カーター政権の在韓米地上軍撤退政策-対韓防衛コミットメントのディレンマ-

冷戦変容期の国際政治

抄録

In early 1977, U. S. President Jimmy Carter announced that U. S. ground combat forces would be carefully withdrawn from South Korea within a few years. His decision, however, was soon faced with strong resistance from the military and Congress. Officially because of a new intelligence estimate on North Korea's military capability, in June 1979, President Carter postponed immplementing his withdrawal plan till after the next presidential election in which he was severely defeated by Ronald Reagan.
This failed attempt has been often regarded as a typical example of Carter's amateurish diplomacy. History tells us, however, that U. S. defense commitment towards South Korea has frequently fluctuated between the two extremes of intervention and withdrawal. This fluctuation seems to result from a dilemma in U. S. defense commitment towards South Korea: the United States has to provide enough credibility to maintain a favorable military balance in Northeast Asia without being too deeply involved in the defense of South Korea, which is not necessarily of vital interest for the United States.
It is far from an easy task for Washington to escape from this dilemma. First of all, it is extremely hard to evaluate the strategic value of the Korean Peninsula in the context of U. S. global, regional and local strategies. Secondly, given the relatively decreasing U. S. economic capability and the diversified public opinion on foreign policy, a domestic consensus on a desirable degree of U. S. defense commitment towards South Korea cannot be easily obtained. Thirdly, regardless of changes in international and domestic situations, due to their vested interest in maintaining the U. S. presence in South Korea, the Army and the State Department bureaucracies tend to be opposed to reducing the defense commitment.
After briefly reviewing the history of U. S. defense commitment towards South Korea, this paper intends to analyze how the Carter Administration tried to overcome the dilemma in U. S. defense commitment toward South Korea but was unsuccessful through the examination of the policy process of its withdrawal plan with available written materials and interviews with key participants.