ウィスパリング同時通訳研究会コミュのRedesigning Contingency Planning Mechanisms in Northeast Asia

H. R. McMaster:
Hello, everyone. I’m H. R. McMaster. It’s a real privilege to host this great session on behalf of the Hudson Institute to talk about a very serious threat, I think, to all of humanity, and that’s whether or not the only communist hereditary dictatorship in the world gets the most destructive weapons on earth and can threaten us with those weapons. And of course, very important to dealing with that threat is, I think, two of the most important bilateral relationships, but then relationships across the three countries of the United States, South Korea, and Japan.
And we have three amazing panelists to give us their views on the relationship on the threats that we’re facing, and what opportunities we have to work better together, to reduce those threats, and secure peace, and build a better future in Northeast Asia, and then for the rest of the world as well.
My old friend Admiral Harry Harris is here. Admiral Harris served as the U.S. Ambassador to South Korea from July 2018 until January 2021, an eventful few years. He served, beyond that 40 years in uniform, retiring on the 1st of June 2018. He’s the first Asian-American to hold four-star rank in the U.S. Navy. He commanded U.S. Pacific Command, U.S. Pacific Fleet, the U.S. 6th Fleet, the Striking and Support Forces NATO, and Joint Task Force Guantanamo. He participated in numerous combat operations, including Desert Shield and Storm, Enduring Freedom, Iraqi Freedom, and Odyssey Dawn. He’s flown over 4,400 hours, including over 400 hours in combat, and he’s just a great guy, by the way, too, so great to see you, Harry.
He was born in Japan and reared in Tennessee and Florida. He graduated from Annapolis and holds master’s degrees from Harvard and Georgetown. He did post-graduate work at Oxford as well, and completed the Seminar XXI Fellowship at MIT, and he is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations. Dr. Ken Jimbo, Jimbo-san, it’s great to see you and to have you on this panel. He’s a Professor at the Faculty of Policy Management at Keio University. He served as a Special Advisor to the Minister of Defense, Japan Ministry of Defense in 2020, and a Senior Advisor at the National Security Secretariat, kind of the National Security Council Staff on Japan. His main research fields are in International Security, Japan-U.S. Security Relations, Japanese Foreign and Defense Policy, Multilateral Security in the Asia-Pacific, and Regionalism in East Asia. He’s been a policy advisor for various Japanese governmental commissions and research groups, including the National Security Secretariat, the Ministry of Defense, and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. His policy writings are writings from which I’ve learned quite a bit. They’ve appeared in NBR, the RAND Corporation, Stimson Center, Pacific Forum CSIS, Japan Times, Nikkei, Asahi and Sankei Shimbun.
And then, we’re very fortunate to have someone representing the country that is closest to the threat of North Korea, Lieutenant General In-bum Chun from the South Korean Military, a distinguished officer who served 38 years in the South Korean Army and retired in 2016. He was a visiting fellow at the Center for East Asia Policy Studies of the Brookings Institution, he was a visiting researcher at the U.S.-Korea Institute at SAIS, the University of Johns Hopkins, and a visiting fellow at the Sam Nunn School of International Affairs in Georgia Tech. His past military positions include Chief of the Election Support Branch, Civil Military Affairs/Strategic Operations Directorate of the Multi-National Forces in Iraq, the Director of U.S. Affairs at the Korean Ministry of National Defense, Deputy Assistant Chief of Staff for Operations at the U.S.-ROK Combined Forces Command, and Senior Member of the UNCMAC or Uncmac, the Commander of the ROK Special Forces Command, and Deputy Commander of the First ROK Army.
What you can see with all of these bios is that, there’s a combination of tremendous practical experience, and then, also, academic research and policy research and writing about policy to influence the direction of our multilateral approach and each of our nations’ approach to this particular problem set. The General is one of the most decorated officers in Iraq military history and his awards include three U.S. Legions of Merit, which is extraordinary, a U.S. Bronze Star Medal, and the USSOCOM medal. He serves now as the Senior Vice President of the AUSA Korea Chapter, and is on the Advisory Board for NBR, the National Bureau of Asian Research.
