For those who missed @CNASdc The Pitch competition at #CNAS2020 today, here's my pitch: Korea’s strategic geography has always made it the battleground and compass of great power rivalry. Whoever controls Korea controls Asia. 1/

The 1590s saw the Imjin Wars, the 1890s Sino-Japanese War, the early 1900s Russo-Japanese War, the 1940s World War II, and 1950s Korean War. In all these wars, navies, not armies, were the decisive factor for the victor. 2/

Today, South Korea remains isolated from the Asian continent and functions politically, economically, socially, and militarily as an island nation. It’s dependent entirely on air and sea trade and the DMZ blocks the overland exchange of people, goods, and information. 3/

Korea has almost 500 years of maritime innovation dating back to Admiral Yi Sun Shin’s turtle ships. That legacy is visible today in its development of aircraft carriers, attack submarines, and naval warplanes. 4/

But we’re limiting our imagination by approaching South Korea largely as a land-based deterrent against North Korea instead of as a key maritime security ally against China and other threats in the Indo-Pacific. 5/

We’re repeating the same mistakes of former Secretary of State Dean Acheson in 1950 when he excluded Korea from the Asia defense perimeter and thus failed to recognize Korea as a fundamental geographical building block of U.S. maritime security strategy in the Pacific. 6/

But by reimagining South Korea as the missing link in the first island chain, the United States can better empower its ally with maritime-focused infrastructure investments, logistics, defense exports, security cooperation, and joint military exercises. 7/

This will not only enhance conventional deterrence but create opportunities to expand the alliance relationship into new areas beyond the Korean Peninsula. 8/8