Clear the partition and cement the ‘jointness’

Reinforcing the jointness should be carried out toward the direction of maximizing characteristics of each military branch.

Choi Yoon-hee

The author, Ret. Admiral and former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, is the president of R.O.K. Seapower League and a chair professor at Jungwon University.

Around this time of the year, each ministry is busy contesting over next year’s government budget plan. Given the heated race to secure enough fund among different ministries, proving the efficacy of defense budget is very difficult: the finance ministry — the orchestrator of the budgeting process — is only interested in preventing budget waste without grasping the true character of defense budget as “insurance premiums” for security. In that regard, the defense ministry did a great job last year by acquiring 57 trillion won ($42.4 billion) — or 12.8 percent of the entire budget — for this year.

Distributing defense budget is a tricky issue, as it converges into some sort of a “zero-sum game.” The mighty U.S. military was no exception. Cooperation among armed forces was not easy due to their self-interest, which can help explain the disastrous results in the Vietnam War (1960-1975), Operation Eagle Claw (1980) in Iran and the U.S. Invasion of Granada (1983). To correct the problem, the Goldwater-Nichols Act was first enacted in 1986 to apply the concept of “jointness” — the cooperation and integration of different branches of the U.S. military. The concept helped prevent budget waste and raise combat capability. Korea introduced it in the 1990s.

Reinforcing the jointness should be carried out toward the direction of maximizing characteristics of each military branch. To do that, the defense ministry must run military branches based on “domain,” not “service.” For instance, the military must take into account political, economic and social factors — such as an emergency in North Korea, the economic gap, space security, application of the AI-based weapons system, natural disasters, and international terror — on top of military threats from outside. They will likely emerge as serious issues soon. Let’s look new challenges our military will face.

The deepening food and human rights crises in North Korea escalate the possibility of contingency further. We must prepare for an unexpected unification if a massive revolt occurs in the North. Among many complicated problems, including from China’s intervention, a primary challenge is the military integration and stabilization in the process of merging North Korea. That’s inevitable given the huge discrepancy between the two divergent systems over the past seven decades.

In a visit to Germany in the mid-1990s, I had a chance to discuss military integration. I was shocked to see that East and West Germany had had no hostility toward one another before the unification. Nevertheless, they experienced enormous resistance and difficulty in the process of unifying the two military forces. What will happen to us if the two Koreas become one. Dealing with the nuclear weapons in the North will be an extremely difficult homework, given the uncertainty over the North’s response and Uncle Sam’s obvious disapproval of our rights to handle the nukes.

As proven in Rome, Britain, and the United States, navies were born to seek national interest overseas rather than defending their maritime border. Despite the need for our navy to play such a role, it has been stuck in defending the waters from North Korean provocations, including its vessels crossing the Northern Limit Line or spy ships penetrating southward. The time has come to ask if our navy should be confined to such narrow-focused missions.

Korea has massive national interest to protect overseas. As trade takes up more than 70 percent of GDP, the country must safeguard the maritime transportation routes for 99.7 percent of its exports and imports. If the sea route is cut off or blocked, Korea cannot endure it over 50 days. Our navy must acquire the operational capability to protect our national interests overseas under any circumstances, including carrying out long-term maritime operations in distant seas to deal with ever-evolving threats. Our marines must have the ability to rescue our nationals under disasters or terrors in foreign countries no matter what.

Space has emerged as a new front for national economy and security. It has turned into a “blue ocean” for Korea after its successful launch of the homegrown Nuri-3 rocket in May. Over 4,500 satellites put into orbit are expected to increase to tens of thousands soon. No one knows what kind of threat will come from space. The U.S. Space Force system established in 2019 attracts keen interest from China and Russia. Our Air Force must have operational capability to cope with new threats from space.

At the same time, the Air Force must consider “airspace control” to promote the safe and efficient use of airspace after each military branch competitively operates drones as a result of a drastic decrease in conscripts. Given the effective use of unmanned vehicles in the Ukraine war, we need to establish the “wartime airspace control” covering fighter jets, missiles and drones.

In the past, top priority of military officials handling budget affairs for each service was to secure more budget than in other services. Unnecessary conflict and misunderstanding destroyed their jointness. An interesting anecdote at the time still reverberates. After a budget officer in a service demands too much money, his counterpart in other service famously said, “If a whale needs two eyes to see, a shrimp also needs two eyes.” Genuine jointness starts with a consideration for others.

Translation by the Korea JoongAng Daily staff.