Very long, very informative, very disturbing.
Miriam
Tomgram: Tim Shorrock, American Military Power in Asia and the Trump Factor
By Tim Shorrock
Posted on December 13, 2016, Printed on December 14, 2016
http://www.tomdispatch.com/blog/176221/ ;
Did China ask us if it was OK to... build a massive military complex in the
middle of the South China Sea? I don't think so! tweeted President-Elect
Donald Trump after shattering nearly 40 years of U.S.-China diplomatic
protocol by having a telephone conversation with Taiwanese President Tsai
Ing-wen.
The call -- the first official contact between a U.S. president or
president-elect and Taipei since President Jimmy Carter switched diplomatic
recognition from Taiwan to China in the late 1970s -- was prime Trump. So
was the tweet, a no-nonsense response to typical Chinese military
provocations.
At least, thats one way to look at it.
Of course, if Chinas president Xi Jinping was a social media blowhard, he
could have easily tweeted back: Did America ask us if it was OK to...
maintain a massive military complex of more than 100 bases in nearby Japan?
I don't think so!
Or the Chinese leader could have tweeted: Did America ask us if it was OK
to... rent space at the massive U-Tapao military complex in nearby Thailand?
I don't think so!
Or Xi could have tweeted: Did America ask us if it was OK to... use
portions of the military complexes at Antonio Bautista Air Base, Basa Air
Base, Fort Magsaysay, Lumbia Air Base, and Mactan-Benito Ebuen Air Base in
the nearby Philippines? I don't think so!
Chinas president might have tweeted: Did America ask us if it was OK to...
deploy troops to a military complex near Darwin, Australia? I don't think
so!
Xi could have even tweeted Did America ask us if it was OK to... maintain
four major Army facilities in nearby South Korea at Daegu and Yongsan as
well as Camps Red Cloud and Humphreys; not to mention air bases at Osan and
Kunsan and a naval facility at Chinhae? I don't think so!
Had he enough characters to spare, Xi might have mentioned U.S. access to
key facilities in Singapore or its other Pacific military strongholds like
Hawaii, Guam, and Saipan. He could even have mentioned the massive U.S.
military presence in Asia -- the U.S. Pacific Fleet, U.S. Army Pacific, U.S.
Pacific Air Force, U.S. Marine Forces Pacific, U.S. Special Operations
Command Pacific, and U.S. Forces Korea as well as the U.S. Eighth Army (also
in Korea) -- for which there are no Chinese analogs operating in or around
the Americas.
Even if Xi Jinping were to counter Trumps twitter storm with gale-force
tweets of his own, its fair to assume that the president-elect wouldnt be
swayed. American leaders dont view U.S. power projection through the lens
of those on the receiving end. Meanwhile, the American public remains
mostly ignorant of the ways in which the U.S. garrisons the globe and rings
its rivals with military bases.
Today, Tim Shorrock, a long-time Asia expert, seeks to do his part in
obliterating this obliviousness with his inaugural TomDispatch article. The
author of Spies for Hire: The Secret World of Intelligence Outsourcing, he
delves into how the election of Donald Trump will affect President Obamas
famed Asian pivot by teasing apart the tangled history of U.S. foreign
policy in that region, and analyzing what it all means for the longstanding
U.S. military footprint in Japan and South Korea. Nick Turse
Cops of the Pacific?
The U.S. Militarys Role in Asia in the Age of Trump
By Tim Shorrock
Despite the attention being given to Americas roiling wars and conflicts in
the Greater Middle East, crucial decisions about the global role of U.S.
military power may be made in a region where, as yet, there are no hot wars:
Asia. Donald Trump will arrive in the Oval Office in January at a moment
when Pentagon preparations for a future U.S.-Japan-South Korean triangular
military alliance, long in the planning stages, may have reached a crucial
make-or-break moment. Whether those plans go forward and how the
president-elect responds to them could help shape our world in crucial ways
into the distant future.
On November 18th, Shinzo Abe, Japans most conservative prime minister since
the Cold War, became the first foreign head of state to meet with Donald
Trump after his surprise election victory. The stakes for Abe were high. His
rightist Liberal Democratic Party (LDP), which has run Japan for much of the
last 70 years, has been one of Americas most reliable, consistent, and
subservient allies. Yet during the campaign, Trump humiliated him, as well
as the leaders of nearby South Korea, with bombastic threats to withdraw
U.S. forces from both countries if they didnt take further steps to defend
themselves.
Even more shocking was Trump's proposal that Japan and South Korea develop
their own atomic weapons to counter North Koreas rising power as a nuclear
state. That left the governments of both countries bewildered --
particularly Japan, which lost tens of thousands of lives when the cities of
Hiroshima and Nagasaki were incinerated by American atomic bombs in World
War II. (Hundreds of Koreans in Japan died in those attacks as well.) Trump
made these statements despite the LDPs ardent support over the decades for
American wars in Korea, Vietnam, and Iraq, and the Japanese governments
payment of around $2 billion annually to maintain a string of U.S. bases,
primarily on the island of Okinawa, which host over 48,000 American
soldiers.
Abe apparently got what he wanted. During an hour-long meeting at Trump
Tower on New Yorks Fifth Avenue, he and the president-elect agreed that
their military alliance was stable and capped their discussions with a
friendly exchange of golf equipment. I am convinced Mr. Trump is a leader
in whom I can have great confidence, Abe declared to a gaggle of mostly
Japanese reporters. The president-elect, he said, had established the trust
essential for the U.S.-Japanese relationship.
That same day, a high-level delegation representing Park Guen-Hye, South
Koreas scandal-ridden president (who, three weeks later, would be impeached
by the Korean parliament), was also in New York. She and her right-wing
Saenuri Party had been no less disturbed than Abe by the tenor of Trumps
campaign. According to a recent analysis by the Wall Street Journal, South
Korea already pays about $900 million a year, or about 40% of the costs of
the network of U.S. bases it hosts. It also has had a special relationship
with the U.S. military that has no parallel elsewhere. Under the U.S.-Korean
Combined Forces Command, established in 1978, should war ever break out on
the peninsula, an American general will be in charge not just of the 28,000
U.S. personnel permanently stationed there, but of more than half a million
South Korean troops as well.
Unlike Abe, however, Parks delegation was shunted off to discuss its
concerns with Michael Flynn, the retired general who will soon be Trumps
national security adviser. A few days earlier, Park had spoken to Trump for
10 minutes by phone. In that conversation, the president-elect reportedly
stressed his admiration for Koreas economic prowess. Ive bought a lot of
Korean products; theyre great, he told Park, according to a Reuters
correspondent in Seoul. Flynn would also reassure the Koreans that their
alliance with Washington was vital. So, on the surface at least, with less
than six weeks to go until the Trump era officially begins, all is well and
seemingly normal when it comes to U.S. relations with its allies in East
Asia.