And so, without further delay, let’s just get the panel started. We’ll start with Admiral Harris. Each members of the panel are going to offer some opening and framing remarks, and then we’ll go into a general discussion. Welcome, everyone. It’s great to see all of you.
Admiral Harry Harris:
Yeah. Thanks, H. R., and let me give a shoutout to Hudson for putting together this important discussion. Now, let me just begin by saying that the U.S. has only five bilateral security treaties in the whole wide world, and these are all in the Indo-Pacific, that’s Australia, the Philippines, Japan, South Korea, and Thailand. The rest are multilateral, the Rio Pact and NATO, of course, come to mind, but there’s only five bilateral security treaties that we have, and these are in East Asia.
Let me emphasize that our most important alliances, allies in North Asia are with South Korea and Japan, while Australia forms a bulwark to the South. And I’ve said this often, because it is true, since World War II, the network of U.S. alliances and partnerships has been at the core of a stable Indo-Pacific. Relationships matter and alliances matter, and I’m glad the Biden administration has embraced this concept.
No country can shape the future of their region in positive ways in isolation. Therefore, it’s crucial, in my opinion, for the ROK, the Republic of Korea, for Japan, and for the United States to work together to enhance security cooperation and preserve the international rules-based order.
The reality is that, no important security or economic issue in the region can be addressed without South Korea’s and Japan’s active involvement. I believe that both governments have used the historical divisions between them for domestic politics. That said, I know Seoul better than Tokyo in this context, and let me speak to that.
I do believe that the current administration in South Korea has placed too much emphasis on threading the needle between its number one trading partner, that’s the People’s Republic of China or PRC, on the one hand, and its only security ally, that’s us, the United States, on the other. I believe it also weighed improving relations with North Korea as more important than strengthening the security lines with the U.S., as manifested by its agreements with the PRC over THAAD, the Terminal High Altitude Area Defense system, insistence on the reduction of joint military exercises, which exist only to improve the readiness of the combined force to defend South Korea, and its willingness to discard the GSOMIA or General Security of Military Information Agreement, the bilateral agreement between Seoul and Tokyo. I also believe that Japan and South Korea are unable to work out their differences by themselves, that it will take a strong mediator, the U.S. or someone else, or a strong common existential threat, North Korea or the PRC for the latter example.
Now, without going into the bad history between Seoul and Tokyo, and it’s important to underscore how serious this bad history is, let me talk briefly about the trilateral crisis of 2019 surrounding the GSOMIA agreement. I advocated strongly, while I was an ambassador for the two nations, to sign this… I’m sorry. I advocated strongly for the two nations to sign this agreement when I was the PACOM commander back in 2016, and I was pleased when they did. Unfortunately, in 2019, when Japan announced export restrictions and removed South Korea from its whitelist, citing security concerns, South Korea announced its intent to abrogate the GSOMIA. Only hard lobbying by the United States at all levels of government, including me in Seoul, called Seoul to reconsider, which they did.
Now, that said, I was encouraged by the outcome of just last February’s trilateral foreign ministerial meeting in Hawaii, where the three leaders condemned the recent flurry of North Korean missile tests, and acknowledged the need to deter further to such activity. The South Korean Foreign Minister, Chung Eui-yong, said himself, that in going further than the trilateral statement, he said that ongoing disagreements between Seoul and Tokyo would not affect cooperation on North Korea. This is a strong and positive statement, in my opinion.
I’m optimistic about South Korea’s new president-elect’s outreach to Tokyo and vice versa. The stakes are too high to take any other course. I was pleased that President-elect Yoon’s defense advisor, Kim Young-eun underscored the GSOMIA, was more than a bilateral intelligence share impact between South Korea and Japan. In his opinion, the GSOMIA bridges, Seoul, Washington, and Tokyo for security coordination. “We need to properly restore GSOMIA to firm up trilateral corporation,” he said, and he’s so right.
