Keeping the Americans in: The THAAD deployment on the Korean peninsula in the context of Sino-American rivalry

ABSTRACT

Seoul and Washington have conceded that Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) in South Korea cannot protect the capital region of Republic of Korea (ROK), including Seoul and Incheon, from North Korea’s missile attacks. Why did the South Korean government decide to deploy THAAD, risking possible retaliation from China, although it already knew its limited utility on the Korean peninsula? This article addresses the puzzle by connecting the deployment of THAAD in South Korea with the U.S. conception of a strategic rebalancing to Asia. By linking South Korea’s decision to deploy THAAD with contemporary alliance politics, extended deterrence, and abandonment and entrapment risks, it argues that Seoul’s THAAD decision was primarily intended to sustain and strengthen the U.S.-ROK alliance amid escalating nuclear threats by North Korea and deepening Sino-American rivalry.

KEYWORDS:

• THAAD
• rebalancing to Asia
• U.S.-ROK alliance
• extended deterrence
• abandonment and entrapment risks

Acknowledgements

I am very grateful to the Editor-in-Chief of Contemporary Security Policy and the two anonymous reviewers for their detailed and constructive suggestions, which greatly helped me improve the original manuscript.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes on contributor

Yong Sub Choi teaches at the Graduate School of International Studies, Seoul National University. He earned his Ph.D. in Politics and International Studies from the University of Warwick. His research interests include Antonio Gramsci, state-society relations, inter-Korean relations, and international relations in East Asia. His recent works have been published in international journals such as The Pacific Review and Asian Studies Review.

Notes

1 Postol has even argued that the THAAD interceptor itself “is very easily defeated by either causing a missile to tumble end over end, or by intentionally fragmenting a rocket into pieces.” To him, the defense capabilities of the THAAD “can be expected to be very low, probably zero or close to that” (Klug, 2017).

2 In November 2016, about four months after the announcement of the decision to deploy THAAD in South Korea, South Korea and Japan finally signed the GSOMIA (Park & Yun, 2016).

3 Many of those who were involved in the THAAD decision—particularly President Park Geun-hye and Chief of The National Security Office Kim Kwan-jin, the two most important figures—are in prison or on trial.