US commander calls South Korea a strategic hub against Russia, China

The geographical position of South Korea gives it a unique advantage, enabling it to project influence toward North Korea, China and Russia simultaneously, US Forces Korea (USFK) Commander Xavier Brunson said.

In excerpts from his article “East-Up Map", he writes that America’s largest military base in the country, Camp Humphreys, is located close to potential threats — roughly 254 km from Pyongyang, 985 km from Beijing and 1,770 km from Vladivostok, Caliber.Az reports per foreign media.

South Korea, he argues, is positioned in a way that allows it to counter threats from Russia to the north while providing a western reach to respond to Chinese activity in the waters between Korea and China.

“This conveys the message that the Korean Peninsula can impose costs by preventing the Russian fleet from entering the eastern waters of South Korea, making those waters a more defensible space. In the West Sea, the Yellow Sea, the Korean Peninsula’s forces can impose costs not only on the Chinese Communist Party’s Northern Theater Army but also on the Northern Fleet, demonstrating significant potential to deter enemy operations in both seas,” Brunson noted.

The USFK commander focused solely on the geopolitical value of the Korean Peninsula, without emphasising readiness to confront North Korea — an approach considered highly unusual.

His emphasis on greater strategic flexibility has continued since his inauguration last year.

At the US Army Association Symposium on May 15, he said that USFK “does not focus solely on repelling North Korea but is part of a larger Indo-Pacific strategy,” adding that South Korea, as the US ally closest to Beijing, resembles “an island or a ‘fixed aircraft carrier’ floating between Japan and the Chinese mainland.”

On May 27, he returned to the same point, stating, “No U.S. forces are deployed on the Asian continent except for USFK.”

At his first press conference after taking office last August, he described strategic flexibility as the ability “to deploy forces and equipment where needed when needed,” stressing that “It is not militarily appropriate to tie down the capabilities of USFK when we need to maintain peace throughout Northeast Asia and the Indo-Pacific.”

By Jeyhun Aghazada