Korea alliance must be seen holistically: Maxwell

David Maxwell, vice president of the Center for Asia Pacific Strategy and senior fellow of the Global Peace Foundation, speaks about ROK-U.S. alliance and unified Korea issues on the sidelines of the 2025 Capitol Forum held Saturday in Washington, D.C. / Courtesy of organizers

When he visited Seoul last December, following former President Yoon Suk Yeol's brief martial law declaration, David Maxwell, vice president of the Center for Asia Pacific Strategy, observed how different the street protests were.

"In the 1980s, we would come down from the DMZ once a month and Seoul would smell like tear gas. ... But there is no political violence, almost no violence at all," said Maxwell, who is also a senior fellow at the Global Peace Foundation.

"It looked like Independence Day ... and regardless of your political views, Koreans are protecting their democracy," said Maxwell, adding that this is one of the reasons why the U.S. continues to express support for democracy and the alliance.

Speaking on the sidelines of the 2025 Capitol Forum held on Saturday, Maxwell stressed that South Korea, like other allies, must see that the United States thinks about alliances holistically.

"Allies need to do that too," he said.

Maxwell, a military veteran who served in South Korea, said the country is "a partner in the arsenal of democracy, providing advanced weaponry to friends, partners and allies around the world ... and is also a contributor as a global pivotal state.

"I am hoping that the administration will recognize that because Korea is really a key to U.S. success against China."

On the heightened concern about defense-sharing costs rising in Seoul, he said that South Korea must separate political rhetoric from what the agreement calls for.

"We have to really look at the value of our alliance and see to understand that South Korea owns the burden of its defense and it is in the U.S. national interest," he said.

During the forum, he stressed the need for a better strategy toward North Korea, in contrast to the first summit between U.S. President Donald Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong-un in the first Trump administration.

"While it rests on deterrence and defense, it also rests on three new pillars: a human rights upfront approach, a sophisticated information campaign that is focused on achieving a free and unified Korea and (that) the U.S. should help the Korean people, all the Korean people to achieve a free and unified Korea."

"The path to unification is through human rights," he said, a sentiment he reiterated many times in an interview.

He listed four paths to unification — war, which should be avoided; regime collapse, which is dangerous and could lead to conflict; peaceful unification, the most difficult task; and regime change.

"The ideal path to achieve peaceful unification is through regime transformation, a change inside North Korea where new leadership emerges that wants to seek peaceful unification. ... And this is why human rights and information is so important because the Korean people in the North ... have to understand what their universal human rights are," he said.

Asked how a military veteran could uphold human rights and peaceful Korean unification, Maxwell referred to the Korean Armistice. "I think it is important to remember in Article 60 of the Armistice, the military commanders recognize there is no military solution to the division of the peninsula. It must be a political solution," Maxwell said.