Troop presence in Korea serves US national interest

The United States has kept troops in South Korea for decades because it’s in the country’s own national interest, not just to help the Asian ally, the head of a major U.S. think tank said Monday.

John Hamre, a top security expert and president of the Center for Strategic and International Studies, made the point during a discussion on Korea-U.S. defense cooperation, rejecting President-elect Donald Trump’s rhetoric that the U.S. gains little from maintaining troops in allied nations.

“We’ve just elected a new president-elect, who has said rather curious things about our allies, implying that we’re only in Korea to help Korea, we’re not there for ourselves, we’re there to help Korea. You know that’s just completely wrong,” Hamre said.

“America has been in Korea because we felt our strategic national interests are at risk if the Korean environment is uncertain. So we made a commitment as a nation to stay there because our interests required that we stay there. And we chose to have a very strong ally in the Republic of Korea because it helped us do that,” he said.

Hamre also stressed the troop presence is not the gift that “we’re giving to the Korean people.”

“This is something that we’re doing for ourselves. And we’re so very fortunate that we have such a strong ally. We’re very grateful to have an ally like this,” he said.

Hamre also said there is “some confusing things going on in Korea,” referring to the corruption scandal rocking South Korean President Park Geun-hye, and said he hopes the country will remain strong through next year’s presidential election.

“I don’t know enough about the issues that are swirling around in Korea to know what to say other than we want a strong Korea through the next election,” he said. “We need to make sure there is a strong, coherent government in Korea. That’s in our interests.”

During campaigning, Trump argued that the U.S. should no longer be the “policeman of the world,” expressing deeply negative views of U.S. security commitments overseas and claiming it makes no sense for the U.S. to help defend such wealthy allies as Japan, South Korea and Saudi Arabia in exchange for little.

He has said allies should pay 100 percent of the cost of stationing American troops, or the U.S. should be prepared to end their protection. He even suggested allowing South Korea and Japan to develop their own nuclear weapons for self-defense so as to reduce U.S. security burdens.

About 28,500 American troops are stationed in South Korea to deter North Korean aggression, a legacy of the 1950-53 Korean War, which ended in a truce, not a peace treaty. Many agree that the troop presence is also in line with U.S. interests in a region marked by China’s rise. (Yonhap, The Korea Times)