To Military or Not to Military

The Effects of Korean Unification on the US Military Presence in Northeast Asia (and vice-versa....)

The author of the article clearly holds the view that security is comprised mainly of military presence and action. He proves several good points concerning a continued presence of the US military in a unified Korea for Korea:

1) When Germany reunited, the US kept troops stationed in order to keep stability as the power transition occured. He believed this will prove the same for a reunified Korea. However, Haselden fails to prove that the US presence actually caused unified Germany to keep stability or merely accompanied it.
2) Keeping military presence in Korea will keep the historically invasive Japan out of Korea.

He attempts to provide even more reason for US military presence in unified Korea for the US:

1)We can still monitor Japan's military and China/Korea's nuclear build-up
2) We deserve to be there because so many of our men risked their lives for their security during the Korean War. However, as the previous articles mentioned... this may have actually been a self-serving endeavor that led to an unnecessary rupture between the Koreas and unnecessary Korean deaths.

Haselden does attempt to focus security on more non-traditional topics and actors as well. He successfully emphasizes the importance of a focus on transnational issues such as terrorism, piracy, drug trafficking, and disease, which require actions from sources other than the military and actors other than just states. However, this topic is short-lived in the article.

He mainly focuses on how the military can shrink in size and numbers in order to still maintain a presence without raising suspicion or anger by Korea. He believes the East Asia relations will collapse without the military to monitor.... a sentiment heavily repeated by many top US politicians. This is a very authority-centric and self-righteous attitude famous of the U.S. What I want to know is why we feel we are better at protecting their people with our military than they are with peaceful means?