The ROK military announced on December 21 its decision to further scale up the ROK-US joint military exercise in the first half of 2023 to reach the level of the previous Foal Eagle exercise. The scale-up and the re-mention of Foal Eagle exercise reflected both Seoul and Washington’s strategic intention to intensify their military alliance, said military observer Yin Zhuo.
The ROK Defense Minister Lee Jong-sup recently presided over a top commanders’ meeting for the second half of 2022, at which they discussed core topics of ROK’s defense policy for 2023 and stressed “nuclear protection” as the pivot of the ROK-US military alliance. Yin Zhuo analyzed that ROK’s current defense policy is centered on intensifying the military alliance with the US to jointly tackle the so-called nuclear missile threat from DPRK, thus borrowing America’s capabilities to mitigate its own security concerns. Moon Jae-in administration called off a series of exercises during his term in hopes of improving the relations with DPRK, but his successor Yoon Seok-Youl has been strengthening the military cooperation with the US and Japan, and joint military exercise is now back on the agenda.
The key topic in its national defense policy, according to the ROK government, is closer military ties with the US in response to the so-called nuclear missile threat from the north. To achieve that, in addition to making its own preparations, Seoul also proposed to keep more American strategic assets, which probably refer to aircraft carrying nuclear weapons or even nuclear warheads, on ROK soil.
Yin Zhuo further pointed out that it is the US that’s the root cause of the ROK’s security anxiety, and it is intensifying the alliance with ROK only to turn the Asian country into a forward position for advancing its major country competition strategy. Taking the so-called nuclear missile threat from the north as an excuse, Washington wants to beef up military cooperation with Seoul to put together an Asian version of mini NATO, in which ROK can serve as a forward position where it can intensify military deployments targeting major Asian Pacific countries and Russia.
In another related development, Seoul and Washington have had constant and various joint exercises recently. There was an air exercise scheduled for December 22, for which America’s F-22 Raptor stealthy fighters and B-52H Stratofortress strategic bombers had arrived at the US military base in ROK and areas surrounding the Korean peninsula. The exercise captured extensive attention even though it was called off in the end due to bad weather. The ramped-up military deployments and scaled-up exercises between the two countries will further undermine peace and development on the Korean peninsula, even the whole Asia Pacific, said Yin.
The plan to revive the Foal Eagle joint exercise indicates the recovery and strengthening of military cooperation between the US and ROK, who, both using DPRK’s nuclear missile threat as an excuse, are sabotaging regional security by driving up confrontation and forcing regional countries into a new round of arms race. That spells nothing but disaster for the security, stability and peace in the region.
The Asian Pacific economy is growing at a fast pace, and the US has no place in such regional economic arrangements. Therefore, it is its important strategic goal to ruin regional peace and stability and the collective economic arrangements where it has no place.
Editor's note: Originally published on military.cnr.cn, this article is translated from Chinese into English and edited by the China Military Online. The information and opinions in this article do not necessarily reflect the views of eng.chinamil.com.cn.