The Earth Shakes in Asia
Despite the apparent post-election softening of Trumps positions, however,
his victory continues to cause consternation. In Tokyo, Japanese politicians
of every stripe expressed doubts that the alliance with the U.S. could
withstand the shock of the new American president. When Trump takes power,
Shigeru Ishiba, a former defense minister and powerful figure in the LDP,
told foreign reporters, Japan cant just sit back and do what its told to
do by the United States. On the subject of the ties between the two
countries, this rare sort of public dissent was one reason outgoing
Secretary of Defense Ashton Carter flew to Tokyo on December 7th to reaffirm
the alliance as unlike any other.
The response in Seoul has been similar. Koreans must think seriously about
their ability to defend themselves when the U.S. they have long regarded as
a friend and protector becomes a mere business acquaintance, the
conservative newspaper Chosun Ilbo editorialized on November 10th. That was
the day after the South Korean military held an unexpected emergency meeting
to assess the possible impact of Trumps presidency and then established a
task force to ensure that alliance agreements were kept in the years to
come.
While fears of a more nationalistic America coursed through Asia, Trumps
campaign rhetoric sent shudders through Washington as well. Decades of
carefully laid plans by the Pentagon and the foreign policy establishment
for tighter military ties with Japan and South Korea suddenly seemed
threatened. In challenging the importance of such alliances, Trump could not
help but implicitly question the essence of post-World War II U.S. military
dominance in the Pacific, and of the primacy of Japan and South Korea as
forward bases for the Pentagon in the containment of Asias rising power,
China.
Add one more thing to all of this: Trumps threats to withdraw American
forces from the region have undermined President Obamas Asian pivot
strategy, which has sparked the most significant U.S. military buildup in
that region since the end of the Vietnam War. The steady, if slow, shift in
military resources toward Asia remains highly dependent on the base
structure thats been built up there since World War II and the Korean War
and on the nearly 100,000 U.S. personnel now stationed in Japan and Korea.
The establishments fear that all of this might begin to unravel has been
palpable in Washington since Trumps election.
The president-elect has said rather curious things about our allies,
lamented John Hamre, a former deputy secretary of defense who is now
president and CEO of the Center for Strategic and International Studies
(CSIS), which functions as an unofficial Pentagon think tank. Speaking at a
November 21st conference on improving cooperation between the U.S. and
Korean arms industries, Hamre obliquely criticized Trump for implying were
not in Korea to help ourselves but just to help Korea. Not so, he insisted.
The new president needs to understand that we feel our strategic interests
are at risk in Korea and that those require us to stay there. We should be
grateful to have such a strong ally in South Korea.
As Hamres audience well understood, the U.S. bases in the region have long
been considered critical to the Pentagons forward-based military strategy
in Asia.
Nailing a Triple Alliance in Place Before Trump Takes Power
In the last few years, the Obama administration and the Pentagon have used
Chinas expanding military might and the never-ending standoff with
nuclearizing North Korea to incorporate Japan and South Korea ever more
fully into a vision of an American-dominated Pacific. One stumbling block
has been the deep animosity between the two countries, given that Japan
colonized Korea from 1910 to 1945; later, during the Korean War, which
devastated the peninsula, Japan profited handsomely by supplying U.S. forces
with vehicles and other military supplies. In addition, Korean anger over
Japans refusal to apologize for its use of Korean sexual slaves (comfort
women) during World War II remains a powerful force to overcome.
Until recently, the U.S. has had the help of a compliant leader, President
Park Guen-Hye who, just as the Trumpian moment begins, finds herself
scrambling for her political life as the first Korean president to be
legally toppled since 1960. (An interim president, Parks conservative Prime
Minister Hwang Kyo-ahn, will run the government until the Constitutional
Court reviews the legality of her impeachment, a process that could take up
to six months.) Despite all these problems, and while never quite publicly
stating the obvious, American officials have been focused on putting in
place a triangular alliance that would transform the Japanese and South
Korean militaries into proxy forces capable of helping extend U.S. power and
influence ever further into Asia (and also, potentially, elsewhere in the
world).
On the eve of Donald Trumps election, such arrangements were quickly
reaching fruition. As 2016 draws to an end, the Pentagon appears to be
rushing to make Obamas Asian pivot and the militarization of the region
that goes with it permanent before Trump can act or, for that matter, the
United States can lose its Korean political allies (which could happen if
Park's conservative ruling party is replaced in next years elections).
Here are some recent steps taken to cement in place a U.S.-Japan-South
Korean alliance:
* On November 23rd, Japan and South Korea signed their first military
intelligence agreement that, according to the Korean government-owned Yonhap
news agency, will allow the two countries to better cope with evolving
North Korean missile and nuclear threats despite historical animosities.
This pact, the General Security of Military Information Agreement, has long
been pushed by the Pentagon as a way to solidify the three-way alliance.
When negotiations between Tokyo and Seoul broke down in 2012, American
officials led the successful effort to get them back on track. (North Korea,
according to its official news agency, views the arrangement as a serious
threat pursuant to the U.S. strategic interests to hold hegemony in
Northeast Asia.)
* The construction of a maritime-based Aegis missile defense system aimed at
China and North Korea that will link Washington, Tokyo, and Seoul. Not
surprisingly, this has provoked deep concerns in Beijing, while sparking a
broad, if localized, South Korean movement opposed to the building of a vast
naval complex considered critical to Korean participation in the system on
Jeju Island. Missile defense is the core issue of the trilateral alliance,
Choi Sung-Hee, a South Korean historian and one of the chief organizers of
the protests at the Geongjang naval base, told me last spring when I visited
the island.
* A historic 2015 change in Japans national security law that allows the
government to send its Self-Defense Forces (SDF) into military operations
overseas for the first time since World War II. In Korea, this is seen as a
legal mechanism that paves the way for Japanese forces to someday be
deployed on their peninsula in case a war with the North looms. As Hankyoreh
put it recently, Landing troops from the Japanese Self-Defense Force in
South Korea to rescue Japanese citizens is one of Japans main goals, and it
is a request that Japan has repeatedly made to South Korea. Like the
intelligence-sharing pact, its a change that has long been sought by the
United States.
