The Carter Troop Withdrawal Decision.

As early as 1975, candidate Jimmy Carter indicated he would withdraw American ground forces from Korea if he became president.13 The Korean reaction was more muted than might have been expected because in 1975 it did not seem likely that Carter would win the Democratic nomination, let alone the presidency, and because campaign rhetoric is not always translated into policy. Carter proved the Koreans wrong on both counts. After becoming president, he directly addressed the troop issue. The President believed that the approximately 32,000 ground forces in Korea could be removed over a 4-5 year period, allowing South Korea time to prepare its own forces to replace the departing Americans. Carter did anticipate, however, that American air and naval support forces would remain in the ROK for a long time.14

During the spring of 1977, the administration prepared Policy Review Memorandum 13. This document contained the various arguments under consideration at that time on the troop withdrawal plan. Although granting that the strategic balance had shifted in favor of the DPRK since 1970, it concluded that after a 5-year period of withdrawing American ground forces, South Korea could defend itself adequately if U.S. air, air defense, naval, logistics, and intelligence support continued to be made available to the ROK.15 In May 1977, the administration sent Presidential Decision 12 to the Departments of State and Defense ordering these departments to implement Carter's troop withdrawal plan. There were several reasons for the Carter decision. First, he did believe that because of quantitative and qualitative improvements in South Korean forces and equipment, U.S. ground forces were no longer necessary to maintain stability. Second, what he described as "strategic considerations" had changed from the late 1940s and early 1950s in relations between the United States and the Soviet Union.16 Although he did not say so explicitly, presumably the President was referring to the improvement in relations with both the Soviets and Chinese and the concomitant deteriorating relationship between the two communist giants. According to this view, these changing "strategic considerations" reduced the possibility of a repetition of the North Korean invasion of June 1950 in that neither the Soviet Union nor People's Republic of China would want to jeopardize the improving relations with the United States by supporting a North Korean attack. This line of rationale was exactly what the South Koreans feared: events outside the country, and over which they had little control, were directly affecting the ROK's defense. Third, South Korea was developing a strong economy and was fast approaching the time when it could provide for its own defense.17

There were other reasons for Carter's decision. The new President desired additional flexibility in determining how or if the United States should respond to an attack against South Korea. If American forces remained deployed along the major invasion routes, his choices were limited because Americans would be killed in the first moments of the attack. It would be very difficult for any president not to respond with military escalation if such deaths occurred. Also, Carter had campaigned to cut the defense budget; reducing military forces overseas was a means to achieve this promise. Finally, the President stressed the adherence to basic human rights as a major standard to influence U.S. relations with other countries. He found many of the policies and practices of the Park regime to be offensive, and he decided that he wanted to distance himself and the United States from Park.18

The Korean response to this withdrawal plan was predictable. Even opposition political leaders supported the retention of U.S. forces. Park indicated strongly that the United States would have to make major contributions to the South Korean military force improvement program so that his military could provide for the national defense as American forces withdrew. In 1977, the estimates were that Korean industry was providing approximately 50 percent of the equipment used by the ROK's military. This represented a significant improvement from the early 1970s when Park began his major industrialization projects. In negotiations during the summer of 1977, the United States agreed to provide nearly $1.5 billion during the course of the 5-year force-improvement program, primarily through Foreign Military Sales (FMS) credits.19 This assistance was a significant contribution to the ROK's efforts to expand further its defense industries. Nevertheless, Korean skepticism about the credibility of the American commitment reached one of its highest points since the end of the Korean war during these first years of the Carter administration.

In actuality, the Carter withdrawal policy resulted in the removal of less than one combat battalion. Again, significant differences between the executive and legislative branches of government were instrumental in this outcome as each sought to define what American policy should be. It is interesting to note that the roles were reversed from the earlier Nixon period when congressional pressure was a significant force limiting President Nixon's options in East Asia after the Vietnam experience. The 1977 withdrawal plan was never popular with many in the U.S. Congress and military. When the intelligence community conducted an intelligence reassessment in 1978, the remaining support was further diminished. Prior to this reassessment, the Carter administration argued that while the DPRK had some definite advantages, such as more combat aircraft and superior naval forces, these advantages were not so significant that Kim Il Sung could be confident of victory if he launched an attack. Geographical features favored the South as far as defensive positions were concerned, and the South Korean Air Force had more modern aircraft. Also, the ROK military experience in the Vietnam war had provided recent battlefield training which the North Koreans did not have.20

The intelligence reassessment involved both the Central Intelligence Agency and the Defense Intelligence Agency and focused on the DPRK's military capabilities. In June 1979, Congressman Les Aspin, a member of the House Select Committee on Intelligence, announced the results of this reassessment.21 After reviewing the new intelligence data, Aspin and others reached the following conclusions: the North had achieved a numerical superiority in ground forces to accompany its numerical advantages in the air; the number of North Korean divisions had increased from a projected 29 in 1977 to 37 in 1979; and the number of tanks and armored personnel carriers had grown by 35 percent and 20 percent respectively.

