타임, 동맹국들 중국 앞에서 미국 떠날 수 없다 보도

Time magazine reported that US allies across the Asia-Pacific — Japan, Australia, Taiwan and others — face what scholars describe as a “no-plan-B dilemma”: despite real frustration with President Trump’s tariff threats and questioning of allied sovereignty, they view continued American military presence as their only effective counter to a rising China, leaving strategic autonomy a distant prospect rather than a present option.

The report frames China’s July 6 test-launch of a long-range ballistic missile from a nuclear submarine into the South Pacific Nuclear Free Zone — a weapon capable of reaching the continental United States — as the moment that crystallized allied anxiety over whether Washington’s security guarantees remain reliable even as Beijing’s reach grows. Japan has scrapped its 1-percent-of-GDP defense-spending cap and is hitting 2 percent ahead of schedule while buying US Tomahawk missiles and developing its own long-range weapons; Australia has committed to raising defense spending from 2 to 3 percent of GDP by the mid-2030s through the AUKUS partnership.

Time framed these budget increases as the price allies are willingly paying to sustain America’s capacity to deter — choosing, in a kind of paradox, to double down on the alliance with more resources rather than break from it over doubts about US reliability. In effect, allied governments are converting doubts about American credibility not into a rationale for going it alone, but into a motive for building up their own deterrent capability.

South Korea sits inside the exact same dilemma, and its own defense budget increase announced this week is the local expression of the same calculation Tokyo and Canberra have already made: that frustration with an unpredictable ally is real, but the alternative — facing a more assertive China without that ally’s backing — is worse.

What stands out is that this is not a peculiarity of any one country but a structural condition running across the whole Indo-Pacific. Taiwan, too, has moved to deepen security cooperation with Washington as Chinese military pressure intensifies, and Japan’s and Australia’s defense increases spring from that same threat assessment at bottom. Free-world countries across the Asia-Pacific are, in their own distinct ways, arriving at the same conclusion in the face of a shared Chinese threat.

Seeing this structural reality clearly points to a clear posture for Korea. Rather than venting frustration with the alliance emotionally or attempting an awkward balancing act between Washington and Beijing, Korea should acknowledge this no-plan-B structure and use it as the foundation for developing a more substantive, mutually beneficial alliance. Just as Japan and Australia have been building leverage within the alliance through defense spending increases and stronger independent deterrence, Korea should treat its own defense increase not as a passive response to American pressure but as an opportunity to build both its own security autonomy and its voice within the alliance at the same time. Grounded in the conviction that the pro-alliance, anti-Beijing course is the right one, the pragmatic approach now is not to dwell on the alliance’s imperfections but to maximize Korea’s strategic value within it.

As long as China’s military expansion continues, America remains an irreplaceable option for the free world’s Asia-Pacific nations. Korea, too, should face this sober reality and exercise the strategic wisdom to use the alliance as a platform for building its own security capability.