* An escalation of military and economic pressure on North Korea, including
flights of U.S. nuclear-armed stealth B-2 bombers into Korean skies and
intensified unilateral economic sanctions against dictator Kim Jong-Un and
many of his top military aides. (The U.N. Security Council, with Chinas
support, recently endorsed some sanctions as well.) In addition, stepped-up
military exercises with South Korea have included practicing both preemptive
strikes on the Norths nuclear sites and the decapitation of that
countrys leaders. In other words, to use a phrase that previously hadnt
made it out of the Greater Middle East and North Africa: regime change. Both
Abe and Park have been solidly behind such developments, and Parks
government has actually been encouraging the Pentagon to do more.
* A decision by the Pentagon to permanently station a Terminal High Altitude
Area Defense (THAAD) missile system designed to counter incoming North
Korean ballistic missiles in South Korea over the strong objections of many
Korean citizens and politicians who dispute its value as a deterrent against
the North. Despite its defensive nature, THAAD has also been denounced by
China as a provocation. In November, Beijing made clear that it would
regard the ultimate decision about installing THAAD as a political weather
vane in its evaluation of the Trump administration. In recent days,
Japanese defense officials said that they are studying the idea of deploying
U.S. THAAD batteries in Japan as well. Such a move, the Japan Times pointed
out, would enable effective THAAD operations and information-sharing to be
conducted among the three allies.
It goes without saying that such developments will greatly benefit the U.S.
military industrial complex. Missile defense is a major boon for American
military contractors and in particular a potential bonanza for Lockheed
Martin in particular, which makes both the Aegis vessels and the THAAD
system. These industrial projects would also deepen the developing
trilateral alliance.
After signing a $490 million contract with South Korea and Japan to expand
their Aegis missile defense fleets, Lockheed Martin noted, for instance,
that the deal comes on the heels of a successful joint-missile defense
exercise... in which Aegis destroyers from the three nations shared data
while detecting and tracking a simulated missile threat. As the military
newspaper Stars & Stripes noted, that exercise, which took place last June,
was aimed as much at fostering cooperation between the two Asian neighbors
as preparing for a possible North Korean attack.
Of course, none of this was discussed during the presidential campaign. But
one reason Hillary Clinton received such solid support from Republican
foreign policy establishment hawks like former Deputy Secretary of State
Richard Armitage was her staunch support for the Asian pivot and the
Pentagons stepped-up presence in the region. Clinton was a sure bet to
extend the buildup in Asia, deepen the trilateral alliance, and continue the
current hostile policy toward China and North Korea. Now, the Pentagon and
U.S. military planners can only hope that Donald Trump, already in a
contretemps with China over receiving phone congratulations for his election
from the president of Taiwan, does the same.
In the meantime, there are two other potential holes in this strategy that
will undoubtedly also come into play next year: a years-old, intense, and
still growing popular opposition to the U.S. Marines base in Futenma,
Okinawa, the Japanese island that is home to 70% of U.S. bases in that
country, and the massive political protests in South Korea that have now
toppled President Park and could bring an end to her pro-corporate, pro-U.S.
government.
Global Cops and Robbers
When the Cold War ended in 1991, the rationale for all the American troops
then based in Asia -- namely, the communist threat -- suddenly became less
clear. U.S. officials, grimly determined not to see them go just because
their raison d'être may have disappeared, began promoting the idea that a
permanent presence in Asia was inevitable for the purposes of stability.
As historian Chalmers Johnson chronicled in his 2000 masterpiece, Blowback:
The Cost and Consequences of American Empire, the chief ideologists for this
view were Harvard professor Joseph Nye, who had been an assistant secretary
of defense during the Carter administration, and Armitage, who had held a
similar position at the Pentagon in the Reagan administration. American
forces in Asia, Nye wrote in 1995, ensured the stability -- the oxygen --
that has helped provide for East Asian economic growth.
More than two decades later, that vague but all-encompassing code word for
American domination of the Pacific region remains the primary justification
for the Asian pivot. As Pentagon chief Carter typically put it in a recent
Foreign Affairs article: Every port call, flight hour, exercise, and
operation [in the pivot] has added a stitch to the fabric of the
Asia-Pacifics stability. In other words, were to remain the cops of the
Pacific and the world.
But as global and Pacific cops, we need help. From the early post-Cold War
years until today, American officials have pressured Japan to loosen its
peace constitution (imposed during the post-World War II U.S. occupation)
and allow its forces to be used abroad in conjunction with the U.S.
military. That campaign finally bore fruit in 2015, when Abe managed to pass
the new security law.
The precipitating event: the U.S. and Japanese response to the devastating
earthquake and nuclear catastrophe at Fukushima in March 2011. American
military forces in Japan played an instrumental role in the subsequent
rescue operations, dubbed Operation Tomodachi [friend]. Abe then drove
home lessons from this collaboration to convince the Japanese Diet of the
necessity of passing a new security law that allows Japan to exercise the
right of collective self-defense and, for the first time since World War
II, allows Japans Self-Defense Forces to provide logistical and other
support globally to U.S. and allied foreign forces. Previously, such support
was limited only to areas near Japan.
As a result of this law, which went into effect in 2016, U.S. and Japanese
military forces have commenced their first joint military drills and, in
September, signed a new logistics agreement that allows Japans SDF to
supply the U.S. military with fuel and ammunition anywhere in the world.
These steps will further enhance U.S.-Japanese military cooperation.
As usual, in the run-up to the new legislation, Abe received a political
boost from Nye and Armitage. They got the collaboration ball rolling with a
2012 study for CSIS, The US-Japan Alliance: Anchoring Stability in Asia.
Citing the 2011 earthquake and Operation Tomodachi, they suggested that
Japans prohibition of collective self-defense was an impediment to the
bilateral military alliance.
The 2011 earthquake, they argued, demonstrated how our two forces can
maximize our capabilities when necessary. As a result, a change in the law
opening the way to collective self-defense would allow our forces to
respond in full cooperation throughout the security spectrum of peacetime,
tension, crisis, and war. The first step, they added, would be for Japan to
expand its legal system to encourage the protection of other international
peacekeepers, with force, if necessary -- the exact point of Abes 2015
law.
Lo and behold! On November 21st, three days after Abes meeting with Trump,
the first contingent of Japans Self Defense Forces authorized to use their
weapons against enemy combatants while engaged in protection and rescue
operations overseas left Japan for South Sudan. There, they will take part
in a U.N. peacekeeping mission. Despite the opposition of a majority of the
Japanese public to the move, the dream of an American-led collective global
defense, long held by Nye and Armitage, is now in place.
Abes LDP has also been instrumental in protecting another pillar of
Washingtons strategy in the Pacific: retaining the island of Okinawa as a
major forward base for the U.S. Marines. In the 1990s, following national
protests against the rape and murder of an Okinawan schoolgirl by a Marine,
Washington agreed to scale down its primary base in Futenma and shift the
Marines there to Guam. But after protracted negotiations -- and intense
pressure exerted by the Bush and then Obama administrations -- the drawdown
agreement was linked to the right of the Marines to build a new base at
Henoko Bay in the northern part of Okinawa. Almost the entire island and its
elected officials, from the governor on down, fiercely oppose this idea.
