SEOUL, – South Korea should establish an “economic extended deterrence” mechanism with the United States against potential economic coercion by a third country, as a way to cope with geopolitical uncertainties amid the intensifying U.S.-China rivalry, a former top security aide said Friday.
Kim Sung-han, who served as the first national security adviser under the Yoon Suk Yeol government until March, made the case at a seminar, noting the changing environment where the U.S.-led rules-based international order is being challenged by those that object to it.
“From the perspective of South Korea, the U.S.-China strategic competition is a rivalry on who will set the standard for the fourth industrial revolution,” Kim said during an online forum hosted by the Chey Institute of Advanced Studies.
“The U.S-China chip war is a strategic competition between the U.S., which has exercised military and economic hegemony, and China, which is contesting it,” he said.
Kim said China’s economic retaliation against South Korea in 2016 over the deployment of the U.S. THAAD missile defense system is an example of economic coercion that calls for extended deterrence in the economic field.
Extended deterrence refers to the U.S. commitment to mobilizing all of its military capabilities, including nuclear, to defend its ally.
President Yoon Suk Yeol and U.S. President Joe Biden agreed to bolster extended deterrence in the Washington Declaration adopted in their April summit at the White House.
Economic extended deterrence against economic coercion should take the form of punishing the “coercer with an anti-coercion instrument,” such as by building a coalition for strengthening supply chain resilience and other critical areas, Kim said.
“Not many countries have the economic power and the scale to use negative inducement against others’ economic coercion. Realistically, the U.S. may be the only country possessing this kind of policy option,” he said.
“The U.S. and South Korea need to put a strong economic extended deterrence mechanism in place.”
Kim also suggested expanding what he called “comprehensive extended deterrence,” combining security and economy, to include like-minded countries, such as Japan.
“That is required for the ROK-U.S. alliance to expand to the region and the globe,” he said, referring to South Korea by its official name, the Republic of Korea.
Source: Yonhap News Agency