Since the Korean War, United States Forces Korea (USFK) has served as a tripwire force, both deterring North Korean aggression and symbolising the US security commitment to South Korea. However, US political leaders have exhibited inconsistent positions regarding the appropriate size of the USFK necessary to fulfil this role. Most evidently, US perspectives have driven the decision to withdraw due to the extremely asymmetric nature of the US-South Korea alliance, both institutionally and practically. So how is the troop withdrawal policy determined and changed? I argue that strategic interactions between the US president, Congress, and military elites have a decisive impact on withdrawal policy outcome. In particular, I argue that the policy preference gap among presidential, congressional, and military elites is causally related to the withdrawal policy outcome. By developing a dual principal-agent model based on civil-military relations and combining it with process tracing, this study aims to test these arguments. This study analyses President Carter's withdrawal policy, which sought to eliminate the tripwire effect by completely withdrawing US ground forces from South Korea. This analysis reveals the causal relationship between the civil-military preference gap and the outcomes of the withdrawal policy. Furthermore, the study demonstrates how military generals and legislators can constrain the president's overarching power in military-related foreign policy.
President, Generals and Foreign Policy Failure: Principal-Agent Analysis of US Troop Withdrawal from South Korea, 1977-1979
Park, J. (Author). 25 Jun 2025
Student thesis: Doctoral Thesis › PhD