Over the past year, Abes national police have been engaged in daily combat
with citizens fighting such an expansion project, a situation that could
well become critical in the early months of a Trump presidency. But so could
the political situation in South Korea.
Tensions Rise
While Japan is home to 45,000 American airmen, soldiers, and sailors, South
Korea is critical to Washington because it houses the only American ground
forces on the Asian mainland. While the primary justification for them is
the hostility of North Korea and its ominous nuclear weapons program, the
U.S. military also considers its forces in Korea important for global force
projection elsewhere in Asia.
A recent paper by the Center for a New American Security, a military
think-tank founded in 2007, explained the view from the Pentagons
perspective:
South Korea is the only place on the Asian continent with a U.S. military
foothold. The military presence on the peninsula makes South Korea an
essential geopolitical beachhead for the United States in the Asia-Pacific
region. Second, the U.S.-ROK [Republic of Korea] alliance provides physical
territory from which to manage the North Korea problem... The main purpose
of the alliance is to deter North Korea, but the U.S.-South Korea alliance
is a vital tool for both Seoul and Washington to shape Asias developing
regional order and their respective roles within it.
The catalyst for all such planning has, of course, been North Korea, which
is now seen by many military analysts as the toughest problem facing
Washington in the foreign sphere. In these years, the Obama administration
has refused to engage in any kind of negotiations with that country and its
leader, Kim Jong-Un, unless the North Koreans agreed in advance to dismantle
the nuclear program that they now see as essential to their national
survival.
Since Obama took office in 2009, the North has, in fact, steadily improved
its military capabilities. It has tested four nuclear weapons and worked to
develop various kinds of missiles. In response, the Pentagon has steadily
ratcheted up its military preparedness, in part by conducting massive annual
joint exercises with the South Korean military, while from time to time
flying nuclear-capable warplanes in Korean skies.
These steps have only heightened tensions with the North and neighboring
China, while stirring powerful opposition movements in South Korea. If the
intelligence pact with Japan, long sought by the Pentagon, was indeed the
next logical step in the confrontation with the North, it has been bitterly
opposed by some South Korean opposition lawmakers and much of the public,
some of whom have also taken a strong stand against the THAAD anti-missile
system. Now, with Park's government teetering, the Pentagon is suddenly
concerned that its favored policies will be derailed -- or worse, that new
presidents in both Seoul, where elections are scheduled for December 2017,
and Washington this January could throw the evolving strategic triangular
alliance into chaos.
Those were undoubtedly the fears that lurked behind John Hamres remarks in
late October at the Heritage Foundation, when he cautioned against moves
that could spark further controversy in South Korea. We have to do
something [so] we dont become an issue in [Koreas] next election, he
said. Theres a strong strain in the left parties [there] that America is
the problem. (Ironically, Armitage may have added to that concern on
December 6th, when he told a CSIS conference on the U.S.-South Korean
alliance that he now favored a U.S. policy of regime change in North Korea
-- something thats anathema not only to South Korean leftists but to many
centrists as well.)
As December began, as if to underscore Hamres point, USA Today reported
that the growing protests against President Park could shift the countrys
priorities. The pro-U.S. foreign policy of South Korean President Park Geun
Hye is at risk now that she appears to be on her way out over a growing
corruption scandal. CNBC similarly pointed out that the opposition parties
pushing for Parks removal were firmly against the emplacement of THAAD and
suggested that South Korea's promise to host advanced American missile
defense technology on its soil may fall apart following Parks political
demise.
Aware of the rising tide of criticism, the Pentagon has doubled down on its
insistence on THAAD. When a reporter from Yonhap asked U.S. defense
officials if Parks impeachment or resignation could affect the deployment
of the THAAD system, he was told that the plans remain ongoing, and the
alliance continues to move forward with that plan.
So much for respecting Korean democracy.
Alternatives in Asia?
How Donald Trump will deal with these issues is, of course, an open
question. During the campaign, he raised the possibility of talking directly
to Kim Jong-Un as a way of defusing the nuclear standoff with North Korea --
an idea embraced by many Korea specialists and U.S. officials who have, in
the past, dealt with that country. Since winning the election, however, he
and his aides have been silent on the subject. Based on what the
president-elect and his national security chief have reportedly said to the
Japanese and South Korean governments, its possible that his administration
may not make any drastic moves soon to upset the three-way military alliance
or undermine U.S. security policies in the region. In the unpredictable
atmosphere of a Trump Tower presidency, however, there is simply no way yet
to know.
Certainly, Trumps recent appointments of Flynn as national security adviser
and retired Marine General James Mattis as secretary of defense suggest that
his love for the Pentagon and for tough-guy generals may override any desire
to upset the military apple cart in Asia and reverse policy developments of
the last three decades hurriedly being nailed in place at this very moment.
At the same time, hes being warned in no uncertain terms by the Obama
administration and former Pentagon officials that North Korea could present
his administration with an explosive situation that might, in fact,
require a military response.
Donald Trump is certainly an unpredictable figure, but at the moment it
looks like the only genuine opponents of the status quo may be the
democratic opposition movement in South Korea, the anti-base movement in
Okinawa, and what remains of the peace movement in the United States.
Unfortunately, while the Pentagon has been focused on the military situation
in Asia, the American antiwar movement has largely left Asia behind in the
decades since the Vietnam War ended.
As we adjust to life under Trump, it might be wise to start looking again
for alternatives to our militaristic policies in Asia, for more equitable
ties with Japan and South Korea, and for a shift away from confrontation
with North Korea and China. Perhaps the massive demonstrations and
candlelight vigils that have brought millions of people into the streets of
Seoul and other Korean cities, despite the volatile security situation in
East Asia, could show us the way.
Tim Shorrock is a Washington-based writer who was raised in Japan and South
Korea during the Cold War. He is the author of Spies for Hire: The Secret
World of Intelligence Outsourcing.
Follow TomDispatch on Twitter and join us on Facebook. Check out the newest
Dispatch Book, Nick Turses Next Time Theyll Come to Count the Dead, and
Tom Engelhardt's latest book, Shadow Government: Surveillance, Secret Wars,
and a Global Security State in a Single-Superpower World.
Copyright 2016 Tim Shorrock
© 2016 TomDispatch. All rights reserved.