Importantly, President-elect Yoon has promised to establish a future-oriented South Korea-Japan cooperative relationship, and Japan’s Kishida government is also sending positive signals to Yoon. Finally, I’ll note that this is so important, and it’s too early to be optimistic, but it seems to me that we’re off to a good start in the future, and trilateral corporation will be an improvement over where we’ve been. Thank you.
H. R. McMaster:
Thank you so much, Admiral Harris, for those great framing comments. And I think you know that if we try to prioritize this relationship, when I was national security advisor and had three confidential meetings in San Francisco between Director Chung Eui-yong and Director Yachi Shotaro, and I was sad to see it starting to come apart. I think it’s coming back together, and I think in large measure because of leaders in all countries you included, and Jimbo-san included, and General Chun have been really strong voices for keeping the family together.
With that, Jimbo-san, would you share your framing remarks with us about the relationship, the thread, and what we need to do about it?
Dr. Ken Jimbo:
Well, thank you, General McMaster. And I would also like to begin by thanking Hudson Institute for putting this all together. And it’s such an honor for me to share the panel with Admiral Harris and General Chun, who served tremendously over past years on our trilateral relations have spent.
As mentioned, the timing for considering that trilateral security corporation couldn’t be better than now as South Korea, having a new Yoon Suk-yeol administration. It was a win by narrow margin at the presidential election, but I think result was significant. And it is the first occasion in five years to amend the weakest link in our trilateral relationship, that is obviously the Japan-Korea leg of cooperation. And we should capitalize it as early as possible before having Korea local election in June, and also Japan’s upper house election in July. So, I think that timing is quite crucial.
And from Tokyo’s perspective, the security of South Korea is closely linked with the security of Japan. And from the alliance perspective, the U.S.-ROK Alliance and the Japan-U.S. Alliance share the operational theater to deter and respond to the crisis in Korean peninsula. It is always our important reminder that if Tokyo-Seoul relations remain strained, it will undermine our collective ability to deter aggression by North Korea and also by China.
It is never too late to work on the trilateral agenda by first, cross referencing each of our defense policy that is going to take shape in coming months, in both countries. And second, coordinating functions in two of our bilateral alliances with the United States, in line with the U.S. National Defense Strategy, and also the joint war fighting concept. And the third, materializing trilateral joint operations. So, these three dimensions should be pursued in parallel.
Let me offer some of these potentials from Tokyo’s perspective. As Japanese government plans to revise the national security strategy and additional two defense documents by the end of this year, what we expect is having a robust increase, at least, comparing with the past in our defense budget and also our capability, and that will involve self defense force introduction of the long range strike capability, and that might be the one of the significant decision in our post-war history.
Although, there remains a wide ranging views regarding what we are aiming at in terms of objectives, operational concept, and the scale of such capability, but given that Japan’s indigenous strike package, that is a strike operation solely by SDF, may fall into two costly and less effective options. My hunch is that, only available option that Tokyo pursue, vis-a-vis North Korea, is Japan joining the joint strike operations side by side with the United States, and also, potentially, with ROK.
So, it is about integrating Japanese strike capability in the alliance framework. And with that, we can achieve better operational effectiveness, and also reducing the South Korean concerns. And most importantly, we might pursue the opportunity for get free of us in the loop of decision making, and also the sharing of the political responsibility when we decide to strike. So, I recall the USFK’s command philosophy is, fight tonight and win, but for us, we should pursue fight together and win in the trilateral context.
Let me also touch upon the connecting the bilateral alliance. To ensure the robust and seamless U.S.-Japan and U.S.-Korea join operation in the theater, both Japan and South Korea’s defense corporation guideline needs to be further coordinated, and that might involve a deeper intelligence sharing from peace time through the contingency, so I really concur with that. Admiral Harris has been mentioning about the importance of the GSOMIA, and also we should pursue resuming of the missile defense cooperation. And further, we can aim for the establishing much more integrated missile defense architecture that obviously needs to be decided by the government of Korea. And also, having a trilateral regular defense dialogue, and TTX, and actual exercise to operationalize scenario-based contingency planning.
