브런슨 USFK 사령관 발언2-태평양지상군(LANPAC) 심포지엄(0515)

2025 LANPAC 심포지엄 기조연설(대장 브런슨)

Gen. Brunson Highlights Land Power's Role in Deterrence and Regional Security in Northeast Asia > U.S. Army Pacific > Article Display

Gen. Brunson Highlights Land Power's Role in Deterrence and Regional Security in Northeast

 

DVIDS - Video - LANPAC Symposium and Exposition Day 3 Part 2

LANPAC 25

 

Gen. Brunson

Highlights Land Power's Role in Deterrence and Regional Security in Northeast Asia

By Sgt. Johanna Pullum

 

HONOLULU, Hawaii  –  Commander of United Nations Command, Combined Forces Command, and United States Forces Korea, U.S. Army Gen. Xavier Brunson delivered a keynote address at the Land Forces Pacific Symposium, commonly known as LANPAC, emphasizing the critical role of land power in maintaining deterrence and ensuring regional security, particularly in Northeast Asia. (Drawing on his experiences in Korea,) Brunson discussed the importance of strong alliances, adapted force posture, and a thorough understanding of the strategic geometry of the region. He highlighted the interconnectedness of the joint force and the need for a visible, credible land presence(지상군 주둔) to deter potential adversaries and assure allies.

Themes and Messages:

• The Importance of Alliances: Strong alliances are essential for maintaining regional security and deterring aggression.
• Adapted Force Posture: Adapting force posture to the specific challenges of the region, including pre-positioning equipment and maintaining a forward presence, is critical for effective deterrence.
• Strategic Importance of Geography: Understanding and leveraging the strategic geography of the region, particularly the location of the Korean Peninsula, is crucial for success.
• Land Power as a Connective Tissue: Land power is the connective tissue of the joint force, providing essential support for maritime, air, and other domain operations.
• Credibility and Trust: Credibility and trust are essential for effective deterrence and are built through consistent engagement and demonstrated commitment.

Key Quotes:

• "We prevail by strengthening our alliances, adapting our force posture, aligning our focus, resources, training and activities, and ultimately understanding the strategic importance of the geometry of the geography of this region."
• "By being forward stationed, we effectively operate inside an adversary's anti access, aerial area denial bubble and inside their head space, if you were to consider the region contextually."
• "Land power is a connective tissue of the joint force. Key assets such as offensive and defensive missile batteries, the terrain (that supports airfields), command posts and medical nodes require a ground force."
• "Deterrence doesn't rest, and neither can we. Complacency is one of our greatest enemies. We must remain steadfast in our commitment, proactive in our preparation, and resolute in the defense of the values we all hold dear."
• "Posture is about positioning the right forces or capabilities (with the right authorities) in Korea, this means a combined, fight tonight, force capable of immediate response, enabled by rotational deployments and joint training."
• "We look for this whole of government solution when I think what we ought to do is be more artful in the application of inter agency. We ought to go for the people (that we need), as opposed to trying to get everybody under one big tent."

Q&A Highlights:

• Trilateral Security Cooperation: Brunson highlighted the importance of ballistic missile defense and ballistic missile defense warning systems.
• Evolving Threats: Brunson highlighted what North Korea is receiving from Russia is technology, materiel, and RDT&E (Research Development Test & Evaluation).

---------------------

Lieutenant General Xavier T. Brunson(2024년 발언내용)

CLSC-1-BRUNSON-PODCAST-TRANSCRIPT.PDF

0.71MB

The most important thing that I think that you said is “thought leader.” That he is a thought leader. And what I’m finding as we look at the problems—the challenges, rather—that exist in the Indo-Pacific region, whether that be the tyranny of distance or whether that be our posture in the region or whether it be our thoughts on protection or sustainment in the region, all those challenges require deeper thought. There are no forgone conclusions asit relates to conflict in the Indo-Pacific. So, I think the way that we think about solving problems in the region is one of the chief things that I would talk about, not necessarily the nature of war, not necessarily the character of a war that might occur there, but the need for professionals to give themselves over to thought about the challenges that face us in the future.