While these quantitative changes were disconcerting to Aspin, he found additional causes for concern in how Kim Il Sung had deployed his forces. Previously, American military analysts believed the DPRK was dedicated to a forward defense concept in which forces would be deployed along the 38th parallel and reinforced if necessary from rear areas. Such reinforcements would require time and could be detected by various intelligence means. However, the new data indicated that rather than a forward defense deployment, North Korea more than likely had developed a defense-in-depth posture. This new orientation could allow Kim to launch an attack without the sizable reinforcements required by forward defense planning. Therefore, the ROK and United States would not have the luxury of the requisite time to provide reinforcements as an attack became imminent. Since Seoul, the South Korean capital, is less than 30 miles from the 38th parallel, this new capability sent shock waves throughout the ROK and the bilateral security alliance.22

Confronted by increasing congressional opposition, concerns of the U.S. military, and the public statements of the Park government plus the new intelligence estimate, President Carter reevaluated his troop withdrawal plan. To assist in this reevaluation, he included Korea on his itinerary for an Asian trip scheduled for the summer of 1979. In an exchange of toasts with President Park, Carter emphasized the importance of the U.S.-South Korean relationship and stressed that the American military commitment to the ROK's security was "strong, unshakable, and enduring."23 In the joint communique, the American President was more specific about this commitment. He promised "prompt and effective assistance to repel armed attack" against the South and assured President Park that "the United States nuclear umbrella provided additional security for the area." Specifically relating to the withdrawal plan, Carter pledged that "the United States will continue to maintain an American military presence in the Republic of Korea to ensure peace and stability."24

Although President Carter's statements were somewhat nebulous and non-specific, the implication was that U.S. ground forces would remain in South Korea. Richard Holbrooke, Assistant Secretary of State for East Asia and the Pacific, made this point more explicitly in his testimony before the House Investigations Subcommittee after the President returned from Korea. In response to a question, Secretary Holbrooke stated that the communique; was "a clear statement that the United States will continue to maintain an American military presence in the Republic of Korea to insure peace and stability."25

Finally, in July 1979, President Carter announced that he had decided to hold the withdrawal plan in abeyance.26 Although Carter did not completely abandon his goal, he postponed further implementation of the withdrawal plan until well after the 1980 presidential election. More important, he attached a condition to any subsequent consideration of this issue: some indication or sign that the DPRK was willing to help reduce tensions on the Korean peninsula. Any future withdrawal decision would not be a unilateral U.S. decision.

This comparison of the Nixon and Carter policies is instructive. The Congress was the driving force in the Nixon decision to withdraw the 7th Infantry Division from the ROK because of congressional desires to reduce American commitments abroad in the aftermath of the Vietnam experience. It also wanted to reduce defense spending. During the Carter administration, the Congress reversed its role. Rather than supporting the President's initiative to remove the 2nd Infantry Division, many in the legislature opposed this policy and worked hard for its defeat. Les Aspin and others were concerned that America's credibility as a reliable ally was at stake. The collapse of friendly regimes in Indochina during 1975 was a factor, but the U.S. policy to establish normal diplomatic relations with the People's Republic of China was another. The PRC demanded that the United States break diplomatic relations with Taiwan and abrogate the Mutual Defense Treaty with the island before normalization could occur. The Carter administration complied with these demands for good geostrategic reasons, but U.S. credibility did suffer. The Congress acted to retain the troop presence in Korea in part as a damage-control measure.

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Notes:
13. U.S. Congress, Senate Committee on Foreign Relations, U.S. Troop Withdrawal from the Republic of Korea, a report by Senators Hubert H. Humphrey and John Glenn (hereafter the Humphrey and Glenn Report), 95th Cong., 2d sess., January 9, 1978, p. 1. (Back to text)

14. Public Papers of the Presidents: Jimmy Carter, 1977, book 1, p. 1018. (Back to text)

15. Humphrey and Glenn Report, p. 20. (Back to text)

16. Public Papers of the Presidents: Jimmy Carter, 1977, book 1, p. 1018. (Back to text)

17. Ibid., pp. 1018-19. (Back to text)

18. For a good discussion, see Franklin B. Weinstein and Fuji Kamiya, eds., The Security of Korea, pp. 81-84. See also Frank Gibney, "The Ripple Effect in Korea," Foreign Affairs, vol. 56, no. 1, October 1977, pp. 167-68. (Back to text)

19. Far Eastern Economic Review (hereafter FEER), June 10, 1977, p. 10. (Back to text)

20. Humphrey and Glenn Report, pp. 27-8. (Back to text)

21. U.S. Congress, House Committee on Armed Forces, The Impact of Intelligence Reassessment on Withdrawal of U.S. Troops from Korea: Hearings Before the Investigations Subcommittee, 96th Cong., 1st sess., June 21 and July 17, 1979, p. 3. (Back to text)

22. Ibid., p. 6. (Back to text)

23. Department of State Bulletin 79, no. 2029, August 1979, p. 15. (Back to text)

24. Ibid. p. 16. (Back to text)

25. The Impact of Intelligence Reassessment on Withdrawal of U.S. Troops from Korea: Hearings Before the Investigations Subcommittee, p. 77. (Back to text)

26. Department of State Bulletin 79, no. 2030, September 1979, p. 37. (Back to text)

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