its buildup of WMD, with which the North in turn threatens the the USFK, whose very purpose is to protect Roh's South Korea from the North. Such a convoluted reality is comprehensible only in the theater of the absurd. In the real world of international politics - especially in light of America's overarching post-September 11, 2001, policy of fighting a "war on terror" and preventing the proliferation of WMD - it is simply an unacceptable situation.

At no other time in the history of the bilateral relationship has a South Korean president with such audacity, and with such success, manipulated for political gains anti-American sentiments at home. It has been proved over the past few years that a direct correlation exists between President Roh's anti-US remarks and a spike in his approval ratings. While resistance or hostility toward the United States was certainly not confined to South Korea under President Roh, that the head of a key ally is directly challenging vital US national interest is certainly a highly unusual development.

To turn a blind eye to the state of the US-ROK alliance in its present last breath is tantamount to musing, "The North Korean nuclear crisis had been formed expressly to test the US-ROK alliance. We should just ignore it and sail on." In other words, it bears no real-life relevance to the crux of the problem, which is that the alliance is predicated on the common threat of North Korea.

President Roh has come to Washington and gone, and the dismantling of the alliance structure will proceed as planned in the near term.

Short on conviviality, solidarity or a meaningfully shared vision for the future, the meeting's sole significance will lie in its marking of the end of an era. Unless the South Korean people are able to persuade Roh to change course abruptly or vote into office in December 2007 a new leader with a far greater appreciation for the alliance and the integrity not to scuttle it for short-term political gain, the meeting on Thursday between Bush and Roh will be remembered as the definitive punctuation mark to a long and once special bilateral relationship.

Dr Sung-Yoon Lee is associate in research at the Korea Institute, Harvard University, and a former professor at the Fletcher School, Tufts University.