A Tattered Umbrella | Doug Bandow | Cato Institute: Commentary

A Tattered Umbrella | Doug Bandow | Cato Institute: Commentary: "More than a half century after the Korean War, the Republic of Korea (ROK) remains surprisingly dependent on America. It's as if the United States was cowering before the Mexican military, begging its friends in Europe for help. In fact, the ROK requires no assistance to defend itself from conventional attack.

The so-called Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK) has a strong numerical military advantage over the South: about 1.1 million personnel under arms, compared to fewer than seven hundred thousand for Seoul. Pyongyang also has impressive numbers of other weapons, including more than four thousand tanks and roughly eighteen thousand artillery pieces."

"However, most of the North's equipment is decades old, a generation or two behind even that of the long-gone Soviet Union. Training is minimal and many of the DPRK's military personnel perform construction and similar tasks. The Korean peninsula's rugged geography favors defense. Putting thousands of antiquated tanks backed by hundreds of thousands of malnourished soldiers on the move south would create a human "turkey shoot" of epic proportions.

Anyway, the ROK's numerical inferiority is a matter of choice, not an immutable artifact of geography. In its early years the South's resources were sharply limited. But today, South Korea is thought to have upwards of forty times the North's GDP. Seoul also possesses a substantial industrial base, sports high-tech expertise and enjoys a sterling international credit rating. The ROK's population is twice that of the North. South Korea could spend more than the equivalent of North Korea's entire economy on defense if the former wished. But it hasn't wished to do so, preferring to rely on Washington instead.

The time for subsidizing wealthy allies has long passed. "