Moon Admits THAAD Isn’t Going Anywhere

Just days after he angrily ordered a probe into the THAAD missile defense system, South Korea’s president is sending a very different message to the United States: THAAD is here to stay, despite my huffing and puffing at home. Reuters:

South Korean President Moon Jae-in’s top security aide left for Washington on Thursday as the new leader tries to reassure his country’s main ally he will not scrap a deal to host a missile defense system that has angered China. […]

“My order for a probe on THAAD is purely a domestic measure and I want to be clear that it is not about trying to change the existing decision or sending a message to the United States,” Moon told visiting U.S. Senator Dick Durbin late on Wednesday.

The remarks were Moon’s first clear indication that he does not intend to stop the deployment, which has drawn angry protests from China, South Korea’s biggest trading partner.

Moon’s remarks here should offer reassurance to many observers (us included) who worried that his recent outrage over THAAD could open up a rift between Seoul and Washington. Now, his decision to open a probe looks more clearly to be domestic political grandstanding, not a declaration of his intent to scrap the system. And indeed, between the fait accompli of the THAAD deployment and the reality of Pyongyang’s increasingly aggressive missile testing, Moon may find he has little room to implement a dovish engagement policy with the North.

That said, the system’s opponents are unlikely to give up so easily. Even as Moon reassured Washington that THAAD would stay, China repeated its demands that South Korea remove the system, while Russia’s Vladimir Putin denounced it as an American plot to upend the world’s strategic balance, and threatened to deploy military hardware to the Kuril Islands in response. Expect THAAD’s opponents to exploit all available pressure points—including signs of friction with the Trump administration—to try to change Moon’s mind.