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Oh, irony of ironies.
United States Forces Korea ― USFK, which oversees 28,500 U.S. troops in South Korea ― is not under threat from a leftist South Korea government, nor from North Korean action, anger or hostility.
No. The man most likely to bring this formidable force home ― or, at the very least, slash its capabilities, numbers and expenses ― is the U.S. president himself.
To widespread astonishment, U.S. President Donald Trump revealed in Singapore, after his summit with North Korean leader Kim Jong-un, that he had granted Pyongyang a long-standing demand: The end of joint South Korean-US military exercises.
Notably, he did not simply cite the war games as "provocative" toward North Korea; they are "expensive" for the US taxpayer he said ― an argument that Pyongyang has never used.
This should astonish nobody. On the campaign trail Trump made clear that he favored allies paying more than they do. This is a president who views matters through an economic, rather than a strategic prism.
Since 1953, USFK has been shrinking. Looking ahead, does further shrinkage ― or even withdrawal ― of USFK make sense in the wider strategic picture?
Not for South Koreans. And possibly not even for North Koreans, either.
For South Korea, the Northern threat has not gone away. Perhaps it will. But even if it does not, it no longer threatens South Korea's existence.
Pyongyang's vanilla forces lack fuel, equipment, large-scale training opportunities and recent combat experience. Its manpower is decrepit and under-equipped, at their best not in combat on expeditionary battlegrounds, but while showcasing impeccable drills for their leader during televised parades.
Pyongyang's black forces are scarier. They can launch strikes deploying spies, commandos, patrol boats, submarines and artillery. Such operations kill citizens and troops. But none are strategic; none are game winning moves. All are pinpricks in South Korea's national body. If anything, such tactics are self-defeating: They arouse Southern sentiment against the North.
The real North Korean threat is weapons of mass destruction: Nuclear arms. Chemical and bacteriological agents can largely be written out of any equation of conquest.
While chemical and bacterial agents represent nightmare munitions in the popular imagination, both are difficult to deploy, and have massive blowback potential. Both suffer reduced effectiveness if their target boasts an advanced health infrastructure, as South Korea does, but North Korea does not.
Don't believe me? OK. Show me a single post-1918 conflict in which either chemical or biological weapons were deployed with battlefield effectiveness. No..? I rest my case. These are terrorist tools, not state-to-state warfare weapons.
What, then of nuclear arms?
Why would North Korea incinerate countless members of a population it claims to be liberating? (This same question applies, in a smaller way, to Pyongyang's artillery threat ― which professionals will tell you is far less intimidating than media believes.)
But even if South Korea can defend itself against North Korea conventionally, there are broader reasons to maintain a Washington alliance.
This alliance goes beyond USFK. Its underpinning is a mutual defense treaty ― which, incidentally, does not even mention North Korea.
There is no multilateral security architecture in the region; no Northeast Asian NATO. We all know that _ for emotive rather than political reasons ― Koreans cannot ally with Japanese. This makes the U.S. South Korea's only friend to turn to if things turn rough. It has no other ally. Period.
Speaking of the broader peninsula: What is more threatening? A superpower across the Pacific ― or a superpower next door? Could ― gulp! ― Seoul and Washington one day invite Pyongyang into a trilateral pact against external enemies?
This is not complete lunacy. After all, the late Kim Jong-il told the late Kim Dae-jung that he agreed to a long-term US presence on the peninsula to counterbalance a rising China.
I would respectfully suggest that Seoul considers these factors very carefully as it negotiates the upcoming issues of defense cost-sharing and wartime operational control with Washington.
These are big-picture issues here. There are big-boys' rules to consider. In a situation where all possibilities are in play, there is more at stake than North-South rapprochement.
Andrew Salmon (andrewcsalmon@yahoo.co.uk) is a Seoul-based reporter and author.
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