Conditions, Timelines, and the Transfer of Wartime Command | Eye on Korea Ep. 43

And I just really want to jump in to some of the research that you're doing, especially related to alliance modernization and operational control transition.

And I want to start with the alliance modernization part because that seems to have become an active term to describe what's happening in the alliance relationship since last year with the Trump and Lee administrations.

What does the term alliance modernization mean in your view? And do you think that both governments are on the same page regarding the meaning of the term?

Yeah, first of all, as you all know, there is no official definition of that term from two governments.

And I think it's difficult for us to expect that kind of definition or some official document we'll have in the near future.

First of all, President Trump always tried to use ambiguity as a leveraging power in negotiation process.

And the Lee Jae-myung government, actually, it's a new democratic progressive government in South Korea.

And I think in my understanding, we need to have some more time to fully understand what direction the government will take in that sense.

it's difficult for us to say some commonly shared definition of alliance modernization between two allied countries.

So I think we need to understand that concept as a kind of a process for two countries to make common ground.

And we finally need to make some new model of our alliance to effectively deal with fundamentally changing security environment.

So in that sense, I think we perceive this concept as a process, not fixed definition of this concept.

Yeah, no, I think that makes a lot of sense, thinking of it as a process.

And of course, the discussion began, I think, related to this term early in both administrations in the summer of 2025.

But subsequently, we've seen the U.S. release both the national security strategy and the national defense strategy.

And so I'm wondering from your perspective how those national security documents on the U.S. side have illuminated our understanding of what is trying to be achieved through the process of alliance

modernization.

Yeah, right.

I think that can be a good starting point, especially to understand the U.S. perspective on this alliance modernization.

And I think we can easily find out the basic approach from a new security strategy of Trump's second term is prioritization.

Because now United States has too many global and regional commitments, but at the same time very limited resources.

So the country should be selective in what and when and where it should use its resources to deal with some situation.

So in that sense, prioritization is a key concept and naturally the country United States require especially careful allied country to take responsibility in defending itself and so-called burden sharing, or even we can find out in 2026 NDS, burden shifting, which means the allied countries should take primary responsibility in defending itself and even contribute to the deterrence in the region the country is belonging to.

And the formula.

we can find out from NDS, the allied countries should take primary responsibility in deterring its own territory, I mean, and United States provide critical but more limited support.