Such a pleasure to hear from and meet former USFK Commander General Vincent Brooks at @koreasociety this evening. I’ll post a brief summary in this thread a bit later this evening. 
Tomorrow at 10 am (my time) GSOMIA (a bilateral intelligence sharing agreement between Japan and South Korea) expires as a result of ROK withdrawal.
Brooks said that this "brings into question the relationships in Northeast Asia" and that while the ROK "had their motivations" they "may have miscalculated." And the US has "limited" influence to prevent the lapse from occurring 12 hours from this tweet.
On the subject of the Special Measures Agreement negotiations, which I wrote about here...
cnn.com/2019/11/20/opi…
cnn.com/2019/11/20/opi…
Brooks said that the ROK finds it "difficult to know where to start [negotiating]" and that "its difficult to close such a wide gap" and his concern is that the current situation "causes both societies to begin to question the other."
He also points out that if no agreement is reached, when the current agreement expires the US will be paying 100% of costs, which will allow politicians and the public to question why we are paying 100%.
(I thought that was a very good point, and if I thought Trump was capable of long-term planning I might even think that that is his actual plan to undermine the alliance... and tbh I don't think one can rule that out entirely.)
When asked what DPRK means by "hostile attitude," he replied that it was a "perplexing question" and that the "ball advances and the goalposts move" and that by not being clear about what they mean it means that US and the ROK act but it is never enough and DPRK asks for more.
Brooks said "risks must be taken for change to occur" and that both sides (DPRK + ROK/US) need to take risks.
Finally, he said that the DPRK "ability to hold territory is very limited indeed" and that in the event of hostilities their goal would be to "create a crisis in governance that causes democracies to collapse."
which seems like a familiar tactic
[my aside, he didn't say that]
which seems like a familiar tactic
[my aside, he didn't say that]
That was a small summary of an outstanding talk from someone I have quoted many times, but never heard or met in person.
(I even quoted him yesterday, at this link: cnn.com/2019/11/20/opi…)
btw, my reading of what he was saying here was that the ROK had legitimate reasons to take some action against Japan, but that this was not the way to do it and was ultimately self-defeating.
Again, he did not say that explicitly, but that was how I took it.
Again, he did not say that explicitly, but that was how I took it.
