Abstract: Prudent leaders must always contemplate the unintended consequences of their foreign policy successes, particularly when those secondary consequences create negative externalities. In this article, I look at whether the unintended consequence of the South Korean government’s push for a peace declaration on the Korean peninsula could create the conditions by which the United States, led by an impulsive American president, could withdraw U.S. troops from the Korean peninsula. I first document the rationale behind the South Korean government’s approach to peace diplomacy with North Korea. I then examine the concept of the peace declaration, which is different from a ratifiable treaty, and the “catch-22” of this declaration as it relates to denuclearization of the Korean peninsula. Finally, I analyze how a superficial peace declaration will not address core national security concerns of either ally, and how it could create unintended consequences with regard to troop drawdowns. This research features an original and unique dataset that documents Donald Trump’s transactional view of U.S. military commitments to its allies over the past three decades. Full text available here.