View this story online at: http://www.tomdispatch.com/blog/176221
Tomgram: Tim Shorrock, American Military Power in Asia and the Trump Factor
By Tim Shorrock
Posted on December 13, 2016, Printed on December 14, 2016
http://www.tomdispatch.com/blog/176221/ ;
Did China ask us if it was OK to... build a massive military complex in the
middle of the South China Sea? I don't think so! tweeted President-Elect
Donald Trump after shattering nearly 40 years of U.S.-China diplomatic
protocol by having a telephone conversation with Taiwanese President Tsai
Ing-wen.
The call -- the first official contact between a U.S. president or
president-elect and Taipei since President Jimmy Carter switched diplomatic
recognition from Taiwan to China in the late 1970s -- was prime Trump. So
was the tweet, a no-nonsense response to typical Chinese military
provocations.
At least, thats one way to look at it.
Of course, if Chinas president Xi Jinping was a social media blowhard, he
could have easily tweeted back: Did America ask us if it was OK to...
maintain a massive military complex of more than 100 bases in nearby Japan?
I don't think so!
Or the Chinese leader could have tweeted: Did America ask us if it was OK
to... rent space at the massive U-Tapao military complex in nearby Thailand?
I don't think so!
Or Xi could have tweeted: Did America ask us if it was OK to... use
portions of the military complexes at Antonio Bautista Air Base, Basa Air
Base, Fort Magsaysay, Lumbia Air Base, and Mactan-Benito Ebuen Air Base in
the nearby Philippines? I don't think so!
Chinas president might have tweeted: Did America ask us if it was OK to...
deploy troops to a military complex near Darwin, Australia? I don't think
so!
Xi could have even tweeted Did America ask us if it was OK to... maintain
four major Army facilities in nearby South Korea at Daegu and Yongsan as
well as Camps Red Cloud and Humphreys; not to mention air bases at Osan and
Kunsan and a naval facility at Chinhae? I don't think so!
Had he enough characters to spare, Xi might have mentioned U.S. access to
key facilities in Singapore or its other Pacific military strongholds like
Hawaii, Guam, and Saipan. He could even have mentioned the massive U.S.
military presence in Asia -- the U.S. Pacific Fleet, U.S. Army Pacific, U.S.
Pacific Air Force, U.S. Marine Forces Pacific, U.S. Special Operations
Command Pacific, and U.S. Forces Korea as well as the U.S. Eighth Army (also
in Korea) -- for which there are no Chinese analogs operating in or around
the Americas.
Even if Xi Jinping were to counter Trumps twitter storm with gale-force
tweets of his own, its fair to assume that the president-elect wouldnt be
swayed. American leaders dont view U.S. power projection through the lens
of those on the receiving end. Meanwhile, the American public remains mostly
ignorant of the ways in which the U.S. garrisons the globe and rings its
rivals with military bases.
Today, Tim Shorrock, a long-time Asia expert, seeks to do his part in
obliterating this obliviousness with his inaugural TomDispatch article. The
author of Spies for Hire: The Secret World of Intelligence Outsourcing, he
delves into how the election of Donald Trump will affect President Obamas
famed Asian pivot by teasing apart the tangled history of U.S. foreign
policy in that region, and analyzing what it all means for the longstanding
U.S. military footprint in Japan and South Korea. Nick Turse
Cops of the Pacific?
The U.S. Militarys Role in Asia in the Age of Trump
By Tim Shorrock
Despite the attention being given to Americas roiling wars and conflicts in
the Greater Middle East, crucial decisions about the global role of U.S.
military power may be made in a region where, as yet, there are no hot wars:
Asia. Donald Trump will arrive in the Oval Office in January at a moment
when Pentagon preparations for a future U.S.-Japan-South Korean triangular
military alliance, long in the planning stages, may have reached a crucial
make-or-break moment. Whether those plans go forward and how the
president-elect responds to them could help shape our world in crucial ways
into the distant future.
On November 18th, Shinzo Abe, Japans most conservative prime minister since
the Cold War, became the first foreign head of state to meet with Donald
Trump after his surprise election victory. The stakes for Abe were high. His
rightist Liberal Democratic Party (LDP), which has run Japan for much of the
last 70 years, has been one of Americas most reliable, consistent, and
subservient allies. Yet during the campaign, Trump humiliated him, as well
as the leaders of nearby South Korea, with bombastic threats to withdraw
U.S. forces from both countries if they didnt take further steps to defend
themselves.
Even more shocking was Trump's proposal that Japan and South Korea develop
their own atomic weapons to counter North Koreas rising power as a nuclear
state. That left the governments of both countries bewildered --
particularly Japan, which lost tens of thousands of lives when the cities of
Hiroshima and Nagasaki were incinerated by American atomic bombs in World
War II. (Hundreds of Koreans in Japan died in those attacks as well.) Trump
made these statements despite the LDPs ardent support over the decades for
American wars in Korea, Vietnam, and Iraq, and the Japanese governments
payment of around $2 billion annually to maintain a string of U.S. bases,
primarily on the island of Okinawa, which host over 48,000 American
soldiers.
Abe apparently got what he wanted. During an hour-long meeting at Trump
Tower on New Yorks Fifth Avenue, he and the president-elect agreed that
their military alliance was stable and capped their discussions with a
friendly exchange of golf equipment. I am convinced Mr. Trump is a leader
in whom I can have great confidence, Abe declared to a gaggle of mostly
Japanese reporters. The president-elect, he said, had established the trust
essential for the U.S.-Japanese relationship.
That same day, a high-level delegation representing Park Guen-Hye, South
Koreas scandal-ridden president (who, three weeks later, would be impeached
by the Korean parliament), was also in New York. She and her right-wing
Saenuri Party had been no less disturbed than Abe by the tenor of Trumps
campaign. According to a recent analysis by the Wall Street Journal, South
Korea already pays about $900 million a year, or about 40% of the costs of
the network of U.S. bases it hosts. It also has had a special relationship
with the U.S. military that has no parallel elsewhere. Under the U.S.-Korean
Combined Forces Command, established in 1978, should war ever break out on
the peninsula, an American general will be in charge not just of the 28,000
U.S. personnel permanently stationed there, but of more than half a million
South Korean troops as well.
Unlike Abe, however, Parks delegation was shunted off to discuss its
concerns with Michael Flynn, the retired general who will soon be Trumps
national security adviser. A few days earlier, Park had spoken to Trump for
10 minutes by phone. In that conversation, the president-elect reportedly
stressed his admiration for Koreas economic prowess. Ive bought a lot of
Korean products; theyre great, he told Park, according to a Reuters
correspondent in Seoul. Flynn would also reassure the Koreans that their
alliance with Washington was vital. So, on the surface at least, with less
than six weeks to go until the Trump era officially begins, all is well and
seemingly normal when it comes to U.S. relations with its allies in East
Asia.
