Sorensen, Clark WWork, Clint2019-08-142019-08-142019Work_washington_0250E_20307.pdfhttp://hdl.handle.net/1773/43950Thesis (Ph.D.)--University of Washington, 2019During the long 1970s, the U.S.-ROK alliance underwent a highly contested process of reassessment and restructuring. President Jimmy Carter’s troop withdrawal policy was an important episode during which this larger process crescendoed, resulting in a more mature if still hierarchical alliance relationship. Emerging out of the earlier Nixon Doctrine and Vietnam withdrawals, Carter aimed to make more flexible the U.S. military presence in South Korea and pass a greater share of the defense burden onto Seoul, without at the same time undermining U.S. credibility and control. As it happened, Carter faced enormous opposition and ultimately failed to execute his policy. Many within the U.S. foreign policy and national security bureaucracy viewed U.S. combat forces in South Korea as so deeply embedded within a wider hegemonic structure in East Asia that they could not be withdrawn without undoing that very structure. Despite the ultimate cancelation of the policy, examination of previously unavailable U.S. and Korean documents and oral history and field interviews, reveals that the policy processes itself produced several important outcomes, namely: the reconstitution of a patron-client relationship into a more relatively equal and integrated one; enhancement of ROK defense capabilities and operational decision-making within a new alliance command architecture; and emergence of a more assertive nationalism and even anti- Americanism among both conservative and opposition elements within South Korea. These outcomes represented a key turning point in the alliance and remain salient today.application/pdfen-USCC BY-NC-NDHistoryEast asian studiesThesis