US, China and THAAD

By Shin Sung-won

The South Korean Defense Ministry and the U.S. forces command stationed in Korea announced on July 8 that they would deploy a THAAD missile battery to defend against incoming nuclear missiles from North Korea. China is fiercely opposed to the deployment of the Terminal High Altitude Area Defense system on South Korean territory. Why is China so vehemently against THAAD? We try to find the reasons in the military capabilities of China and the United States.

China's defense industry is still in its infancy. Aside from a few notable exceptions, such as ballistic missiles, the Chinese military-industrial complex has appeared to demonstrate little capacity for designing and producing relatively advanced conventional weapons systems. For example, China still cannot mass-produce high-performance aircraft engines, despite the immense resources it has thrown at the effort, and relies instead on second-rate Russian models. In other areas, for example undersea warfare, China is still behind. China is poorly equipped for antisubmarine warfare and is doing very little to improve its posture here. And only now is the country capable of producing nuclear-powered attack submarines that are comparable in quietness to the ones the U.S. Navy commissioned in the 1950s. Since that time, the U.S. government has invested hundreds of billions of dollars and six decades of effort to achieve its current generation of Virginia-class submarines, which have achieved absolute levels of silence.

One can debate whether China will soon reach the first major milestone on the journey from great power to superpower: that is, having the requisite economic resources. But a giant economy alone will not make China the world's second superpower, nor would overcoming the next big hurdle ― attaining the requisite technological capacity. After that lies the challenge of transforming all this latent power projection and then learning how to use it. Each of these steps is time consuming and fraught with difficulty. What makes the United States a superpower is its ability to operate globally. Only the U.S. has control over the air, space and the open sea, along with the necessary infrastructure for managing these domains. When one measures the 14 categories of systems that create this capability, which comprises nuclear attack submarines, satellites, transport aircraft and more, what emerges is an overwhelming U.S. advantage in each area, the result of decades of advances on multiple fronts. It would take a very long time for China to approach U.S. power on any of these fronts, let alone all of them. Despite China's ascent, the United States' position of superpower is more secure than recent commentary would have one believe, in fact, the chief threat to the world's preeminent power arguably lies within.

The disparity of military capabilities between the U.S. and China is much bigger than commonly thought. THAAD is the most sophisticated weapons system ever developed. In the THAAD system, we see the most advanced military technology invented by any country. Chinese opposition to the deployment of THAAD in Korea is out of fear that such ominous weapons are too closely deployed to Chinese territory. Taking this into consideration, the U.S. and Korea could take measures to alleviate Chinese concerns.

Thinking rationally, the deployment of THAAD is inevitable. The decision comes from the serious threat of North Korea developing nuclear weapons and delivery systems (missiles). The main reason of the U.S.-Korea alliance, which has been established since 1953, has been the defense of South Korea against possible provocative military attacks by North Korea. If South Korea and the United States could not deploy any defensive weapons system due to third-party pressure, it would have serious ramifications for the R.O.K-U.S. solid alliance.

The key of the alliance is to reserve the right of joint military exercises and of deploying weapons systems for the other party's defense. Therefore, deploying THAAD here is inevitable.

Shin Sung-won is the director-general at the Department of International Economy and Trade Studies, Korea National Diplomatic Academy.

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