The Earth Shakes in Asia
Despite the apparent post-election softening of Trumps positions, however,
his victory continues to cause consternation. In Tokyo, Japanese politicians
of every stripe expressed doubts that the alliance with the U.S. could
withstand the shock of the new American president. When Trump takes power,
Shigeru Ishiba, a former defense minister and powerful figure in the LDP,
told foreign reporters, Japan cant just sit back and do what its told to
do by the United States. On the subject of the ties between the two
countries, this rare sort of public dissent was one reason outgoing
Secretary of Defense Ashton Carter flew to Tokyo on December 7th to reaffirm
the alliance as unlike any other.
The response in Seoul has been similar. Koreans must think seriously about
their ability to defend themselves when the U.S. they have long regarded as
a friend and protector becomes a mere business acquaintance, the
conservative newspaper Chosun Ilbo editorialized on November 10th. That was
the day after the South Korean military held an unexpected emergency meeting
to assess the possible impact of Trumps presidency and then established a
task force to ensure that alliance agreements were kept in the years to
come.
While fears of a more nationalistic America coursed through Asia, Trumps
campaign rhetoric sent shudders through Washington as well. Decades of
carefully laid plans by the Pentagon and the foreign policy establishment
for tighter military ties with Japan and South Korea suddenly seemed
threatened. In challenging the importance of such alliances, Trump could not
help but implicitly question the essence of post-World War II U.S. military
dominance in the Pacific, and of the primacy of Japan and South Korea as
forward bases for the Pentagon in the containment of Asias rising power,
China.
Add one more thing to all of this: Trumps threats to withdraw American
forces from the region have undermined President Obamas Asian pivot
strategy, which has sparked the most significant U.S. military buildup in
that region since the end of the Vietnam War. The steady, if slow, shift in
military resources toward Asia remains highly dependent on the base
structure thats been built up there since World War II and the Korean War
and on the nearly 100,000 U.S. personnel now stationed in Japan and Korea.
The establishments fear that all of this might begin to unravel has been
palpable in Washington since Trumps election.
The president-elect has said rather curious things about our allies,
lamented John Hamre, a former deputy secretary of defense who is now
president and CEO of the Center for Strategic and International Studies
(CSIS), which functions as an unofficial Pentagon think tank. Speaking at a
November 21st conference on improving cooperation between the U.S. and
Korean arms industries, Hamre obliquely criticized Trump for implying were
not in Korea to help ourselves but just to help Korea. Not so, he insisted.
The new president needs to understand that we feel our strategic interests
are at risk in Korea and that those require us to stay there. We should be
grateful to have such a strong ally in South Korea.
As Hamres audience well understood, the U.S. bases in the region have long
been considered critical to the Pentagons forward-based military strategy
in Asia.
Nailing a Triple Alliance in Place Before Trump Takes Power
In the last few years, the Obama administration and the Pentagon have used
Chinas expanding military might and the never-ending standoff with
nuclearizing North Korea to incorporate Japan and South Korea ever more
fully into a vision of an American-dominated Pacific. One stumbling block
has been the deep animosity between the two countries, given that Japan
colonized Korea from 1910 to 1945; later, during the Korean War, which
devastated the peninsula, Japan profited handsomely by supplying U.S. forces
with vehicles and other military supplies. In addition, Korean anger over
Japans refusal to apologize for its use of Korean sexual slaves (comfort
women) during World War II remains a powerful force to overcome.
https://www.amazon.com/dp/0743282256/ref=nosim/?tag=tomdispatch-20
https://www.amazon.com/dp/0743282256/ref=nosim/?tag=tomdispatch-20Until
recently, the U.S. has had the help of a compliant leader, President Park
Guen-Hye who, just as the Trumpian moment begins, finds herself scrambling
for her political life as the first Korean president to be legally toppled
since 1960. (An interim president, Parks conservative Prime Minister Hwang
Kyo-ahn, will run the government until the Constitutional Court reviews the
legality of her impeachment, a process that could take up to six months.)
Despite all these problems, and while never quite publicly stating the
obvious, American officials have been focused on putting in place a
triangular alliance that would transform the Japanese and South Korean
militaries into proxy forces capable of helping extend U.S. power and
influence ever further into Asia (and also, potentially, elsewhere in the
world).
On the eve of Donald Trumps election, such arrangements were quickly
reaching fruition. As 2016 draws to an end, the Pentagon appears to be
rushing to make Obamas Asian pivot and the militarization of the region
that goes with it permanent before Trump can act or, for that matter, the
United States can lose its Korean political allies (which could happen if
Park's conservative ruling party is replaced in next years elections).
Here are some recent steps taken to cement in place a U.S.-Japan-South
Korean alliance:
* On November 23rd, Japan and South Korea signed their first military
intelligence agreement that, according to the Korean government-owned Yonhap
news agency, will allow the two countries to better cope with evolving
North Korean missile and nuclear threats despite historical animosities.
This pact, the General Security of Military Information Agreement, has long
been pushed by the Pentagon as a way to solidify the three-way alliance.
When negotiations between Tokyo and Seoul broke down in 2012, American
officials led the successful effort to get them back on track. (North Korea,
according to its official news agency, views the arrangement as a serious
threat pursuant to the U.S. strategic interests to hold hegemony in
Northeast Asia.)
* The construction of a maritime-based Aegis missile defense system aimed at
China and North Korea that will link Washington, Tokyo, and Seoul. Not
surprisingly, this has provoked deep concerns in Beijing, while sparking a
broad, if localized, South Korean movement opposed to the building of a vast
naval complex considered critical to Korean participation in the system on
Jeju Island. Missile defense is the core issue of the trilateral alliance,
Choi Sung-Hee, a South Korean historian and one of the chief organizers of
the protests at the Geongjang naval base, told me last spring when I visited
the island.
* A historic 2015 change in Japans national security law that allows the
government to send its Self-Defense Forces (SDF) into military operations
overseas for the first time since World War II. In Korea, this is seen as a
legal mechanism that paves the way for Japanese forces to someday be
deployed on their peninsula in case a war with the North looms. As Hankyoreh
put it recently, Landing troops from the Japanese Self-Defense Force in
South Korea to rescue Japanese citizens is one of Japans main goals, and it
is a request that Japan has repeatedly made to South Korea. Like the
intelligence-sharing pact, its a change that has long been sought by the
United States.
