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The South Korean and U.S. defense chiefs in the Security Consultative Meeting in Washington on Friday agreed to complete the handover of wartime operational control of Korean forces to Seoul after Oct. 15, 2009 and no later than March 15, 2012. The two defense ministers in a joint communiqué urged North Korea to refrain from any further action that might aggravate tensions. U.S. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld offered assurances of a firm U.S. commitment and immediate support to South Korea, including ¡°continuation of the extended deterrence offered by the U.S. nuclear umbrella, consistent with the Mutual Defense Treaty.¡±
On the Proliferation Security Initiative we are so reluctant to join, Rumsfeld told reporters, "the (nuclear) programs of Iran and North Korea punctuate the importance of counter proliferations efforts of that type. And the Republic of Korea's an important country, and needless to say, we've expressed the hope that they will decide to participate (in the Proliferation Security Initiative)." In the background, a senior Pentagon official was denying reports from a South Korean briefing that Gen. Burwell Bell, the commander of the U.S. Forces Korea, was instructed to map out a detailed nuclear defense against nuclear threats from North Korea.
The SCM was so difficult this year that the joint communiqué had to be delayed by seven-and-a-half hours. The atmosphere was so serious, it is said, that the U.S. had to issue an ultimatum that if Seoul insisted any further, the meeting would end without a joint statement. It had a case. Seoul pestered Washington to concede on the timing of the transfer of wartime operational control of its forces and the offer of a nuclear umbrella, the main themes of the meeting, reversing its own demands of only a year or a few months ago. Seoul tried to shirk agreement on the timing of the troop control handover, after saying only recently, in the president¡¯s words, that it could be done ¡°any time.¡±
Faced with firm U.S. insistence on 2009, however, it kept putting it off, from Oct. 2010 to March 15, 2012. Had this administration and president not brought up the issue for propaganda purposes, pretending the joint exercise of wartime operational control infringed on our sovereignty and stoking anti-American sentiment by doing so, the U.S., for the sake of expanding the strategic flexibility of its forces the world over, would have asked for Korean cooperation and given additional security guarantees in return.
The same is the case with the issue of the U.S. providing South Korea with a more specific nuclear umbrella against North Korea. The government, goaded by the National Security Council under direct presidential jurisdiction, attempted to delete the phrase ¡°nuclear umbrella¡± at last year¡¯s SCM, but this year it asked for an even stronger guarantee. The U.S. said, what more do you want when you have the Korea-U.S. Mutual Defense Treaty? Seoul deserved the rebuff.
The government boasted it would get a U.S. promise of additional security if we are to exercise sole operational control of our troops. But the joint communiqué mentions only a firm U.S. commitment under the treaty and ¡°immediate support.¡± It got no more than that for dismantling Combined Forces Command, which in time of war firmly guarantees the reinforcement of five fleets of aircraft carriers, 160 vessels, 2,500 aircraft and 690,000 troops.
About the only thing this meeting achieved is to reveal in broad daylight just how flimsy the security and foreign policies led by the president and executed by his associates have been in the past three years and eight months, and how dangerously Koreans have lived in that time.
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