By Robert E. Kelly
Seoul is coming under pressure from all sides on the question of missile defense.
Last month, I argued that North Korea’s combined nuclear and missile program was reaching a tipping point. Previously these systems could be defended – at the outer reaches of rationality, to be sure – as protection against possible American-led regime change. In practice, they were primarily tools for the extortion and blackmail of Pyongyang’s neighbors, most obviously South Korea. North Korea’s gangsterism, while objectionable, has generally been manageable. But if (when?) the Northern program expands into more, faster, and more powerful warheads and missiles (as seems likely), then it would morph into a serious, possibly existential threat to South Korea (and Japan). A North Korea with a few missiles and warheads is unnerving, an obvious concern for proliferation and blackmail, but not a state- and society-breaking threat to the neighborhood. But a North Korea with dozens, or even hundreds, of such weapons (in the coming decades) is a threat to the constitutional and even physical survival of South Korea and Japan.
My greatest concern then for regional stability is that at some point Seoul elites will be so terrified of a spiraling arsenal of Northern nuclear weapons (following the logic of the security dilemma), that they will consider pre-emptive air-strikes [PDF] (as Israel has done in Iraq and Syria). The possibility of a Northern response and slide into war is obvious.
There is an alternative however – the deployment of robust missile defense. While hundreds of incoming missiles would overwhelm any current missile defense system, the technology is advanced enough now for at least modest coverage. This would buy time, providing South Korea with at least a basic “roof’’ against Northern threats.
Precisely this debate has roiled South Korean foreign policy in recent years, and it appears to be coming to head in 2015. The U.S. would like to deploy its Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) missile defense system. But THAAD has become quite controversial locally, because the Chinese strongly oppose deployment. The South Korean left especially, traditionally wary of too much association with the Americans, has hesitated. But Beijing’s imperiousness on the issue is becoming itself an issue in Korea. At the moment, public opinion here seems to be slowly drifting toward deployment.
Read the full story at The Diplomat