“Korea Is the First Chapter”: U.S. Forces Commander Reframes the Peninsula’s Strategic Role

SEOUL - Standing before a room of future military leaders at the National Defense University last week, the commander of U.S. Forces Korea delivered a message that was as blunt as it was revealing: the Korean Peninsula is no longer a peripheral theater in American strategy—it is a strategic starting point.

Gen. Xavier Brunson, who leads U.S. and allied forces on the peninsula, used the lecture to argue that Korea sits at the very heart of Washington’s Indo-Pacific security architecture, a view that comes as Seoul and Washington move to modernize their alliance and expand South Korea’s role in regional security.

“Korea is not a side chapter in American strategy,” Brunson said, according to a statement posted Tuesday on the U.S. Forces Korea website. “If you put the peninsula in the first chapter, the geometry of the region and the value of our alliances become impossible to ignore.”

Brunson spoke as U.S.–South Korea defense planners push for a more flexible and future-oriented alliance—one that goes beyond deterring North Korea and takes into account broader regional challenges, including China’s military rise and Russia’s deepening ties with Pyongyang.

Using a map-driven explanation familiar to military audiences, Brunson described the Korean Peninsula as a “hinge” connecting the Asian continent to the Pacific’s maritime approaches. Its geography, he said, makes it a natural strategic fulcrum rather than a geopolitical outpost.

“The peninsula should be viewed as a central pillar of U.S. and allied strategy,” he said.

Brunson emphasized that U.S. and allied forces stationed in Korea are already operating inside the so-called “first island chain,” a critical defensive line stretching from Japan through Taiwan and the Philippines. That positioning, he noted, gives the alliance a forward presence that is difficult to replicate elsewhere in the region.

The remarks come amid heightened concern in Washington over North Korea’s expanding military cooperation with Russia, as well as the broader erosion of regional stability. Brunson argued that maintaining a forward posture on the peninsula—and modernizing the alliance to reflect new realities—is no longer optional.

“Forward presence and alliance modernization on the Korean Peninsula are essential,” Brunson said, citing their role in deterrence, crisis management, and signaling resolve in an increasingly contested Indo-Pacific.

For South Korea, the message was clear: its geographic and strategic value is growing, not shrinking. And for Washington, Brunson’s remarks signal a shift in tone—one that places the Korean Peninsula not at the margins, but at the center of U.S. planning for an era of intensifying great-power competition.