The Adjustment Of Usfk "Strategic Flexibility"and Its Impact

During the Cold War, U.S. military strategy in Northeast Asia is made against the potential threat of the communist countries. The forces in South Korea prevented North Korea and South Korea seeking means of warfare for unification, stabilized the situation of Korean Peninsula, contained China, and prevented the resurrection of Japan militarism.After the event of September11, America put its political center on assuring absolute U.S. security. Counter-terrorism and preventing WMD proliferation ranked top in the agenda of U.S. military strategy. Asymmetry and uncertainty of threats requires U.S. to adjust its military strategy to deal with the challenges. Fixed military deployment since the Cold War needed urgent change and the United States worked hard to make the troops stationed overseas more agile and flexible. Since2005, U.S. and South Korea held formal talks on USFK’s strategic flexibility, and reached agreement in2006that the role of USFK would be transformed into military forces that safeguard regional peace instead of just keeping stability of the Korean peninsula. The important step of USFK "strategic flexibility" adjustment is the transfer of USFK base. U.S. troops will be evacuated from the military demarcation line and deployed into the south of the Han River. In this process, the America-led defense style will change in the direction of South Korea domain and the United States support defense style. The adjustment of USFK "strategic flexibility" is made upon the urgent need of the US-ROK relation improvement and it’s also a part of the Asia-Pacific military strategic transformation. USFK "strategic flexibility" adjustment helps South Korea gain greater autonomy in national defense and the ROK-US alliance is strengthened. South Korea no longer has to worry about being "abandoned" by America but in the contrary, will be possibly dragged into unnecessary disputes by pressure.The strategic intent of USFK "strategic flexibility" adjustment is not only to be consistent with the U.S. global military strategy, but also to contain Northeast Asia countries’arising. After the USFK was transformed into "regional force", it can be involved into disputes outside the Korean Peninsula and the potential target is to deal with the crisis in the Taiwan Strait. The adjustment of USFK "strategic flexibility" is likely to be an unstable factor which would cause the relations among South Korea, U.S. and China to deteriorate. As for USFK "Strategic flexibility" adjustment, China’s first choice is to improve both relations with South Korea and the United States, maintain friendly cooperation and exchanges with neighboring countries, and actively promote the construction of the Northeast Asian Community in order to break the ongoing arms race in the region.This paper starts from the analysis of U.S. global military strategic transformation and America’s policy objectives in Northeast Asia, combining alliance security dilemma theory to explore the motivation of the adjustment of USFK "strategic flexibility", and interprets the positive and negative interactions between United States and South Korea in this process. And then analyze the structure changes of ROK-US alliance and the role and nature change of the USFK after the adjustment, comment on its impact on Northeast Asia and the resolution of North Korean nuclear problem and give some advices on China’s coping strategy.