Assuming funding and baselines and budgets stay flat-no increase, no decrease—it causes us to take a view of this current conflict or the current, let’s say, competition that’s going on in the region from the perspective of, we are where we are, our treaty allies are who they are, our friends and partners in the region are who they are, and they only have so much to give. And how do we achieve posture? How do we achieve sustainment? How do we achieve protection with all those things being said, and we have what we have?

And I think that until we start giving ourselves over to thinking about how we would solve the problems and challenges in the region, then nothing else really matters. And if we give ourselves over to thought on those challenges, those

particular challenges that only exist in the Pacific, I think we start to see things a little bit differently.

So, where I challenge my staff as the commander of a corps is, “How might we solve things differently?”—and not saying that we want to break away from what our doctrine says [and] not saying that we need to make whole sale changes or sweeping changes in the way that we apply combat power to solve challenges—but what are the instruments of national power [that] are out there that we might be able to leverage in order to achieve an effect?

There have been four articles pushed out of this corps recently by staff officers in the corps. This notion of the three kings of the Pacific—we’ve had an article written on each of those three kings. We’re now trying to write a capstone article, if you will, for publication. It’s protection, it’s posture, it’s sustainment. It’s taking best advantage of what our partners can do, as opposed to trying to make them in our image, but to appreciate where they are. There is posture in the region because we have friends, partners, and allies there, and we have to take best advantage of that.

And I’ll stop there. Over to you, General Ryan, sir.

=Brunson

I would like to answer that by first pointing back to that transformative trinity that General Ryan mentioned. What that really gets at for us is this notion of sanctuary. Heretofore(지금까지는), we’ve had great sanctuary. We’ve not been observed. We’ve been able to move freely. And the points that he makes there all look at the fact that-very cheaply-we can be observed. One only has to casually review the news from Jordan recently or look at things that have gone on at Al-Asad Airbase to recognize that for very little dollars, very little currency, very few resources, we can be observed, we can be impacted, we can be degraded, denied, and even dissuaded from ensuring the will of our people is met. And [General Ryan] spoke on will, as well. So, I think that what that causes us to do is recognize that sanctuary is, at best, relative now. It’s relative to the conditions that you can create at a specific place in time. Much like we think about convergence bringing all the assets across domains to bear at a single focus point in time, we have to do the same thing with sanctuary, I think.

One way we deal with that is the physical nature of how we organize ourselves. I’ve never said that there [does] not need to be a main command post, a port area command post, and [tactical action center, or] TAC. I’ve never said that. What I’ve said is those are functions that occur in those places that ought to be dispersed. And the way we found to do that within this corps is through distributed command-and-control nodes. That’s a recognition that if I’m smaller, and I can exist below the noise of a place, if my signals don’t give me away or leave me prone to observation, then I can do the things necessary to prosecute a campaign, a battle, a fight, an engagement. I can do all those things by recognizing that I’ll have toutilize some reach-back because I can’t come into the region in large form, or mass, asImight have atone point in time, and that a peer competitor requires a bit of respect of their capabilities and knowledge of their capabilities, and then arranging myself intime and space insuch away that I can accomplish the objective set before me while also not putting myself at greater risk as we arrange ourselves.

The clearest example we had recently was going down to Talisman Sabre in Australia. We placed one of our nodes, a logistics node, in Guam. We placed a node in the northern part of Australia. And when you started to talk about scale, it was the best opportunity that we had. We were also down in Brisbane [Australia] with another node. And I got up one day and said, “Hey, I’m just gonna go from up here atthis base. I’m gonna drive down from the training area to Brisbane.”

[The staff] go, “Boss, you’re gonna have tofly.”

And I was like, “What?”

And they said, “You don’t have the time to get on the road and drive to that place.”

I mention that sort of tongue in cheek to say that we—writ large, the world—we in the military, don’t really understand the size and scope of the region. So, to that end, what we’re doing is we’ve started this program where we’re bringing officers in from other corps within the United States Army to come and look at this problem. And again, we’re trying to be good to the things that we’re saying. If we say we have to think more deeply about this, then we need more people to be familiar with the region, even if it’s only coming out for aTalisman Sabre rotation or a Cobra Gold rotation, just so they can get abetter appreciation of it.

