The US—South Korea Alliance

Abstract

As with the other US Cold War alliances, the US—South Korea alliance was created to deter Soviet-backed communist aggression. This chapter seeks to show that, while maintaining a residual balance of power role, the US—South Korea alliance has increasingly acquired management of power characteristics — manifested in terms of operations, capabilities, and US posture — since the end of the Cold War. Its applicability has been growing well beyond the Korean peninsula — to the broader Asia-Pacific region as well as more globally. In a sense, the US—South Korea alliance is a “hard case” for the management of power thesis since, of all the alliances studied in this volume, it has the strongest rationale to remain geared exclusively toward a balance of power role owing to the continuing threat from North Korea. The chapter concludes with some thoughts about the future of the alliance particularly in light of prospects for Korean reunification.