Few U.S. experts are as respected in South Korea as James Laney, former U.S. ambassador to the country. Laney first went to Korea in 1947 as an army intelligence officer and returned in 1959 as a Methodist missionary. Two of his three daughters were born in the country, which was recovering from the devastating Korean War. After serving as president of Emory University for 16 years, Laney served as the U.S. ambassador in Seoul from 1993 to 1997, playing an important role in diffusing the North Korean nuclear crisis in 1994. Yonsei University, one of South Korea’s most prestigious universities,
a James Laney chair professorship as well as a James Laney lecture series, which features the most prominent minds in U.S.- Korea relations.
So it was no small news when the 98-year-old former ambassador offered a blunt assessment of the current state of the South Korea-U.S. alliance on March 5, as he received the 2026 Building Bridges Award from the Pacific Century Institute (where I am a board member). In an event usually filled with fluffy grace notes, Laney’s prerecorded remarks offered a cold-eyed analysis that left the audience—which included former South Korean President Moon Jae-in—stunned:
“The [United States] has unilaterally turned the bridge [of the U.S.-Korea alliance] into a drawbridge, with controls only on the United States side. Even when the bridge is down, the gates, that is, tariffs, are controlled by Washington, and the entire edifice operates at the whim of a United States president.
“It grieves me to say it. Boy, I never thought I would have to say it. But I think Korea must begin to project its future on its own terms. Of course, it will do so wisely and prudently, but its interests are no longer congruent with those of the White House.
“What this means for troop command, independent nuclear capability and relations with China will require political skill and deftness of extraordinary range. … [U.S. President Donald] Trump has made it abundantly clear that the [United States] is solely concerned with its own interest. Anything else is for the gullible.”
Laney verbalized what many Korea analysts have been thinking but were too afraid to say: the U.S.-South Korea alliance is close to rupturing, and Washington is at fault. Thanks to the Trump administration’s actions, Seoul must reconsider the fundamental building blocks of the alliance, including U.S. troop presence in South Korea, a nuclear umbrella instead of its own nuclear armament, and participation in U.S. deterrence of China.