From US-Soviet to US-Russian relations: The implications for Korea

US global engagement after WWII began in Europe in response to the Soviet political threat. With the outbreak of the war in Korea in 1950, the Soviet military threat became a reality and accelerated the implementation of the US containment strategy. As a result, a divided Korea came to be locked in a stalemate created by the Cold War. South Korea profited both economically and politically by being part of the US alliance system and a key part of the strategic equilibrium in Northeast Asia during last decade of the Cold War. With the end of the Soviet Union, that equilibrium has broken up. Achieving a new regional stability requires dealing with the region's most urgent challenge: change on the Korean peninsula. Dealing with China is a larger but much less urgent challenge. How change in Korea works out will either leave a unified Korea without US forces and within China's security orbit, or it will keep a unified Korea within the US security system and with US forces still present. Economically, the former outcome would be a disaster for Korea because Chinese economic and military growth are vastly overestimated. Politically, achieving the latter outcome will require Japanese and Russian as well as Chinese involvement. If it is to remain within the Western economic and security system, Korea can dispense with a US troop presence only when Japan and Korea overcome their mutual enmity and replace their bilateral ties with the United States by multilateral military ties in a single alliance.