This article was originally published on Jayu Press and translated by OKN Correspondent.
Although President-elect Yoon Seok-youl has yet to take office, various national security-related issues that the Moon Jae-in administration destroyed are quickly returning to the state it once was before. One is the idea of specifying North Korea as the “main enemy” once more. Previous South Korean administrations have always regarded North Korea as their main adversary since they began publishing white papers on national defense in the late 1980s. However, the Roh Moo-hyun and Moon Jae-in administrations completely removed the concept of [North Korea being] the main enemy from the defense white paper. Their logic was to be submissive by not provoking North Korea, which strategically is absurd and senseless.
These administrations justified not using the term “main enemy” on the pretext that there were no countries that they identified as the concept of being the main adversary. However, this argument is possible because they try to ignore the fact that no country in the world has such a nasty enemy as we do. North Korea blatantly denies South Korea’s sovereignty and has never concealed its ambition to achieve unification under communism through force. Furthermore, we have powerful, threatening powers as neighbors. That is why a sophisticated security strategy and the main enemy concept are needed.
In “The Shield of Achilles: War, Peace and the Course of History” by American strategy theorist Philip Bobbitt, he clearly states how futile and absurd a defense strategy whose main enemy is not clearly stated is. He states that “If it takes two to war, then the idea of deterring wars without a specified adversary or threat is nonsense.” Bobbitt is arguing that not specifying the main enemy in defense strategy is strategically nonsensical. An accurate defense strategy can be established only when the adversary is identified. Only after the main enemy is specified can we decide how to train the soldiers and what weapons to equip them with.
When we excluded North Korea from being the adversary, China claimed that we were threatening them because we were building up [our navy] with high-performance warships. Even when North Korea was declared our main enemy, the country that argued over the deployment of THAAD in South Korea was China. Perhaps Japan was also on alert.
For whom did the Roh and Moon administrations buy weapons to fight if they ignored the concept of the main enemy? For whom did we train our soldiers to fight? Were they planning on fighting against all our neighbors? Or were they planning to not fight anyone?
To read the original article in Korean, please click here.
