Volume 10, Issue 5
During a visit to Seoul in the first week of June 2004, senior US defence officials notified their South Korean counterparts that the United States had decided to withdraw approximately 12,500 troops from units long stationed on the Korean peninsula by the end of 2005. Though hardly unanticipated, the decision has nevertheless triggered widespread anxiety in South Korea about future US security strategy toward the peninsula. Even assuming that various contentious issues can be resolved, defining a credible basis for alliance planning looms as an unmet challenge.
Volume 9, Issue 5
In meetings in Honolulu on 23-24 July, senior American and South Korean defence officials sought to thrash out their continued differences over major changes in US military deployments on the Korean peninsula. These changes portend the most important shifts in US defence strategy in Northeast Asia since president Richard Nixon's promulgation of the Guam doctrine in the summer of 1969. The as yet unresolved issues between Washington and Seoul reflect major disagreements over the pace, modalities and costs associated with the realignment of US forces.
Volume 9, Issue 7
The US is again turning its attention to the proliferation challenges posed by North Korea and Iran. It is perhaps indicative of the extent to which Iraq posed an exceptional case – in terms both of US threat perceptions and the legal, political and military circumstances which led to war – that Washington's non-proliferation policy has shifted from military force and regime-change strategies back toward traditional multilateral diplomacy designed to alter Tehran and Pyongyang's behaviour. Nevertheless, prospects for diplomatic success in either case are plainly mixed.
Volume 9, Issue 6
The Bush administration's Proliferation Security Initiative (PSI) is a multilateral strategy to interdict shipments of weapons of mass destruction and related delivery systems. Still in its infancy, the PSI has already been subjected to two opposing lines of criticism. Some see it as a leaky sieve, unlikely to trap any sensitive items; others fear that it will be a pervasive dragnet, tantamount to a naval blockade that, in the case of North Korea, risks inciting war.
Volume 10, Issue 6
The transfer of Ballistic Missile Defence (BMD) capabilities to countries in Asia embodies difficult dilemmas for the United States. Washington must be mindful of the complications that its transfers might cause, yet equally it must be responsive to the growing expansion of the ballistic missile threat facing its friends and allies if it is to secure their cooperation in regards to both its immediate power projection objectives and its larger geopolitical interests in Asia. Even more importantly, it has to appreciate that eschewing BMD transfers would create problems of its own.
Volume 10, Issue 3
Throughout the Asia-Pacific region, defence planners are seeking to exploit the information-age Revolution in Military Affairs (RMA) that has preoccupied their American counterparts for the last decade. Armed forces as diverse as those of Australia, China, Japan, Singapore, South Korea and Taiwan have begun to develop RMA-type capabilities. Prowess in information and communication technology has played an important part in the economic development of those Asia-Pacific countries where interest in military transformation is strongest, and provides a necessary technological underpinning for national efforts to benefit from the RMA.
Volume 8, Issue 10
Recent events have underlined the significance of mounting economic pressures at home in influencing North Korea's behaviour abroad: faced with a decrepit economy, missile sales are an attractive source of foreign exchange earnings; while Pyongyang's nuclear programme is seen as a key asset through which to extract economic concessions from a nervous outside world. In the second half of 2002, there were signs that economic difficulties had reached such a point that the leadership was prompted to make what appeared to mark a major shift in policy. However, the hap-hazard measures will do little to turn around the country's failing economy, and are therefore equally unlikely to exert any beneficial effects on North Korea's international behaviour in the foreseeable future.
Volume 8, Issue 9
Pyongyang'sadmission that it has a clandestine nuclear programme in violation of its treaty obligations has significantly increased tensions in and around the Korean Peninsula, and presented Washington and its regional allies with a major policy dilemma. While all sides are working towards a diplomatic solution, the dynamics of the dispute leave room for a potentially dangerous escalation.
Volume 8, Issue 9
In October 2002, reports citing US officials claimed that Pakistan - in exchange for North Korean No-dong ballistic missiles - had assisted Pyongyang in its recently uncovered effort to develop a clandestine uranium enrichment-based nuclear weapons programme. The allegation has heightened concerns about Pakistan's apparent resolve to create an operational nuclear strike force against India through a contravention of global non-proliferation norms and at the risk of destabilising relations with Washington. More importantly, it has raised questions about Pakistan's nuclear decision-making institutions and procedures, and the extent to which military decisions on strategic policy have been subject to review by civilian authorities and rival governmental institutions.