On the nuclear domain, as the North Korea’s ICBM capability grows, the risk of so called decoupling that Pyongyang attempts to drive a wedge in the alliance should not be underestimated. The extended deterrence and assurance dynamics is based on the closed consultation among US and its allies. So, the rise of nuclear sharing option debate in Tokyo, and also the re-introduction of the tactical nuclear weapons in Korea exemplify such a potential fear of the alliance decoupling.
While I don’t immediately support two of these options, but I think most effective way is to upgrade the extended deterrence dialogue that we have in the U.S.-Japan Alliance context, and also the extended deterrence strategy and consultation group in the U.S.-Korea Alliance, and that will desirably connect it, further coordinate it together. And those might, I think, increase the confidence over the U.S. nuclear extended deterrence in the years to come.
Finally, I will also like to cite our discussion that we have internally last week, that is the importance of the strategic messaging for both of our audiences in Japan and Korea. And it is important to identify that both Japan and South Korea is in the integrated theater, where Korea’s defense capability will eventually save lives of the Japanese people. And Japanese capability is indispensable for supporting the U.S. operation in the Korean peninsula, thus serving the defense of South Korea. So, these are, I think, the important spirits that should be emphasized more vocally by our political leaders and nurture our public support towards the trilateral relations.
I’ll stop here. Thank you very much.
H. R. McMaster:
Thank you, Jimbo-san. What a rich discussion already, hearing about the importance of the San Francisco system of alliances, the importance of intelligence sharing in GSOMIA, and now the importance of… We’re talking about cross referencing capabilities and ensuring complimentary capabilities.
And it’s only going to get better because now, we get to hear from General Chun, and hear his point of view on the threats that we’re facing, but how we can work better together? And we went in reverse order, I think, general, because we should probably have started with the person who’s closest to the danger, but we look forward to hearing your comments.
General In-bum Chun:
Thank you very much. Again, I would like to just voice my appreciation to Hudson, and to you for providing this opportunity. I also would like to appreciate the comments made by Admiral Harris and Dr. Jimbo-san.
I feel that the first step to trilateral cooperation is the acknowledgement that it is in the best interest of the United States, Japan, and Korea, that Korea and Japan have better relations. You would think that this is a given, but surprisingly, many people seem to forget this on both sides of the straights, so this is something that must be focused upon. Both Korean and Japanese political leaders must communicate this message to their population. I think that a added on message must be that to the Korean public. They must understand that Japan is vital to the security of Korea. And to the Japanese, they must realize that Korea is vital to their security.
For both of these countries, we need each other for our security. Although, there are historical territorial and even naming issues between Japan and Korea, it cannot take precedence over security. And yet, both Japan and Korea face internal political realities in each country, that is why we need the United States to come to our help and be the median. We need to separate security with historical territorial issues and focus on mutual interests, and learn from Israel’s maturity and Germans’ sincerity.
When the Republic of Korea was born, we were the underdog of the relationship. Even now, many Koreans feel that they are the victims of this relationship. This is just reality. So, I think that Japan and the United States must recognize and understand this fact and ease the hearts of the Koreans. Finally, I believe that the Koreans must learn how to overcome their emotions and be more practical.
I just want to emphasize that, although I agree that we need to ensure that we take advantage of the window of opportunity, that the tempo has to be measured because right now, we’ve been going south, now we want to turn north. And if we shift gears too quickly, people are going to get bumped around, so we need to have a gradual phase because right now, the Yoon administration, although they’re starting, has about 50% approval rating, the lowest ever in Korean history.
So, we need to help the Yoon administration make its decisions. And how do we do that? By dialogue. The Yoon administration must understand how the Japanese feel and how the United States feels about its actions and vice versa. So, dialogue, at all levels at government, two-track, three-track, whatever it is about each other’s position is critical in achieving this common goal, which is in the best interest of all our countries against the challenges that we face. Thank you.