South Korea's president has renewed his demand to take back wartime control of his own military. The Pentagon says that control exists as a brass instrument currently lost among fourteen shipping containers in Hawaii. Officials insist the search sends no signal to Pyongyang.
"—and we are confident it is in one of the fourteen containers, we simply cannot say which," said Marlene Fisk, the Pentagon's assistant under secretary for legacy instruments, blinking under the strip lights of a warehouse in Honolulu on Tuesday.
The container in question is supposed to hold wartime operational control of the South Korean military. Officials on both sides now concede it has not been physically seen since the Reagan administration.
President Lee Jae Myung has spent the week pressing again for that control to return to Seoul. He wants it back in Korean hands in the event of war, and he wants nuclear-powered submarines faster. Reasonable requests, both. Neither anticipated a filing problem.
The push followed Donald Trump's instruction to the Pentagon to substantially reduce this week's joint exercises, on the grounds that North Korea has been unthreatening and respectful and that he enjoys a very good relationship with Kim Jong-un.
The object itself
Command authority, it turns out, was never merely legal. In 1978 the allies commissioned a brass instrument, roughly the size of a bread bin, engraved on both faces and fitted with two locks.
Whoever holds it commands. That was the arrangement. Nobody wrote down where it went afterwards.
"There is a receipt," said Colonel Barrett Hoyle of US Forces Korea. "The receipt is excellent. The receipt refers to a pallet."
The pallet was moved during a depot reorganisation. Records show it travelled to Guam, then to a facility in Hawaii, then to storage. Storage is where paper trails go to lie down.
Hong Kong at least managed a flag, a band and a yacht.
Seoul is not amused
South Korea's defence ministry has sent a liaison team to observe the search. Han Se-jin, deputy director for alliance logistics, described the mood as businesslike.
"We were told the transfer would require political will," she said. "We were not told it would require a forklift."
Ms Han confirmed Seoul has offered to pay for the freight. She also confirmed the offer was made in writing, twice, and that the second letter was firmer than the first.
"An alliance is a promise. A promise, in this case, is a brass box on an unlabelled pallet in a humid shed."
Officials in Seoul have separately asked whether the instrument is insured. Nobody has answered.
The drills, meanwhile
The scaled-back exercises went ahead in reduced form. Fourteen scenarios were cut from the schedule, including the one in which the alliance responds to a surprise attack.
Planners replaced it with a briefing about the importance of responding to a surprise attack. Attendance was described as strong.
Colonel Hoyle said the reduction sends no signal whatsoever. He said this four times, which is three more than a man says something that sends no signal.
Analysts disagree, as analysts are paid to. Dr Nigel Ashcombe of the Institute for Deterrence Studies called the week "the most instructive fortnight in the alliance since the last most instructive fortnight".
"Great powers do not abandon allies," he said. "They mislay them, and then hold a review."
North of the line
Pyongyang has not commented on the missing box. State media noted the reduced drills approvingly and moved on to agriculture.
One does not need a doctorate to read the room. A neighbour who has spent seventy years complaining about your fire drill will notice when you cancel the fire drill.
The warm personal relationship remains, by all accounts, warm. Warmth was also the operating principle at Munich, and in 1938 nobody could locate the relevant paperwork either.
The search continues
Ms Fisk's team has opened nine of the fourteen containers. Contents so far include field telephones, a quantity of unopened manuals and a ceremonial sword nobody can account for.
"We are treating this as an inventory matter, not a strategic one," Ms Fisk said. She was standing in front of a container marked only with a chalk number.
Asked what happens if the instrument is never found, she said the alliance would proceed on the basis of trust.1
Asked what happens if a war starts before the search concludes, she said the question was hypothetical. It was, until Sunday night, also hypothetical that anyone would ask it.
Seoul, for its part, has begun quietly costing out a replacement. The defence ministry declined to confirm this. A ministry official confirmed it in the corridor afterwards, which is how everything in this business gets confirmed.
The Guardian reported Lee's renewed push earlier in the week.2 The push, the reduction, the reassurance, the search: all of it will be resolved by autumn, according to people who have said that before.
Footnotes.
Trust has an unbeaten record in these arrangements, in the sense that nobody has ever tested it and reported back. ↩
