Korea: Obama's Most Serious Mistake

By authorizing Seoul to triple the range of its ballistic missiles, Washington opened Pandora’s box in the region.

Seoul and Pyongyang compete with each other as to who will fire its warheads the farthest. This is a dangerous game that threatens the fragile security in Northeast Asia, but it’s supported by Washington. While everybody’s attention is directed at the Obama-Romney race, with its main focus on Iran and the Middle East, the current administration is playing with fire in the Asia-Pacific region, according to experts. “It is Obama’s most serious mistake with regard to security in the region,”* asserts Daniel Pinkston, a specialist with the well respected International Crisis Group. He criticizes the new bilateral agreement brokered by Washington and its ally, South Korea.

On Sunday, Seoul announced triumphantly that it was going to almost triple the range of its ballistic warheads in order to better keep Kim Jong-un’s regime at bay. That decision was reached with its American ally. It will allow South Korea to strike the entire North Korean territory and will void the commitment Seoul made in 2001, according to which the range of its ballistic missiles was limited to 300 kilometers. Within the next five years, Seoul will deploy ballistic weapons of a range of 800 kilometers and will have the means to carry out preventative and surgical strikes against the nine launch sites of North Korean missiles, if necessary, says Baek Seung-joo of the Korea Institute for Defense Analyses.

Bluffing

While South Korean soldiers and experts flex their muscles, Western experts pull out their hair. “It was a bad decision, which will ignite military tension in the region and have a global negative impact. How mind-boggling when you think that this comes from a president who was the recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize and who advocated a nuclear-free world!”* argues Daniel Pinkston. According to this well-known specialist based in Seoul, the green light given by Obama to his conservative ally, President Lee Myung-bak, will bring about an arms race and proliferation in the region. This will escalate tensions with Pyongyang especially.

North Korea immediately responded. Last Tuesday, the dictatorship bared its teeth, holding up threats against the agreement concluded between Seoul and its American ally, which still has 28,500 troops in the peninsula. “We are ready to fight a nuclear arsenal with another nuclear arsenal, warheads with warheads,” said a spokesman of the National Defense Commission, one of the key bodies of the North Korean regime.

Pyongyang boasted that they were able to get within shooting range of not only the American forces in the Korean peninsula, but also Japan, Guam [which is a U.S. territory in the Pacific] and even the territory of the United States itself. This is just bluff, since the various intercontinental missile tests of the reclusive kingdom crashed in the Pacific at best, and Pyongyang has reportedly been unable to miniaturize the nuclear bomb so far. Nevertheless, American troops based in Korea, Japan and even Guam would be within range of the North Korean leader’s weapons.

Some Concerns

The Seoul-Washington agreement also sets a bad example for China and Japan, which feel threatened by the extension of the range of their neighbors’ missiles. “They may think: If the South Koreans can do it, then why not us!”* says Pinkston regretfully. Washington limited the range of the South Korean missiles to 800 kilometers to protect the capital cities of Beijing and Tokyo, but the new and updated weaponry will be able to strike the western parts of Japanese territory.

It is an unfortunate move indeed, as it is at the very time where relations between the two countries have reached their lowest, due to a territorial dispute regarding the island of Dokdo/Takeshima. China has already voiced its concern and via Xinhua, its official agency, criticized the warheads’ new range by pointing out that this went against international commitments to arms reduction. “China will exploit this dispute and export significant technology towards Pakistan or … North Korea,” warns Pinkston. We shall see if Mitt Romney, the Republican candidate at the presidential election, will utilize this argument against his Democratic opponent…

*Editor’s Note: The original quotation, accurately translated, could not be verified.