Most Effective South Korea - U.S. Combined Forces Command Structure After Returning Wartime Operational Control of the South Korean Military

摘要

The core of the 50-year South Korea-U.S. alliance, the Combined Forces Command (CFC), was established on November 7, 1978 to employ operational control of the South Korean military and U.S. forces in South Korea. The CFC has been effective in deterring war on the Korean peninsula. However, impetus for a new CFC has developed from the diverging U.S. and South Korean policy toward North Korea. With this U.S. strategy and different perceptions toward North Korea, the U.S. began working to transfer operational control of the South Korean military forces to the South Korean government. The CFC is projected to be dismantled during 2012 and wartime operational control of the South Korean military transferred to the South Korean government. The South Korean government needs to focus on how to strengthen the military alliance between the U.S. and South Korea based on an agreement to contribute to the stability on the Korean peninsula and Northeast Asia. Therefore, this paper drew success criteria for an effective command structure from warfighting functions from three historic case studies on multinational command structure (the Korean War, the Vietnam War and the Gulf War) and applied those criteria to identify the most effective South Korea-U.S. combined forces command structure after returning the wartime operational control of the South Korean military to the South Korean government.