* An escalation of military and economic pressure on North Korea, including
flights of U.S. nuclear-armed stealth B-2 bombers into Korean skies and
intensified unilateral economic sanctions against dictator Kim Jong-Un and
many of his top military aides. (The U.N. Security Council, with Chinas
support, recently endorsed some sanctions as well.) In addition, stepped-up
military exercises with South Korea have included practicing both preemptive
strikes on the Norths nuclear sites and the decapitation of that
countrys leaders. In other words, to use a phrase that previously hadnt
made it out of the Greater Middle East and North Africa: regime change. Both
Abe and Park have been solidly behind such developments, and Parks
government has actually been encouraging the Pentagon to do more.
* A decision by the Pentagon to permanently station a Terminal High Altitude
Area Defense (THAAD) missile system designed to counter incoming North
Korean ballistic missiles in South Korea over the strong objections of many
Korean citizens and politicians who dispute its value as a deterrent against
the North. Despite its defensive nature, THAAD has also been denounced by
China as a provocation. In November, Beijing made clear that it would regard
the ultimate decision about installing THAAD as a political weather vane
in its evaluation of the Trump administration. In recent days, Japanese
defense officials said that they are studying the idea of deploying U.S.
THAAD batteries in Japan as well. Such a move, the Japan Times pointed out,
would enable effective THAAD operations and information-sharing to be
conducted among the three allies.
It goes without saying that such developments will greatly benefit the U.S.
military industrial complex. Missile defense is a major boon for American
military contractors and in particular a potential bonanza for Lockheed
Martin in particular, which makes both the Aegis vessels and the THAAD
system. These industrial projects would also deepen the developing
trilateral alliance.
After signing a $490 million contract with South Korea and Japan to expand
their Aegis missile defense fleets, Lockheed Martin noted, for instance,
that the deal comes on the heels of a successful joint-missile defense
exercise... in which Aegis destroyers from the three nations shared data
while detecting and tracking a simulated missile threat. As the military
newspaper Stars & Stripes noted, that exercise, which took place last June,
was aimed as much at fostering cooperation between the two Asian neighbors
as preparing for a possible North Korean attack.
Of course, none of this was discussed during the presidential campaign. But
one reason Hillary Clinton received such solid support from Republican
foreign policy establishment hawks like former Deputy Secretary of State
Richard Armitage was her staunch support for the Asian pivot and the
Pentagons stepped-up presence in the region. Clinton was a sure bet to
extend the buildup in Asia, deepen the trilateral alliance, and continue the
current hostile policy toward China and North Korea. Now, the Pentagon and
U.S. military planners can only hope that Donald Trump, already in a
contretemps with China over receiving phone congratulations for his election
from the president of Taiwan, does the same.
In the meantime, there are two other potential holes in this strategy that
will undoubtedly also come into play next year: a years-old, intense, and
still growing popular opposition to the U.S. Marines base in Futenma,
Okinawa, the Japanese island that is home to 70% of U.S. bases in that
country, and the massive political protests in South Korea that have now
toppled President Park and could bring an end to her pro-corporate, pro-U.S.
government.
Global Cops and Robbers
When the Cold War ended in 1991, the rationale for all the American troops
then based in Asia -- namely, the communist threat -- suddenly became less
clear. U.S. officials, grimly determined not to see them go just because
their raison d'être may have disappeared, began promoting the idea that a
permanent presence in Asia was inevitable for the purposes of stability.
As historian Chalmers Johnson chronicled in his 2000 masterpiece, Blowback:
The Cost and Consequences of American Empire, the chief ideologists for this
view were Harvard professor Joseph Nye, who had been an assistant secretary
of defense during the Carter administration, and Armitage, who had held a
similar position at the Pentagon in the Reagan administration. American
forces in Asia, Nye wrote in 1995, ensured the stability -- the oxygen --
that has helped provide for East Asian economic growth.
More than two decades later, that vague but all-encompassing code word for
American domination of the Pacific region remains the primary justification
for the Asian pivot. As Pentagon chief Carter typically put it in a recent
Foreign Affairs article: Every port call, flight hour, exercise, and
operation [in the pivot] has added a stitch to the fabric of the
Asia-Pacifics stability. In other words, were to remain the cops of the
Pacific and the world.
But as global and Pacific cops, we need help. From the early post-Cold War
years until today, American officials have pressured Japan to loosen its
peace constitution (imposed during the post-World War II U.S. occupation)
and allow its forces to be used abroad in conjunction with the U.S.
military. That campaign finally bore fruit in 2015, when Abe managed to pass
the new security law.
The precipitating event: the U.S. and Japanese response to the devastating
earthquake and nuclear catastrophe at Fukushima in March 2011. American
military forces in Japan played an instrumental role in the subsequent
rescue operations, dubbed Operation Tomodachi [friend]. Abe then drove
home lessons from this collaboration to convince the Japanese Diet of the
necessity of passing a new security law that allows Japan to exercise the
right of collective self-defense and, for the first time since World War
II, allows Japans Self-Defense Forces to provide logistical and other
support globally to U.S. and allied foreign forces. Previously, such support
was limited only to areas near Japan.
As a result of this law, which went into effect in 2016, U.S. and Japanese
military forces have commenced their first joint military drills and, in
September, signed a new logistics agreement that allows Japans SDF to
supply the U.S. military with fuel and ammunition anywhere in the world.
These steps will further enhance U.S.-Japanese military cooperation.
As usual, in the run-up to the new legislation, Abe received a political
boost from Nye and Armitage. They got the collaboration ball rolling with a
2012 study for CSIS, The US-Japan Alliance: Anchoring Stability in Asia.
Citing the 2011 earthquake and Operation Tomodachi, they suggested that
Japans prohibition of collective self-defense was an impediment to the
bilateral military alliance.
The 2011 earthquake, they argued, demonstrated how our two forces can
maximize our capabilities when necessary. As a result, a change in the law
opening the way to collective self-defense would allow our forces to
respond in full cooperation throughout the security spectrum of peacetime,
tension, crisis, and war. The first step, they added, would be for Japan to
expand its legal system to encourage the protection of other international
peacekeepers, with force, if necessary -- the exact point of Abes 2015
law.
Lo and behold! On November 21st, three days after Abes meeting with Trump,
the first contingent of Japans Self Defense Forces authorized to use their
weapons against enemy combatants while engaged in protection and rescue
operations overseas left Japan for South Sudan. There, they will take part
in a U.N. peacekeeping mission. Despite the opposition of a majority of the
Japanese public to the move, the dream of an American-led collective global
defense, long held by Nye and Armitage, is now in place.
Abes LDP has also been instrumental in protecting another pillar of
Washingtons strategy in the Pacific: retaining the island of Okinawa as a
major forward base for the U.S. Marines. In the 1990s, following national
protests against the rape and murder of an Okinawan schoolgirl by a Marine,
Washington agreed to scale down its primary base in Futenma and shift the
Marines there to Guam. But after protracted negotiations -- and intense
pressure exerted by the Bush and then Obama administrations -- the drawdown
agreement was linked to the right of the Marines to build a new base at
Henoko Bay in the northern part of Okinawa. Almost the entire island and its
elected officials, from the governor on down, fiercely oppose this idea.
Over the past year, Abes national police have been engaged in daily combat
with citizens fighting such an expansion project, a situation that could
well become critical in the early months of a Trump presidency. But so could
the political situation in South Korea.
Tensions Rise
While Japan is home to 45,000 American airmen, soldiers, and sailors, South
Korea is critical to Washington because it houses the only American ground
forces on the Asian mainland. While the primary justification for them is
the hostility of North Korea and its ominous nuclear weapons program, the
U.S. military also considers its forces in Korea important for global force
projection elsewhere in Asia.
A recent paper by the Center for a New American Security, a military
think-tank founded in 2007, explained the view from the Pentagons
perspective:
South Korea is the only place on the Asian continent with a U.S. military
foothold. The military presence on the peninsula makes South Korea an
essential geopolitical beachhead for the United States in the Asia-Pacific
region. Second, the U.S.-ROK [Republic of Korea] alliance provides physical
territory from which to manage the North Korea problem... The main purpose
of the alliance is to deter North Korea, but the U.S.-South Korea alliance
is a vital tool for both Seoul and Washington to shape Asias developing
regional order and their respective roles within it.
The catalyst for all such planning has, of course, been North Korea, which
is now seen by many military analysts as the toughest problem facing
Washington in the foreign sphere. In these years, the Obama administration
has refused to engage in any kind of negotiations with that country and its
leader, Kim Jong-Un, unless the North Koreans agreed in advance to dismantle
the nuclear program that they now see as essential to their national
survival.
Since Obama took office in 2009, the North has, in fact, steadily improved
its military capabilities. It has tested four nuclear weapons and worked to
develop various kinds of missiles. In response, the Pentagon has steadily
ratcheted up its military preparedness, in part by conducting massive annual
joint exercises with the South Korean military, while from time to time
flying nuclear-capable warplanes in Korean skies.
These steps have only heightened tensions with the North and neighboring
China, while stirring powerful opposition movements in South Korea. If the
intelligence pact with Japan, long sought by the Pentagon, was indeed the
next logical step in the confrontation with the North, it has been bitterly
opposed by some South Korean opposition lawmakers and much of the public,
some of whom have also taken a strong stand against the THAAD anti-missile
system. Now, with Park's government teetering, the Pentagon is suddenly
concerned that its favored policies will be derailed -- or worse, that new
presidents in both Seoul, where elections are scheduled for December 2017,
and Washington this January could throw the evolving strategic triangular
alliance into chaos.
Those were undoubtedly the fears that lurked behind John Hamres remarks in
late October at the Heritage Foundation, when he cautioned against moves
that could spark further controversy in South Korea. We have to do
something [so] we dont become an issue in [Koreas] next election, he
said. Theres a strong strain in the left parties [there] that America is
the problem. (Ironically, Armitage may have added to that concern on
December 6th, when he told a CSIS conference on the U.S.-South Korean
alliance that he now favored a U.S. policy of regime change in North Korea
-- something thats anathema not only to South Korean leftists but to many
centrists as well.)
As December began, as if to underscore Hamres point, USA Today reported
that the growing protests against President Park could shift the countrys
priorities. The pro-U.S. foreign policy of South Korean President Park Geun
Hye is at risk now that she appears to be on her way out over a growing
corruption scandal. CNBC similarly pointed out that the opposition parties
pushing for Parks removal were firmly against the emplacement of THAAD and
suggested that South Korea's promise to host advanced American missile
defense technology on its soil may fall apart following Parks political
demise.
Aware of the rising tide of criticism, the Pentagon has doubled down on its
insistence on THAAD. When a reporter from Yonhap asked U.S. defense
officials if Parks impeachment or resignation could affect the deployment
of the THAAD system, he was told that the plans remain ongoing, and the
alliance continues to move forward with that plan.
So much for respecting Korean democracy.
Alternatives in Asia?
How Donald Trump will deal with these issues is, of course, an open
question. During the campaign, he raised the possibility of talking directly
to Kim Jong-Un as a way of defusing the nuclear standoff with North Korea --
an idea embraced by many Korea specialists and U.S. officials who have, in
the past, dealt with that country. Since winning the election, however, he
and his aides have been silent on the subject. Based on what the
president-elect and his national security chief have reportedly said to the
Japanese and South Korean governments, its possible that his administration
may not make any drastic moves soon to upset the three-way military alliance
or undermine U.S. security policies in the region. In the unpredictable
atmosphere of a Trump Tower presidency, however, there is simply no way yet
to know.
Certainly, Trumps recent appointments of Flynn as national security adviser
and retired Marine General James Mattis as secretary of defense suggest that
his love for the Pentagon and for tough-guy generals may override any desire
to upset the military apple cart in Asia and reverse policy developments of
the last three decades hurriedly being nailed in place at this very moment.
At the same time, hes being warned in no uncertain terms by the Obama
administration and former Pentagon officials that North Korea could present
his administration with an explosive situation that might, in fact,
require a military response.
Donald Trump is certainly an unpredictable figure, but at the moment it
looks like the only genuine opponents of the status quo may be the
democratic opposition movement in South Korea, the anti-base movement in
Okinawa, and what remains of the peace movement in the United States.
Unfortunately, while the Pentagon has been focused on the military situation
in Asia, the American antiwar movement has largely left Asia behind in the
decades since the Vietnam War ended.
As we adjust to life under Trump, it might be wise to start looking again
for alternatives to our militaristic policies in Asia, for more equitable
ties with Japan and South Korea, and for a shift away from confrontation
with North Korea and China. Perhaps the massive demonstrations and
candlelight vigils that have brought millions of people into the streets of
Seoul and other Korean cities, despite the volatile security situation in
East Asia, could show us the way.
Tim Shorrock is a Washington-based writer who was raised in Japan and South
Korea during the Cold War. He is the author of Spies for Hire: The Secret
World of Intelligence Outsourcing.
Follow TomDispatch on Twitter and join us on Facebook. Check out the newest
Dispatch Book, Nick Turses Next Time Theyll Come to Count the Dead, and
Tom Engelhardt's latest book, Shadow Government: Surveillance, Secret Wars,
and a Global Security State in a Single-Superpower World.
Copyright 2016 Tim Shorrock
© 2016 TomDispatch. All rights reserved.
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