But I think that the way that we look at the region is we’ve got to be in those key nodes, and that’s why it’s so important in this region, in particular, that we understand the capabilities of our partners and how we might enhance those things and look toward our human and procedural interoperability and arrange ourselves that same way. So, it causes us to do mission analysis more than once—or a larger form of mission analysis that says: 1.) What’s the mission that we’ve been given and what’s it going to take to accomplish this? And then, how might we arrange ourselves with this wide tapestry of nations in the region, and what might we be able to do there?

You could call it hubris. You could call it, “Hey, we’re the largest and we’re in charge.” But we can’t afford that in this region. And it’s this recognition that it will take all of us to accomplish anything within the region, whether that be dealing with environmental concerns in the region, whether that be helping to better understand fishing rights and feeding of people in the region, whether that be understanding long-standing disputes. How you might call something one thing in a country and call it something totally different in another—is it the Philippine Sea, or is it the South China Sea, for example—you know, what are we really talking about?

And I think we’ve got to be more culturally astute. And I’ve got to, at these nodes, put people that have an appreciable understanding of the language and culture of the place that we might show ourselves better partners in the region.

And I think that, in its truest sense, partnership means there’s value on this side [and] there’s value on this side, and we’ve got to bring that together. And in so doing, we help to strengthen the diplomatic pushes that might be happening in all these nations. And we’ve got to understand that, as well. So, our organization is both physical and it’s mental. It’s also in the way that we look at who’s already there. That, I believe, is posture.

Brunson

What I would add is we’ve not had to deal a lot with disruption. The longer your lines become, the more you can be disrupted. I think we’ve got to think more about that, as well. General Ryan makes an interesting point. At the end of the day, it’s going to come down to the last 100 meters. Either looking at the red or looking at the blue, there’s going to be 100 meters that have to be closed with and dealt with. And Ithink sometimes wefail togive ourselves credit for our ability to bring partners together to achieve an effect.

If you look across the region, we stand to lose more by not responding, as we have recently in Japan, to an earthquake. If we don’t do those things, if we don’t show ourselves to be stalwart and able to be counted upon, that’ll have a more

deleterious effect on our operations than long-range fires will. Everything’s a giant if you make everything a giant.

I wrote down what you said, General, because I want to take that into conversations with folks that OK, remember shock and awe? Remember, that was supposed to end [Operation Iraqi Freedom, or] OIF. Go back to Kosovo. Remember we tried to do that from the air? If the United States couldn’t win that campaign from the air, then I would say you’re not going to win it by lobbing buses into another country. That’s not going to happen because, at the end of the day, if your aim is to unite two countries, you’re not going to do that short of getting on the ground and fighting that fight.

But I really point to the things that the military can do that are, I would say, less martial. I think there’s an importance for those things. It’s recognizing the fact that sea levels are rising, that there are natural disasters, and much like we are in competition with the Chinese writ large, they’re competing to get into these places as well. You go back to shot diplomacy during the height of COVID [when] we were trying to get vaccines in while the Chinese are getting their vaccine in. We have to continue to demonstrate value. There’s got to be a return on the investment for someone to say, “Hey, I want to come to the exercise in the region, and I know the implications of my participation in this exercise because there’s a bully in our neighborhood. And when they see us come to your exercise, there are

questions that will be asked.”

And that’s why I think that we have to go along way toward addressing this threat by not appearing to be transactional in the things that we are doing. And the way that you do that is by proofing the lane, by showing value, by demonstrating value that when there is an earthquake in Japan, we’re going to be there—not just because we have forces positioned there, but that’s what you have to do to lead.

I was at exercise recently in Japan, so the Germans sent folks there, the French sent people there, the Brits sent people there, our Australian partners in the 1st Australian Division were there. And if there is a division in an army and they send the leadership from that division, what we’re saying writ large is this team that stands together is willing to be a buttress against the threats in the region. And it might seem a small thing, but I think it becomes big to our partners when we take the time to send our very best to participate in these exercises because what they really are is rehearsals. And these rehearsals are what’s going to ameliorate the threats that exist in the region—our ability to come together and rehearse routinely. And again, it can’t be haphazard. It cannot be transactional.

It’s got to be genuine. We’ve got to send the right people forward that we might better understand the way threats play out. They’re different, and they’re not always martial. Sometimes they’re economics. Sometimes they’re financial, in terms of markets. Sometimes they’re political pressures that are placed on nations. I think all those things are ways that we help to deal with the threat, but it starts with our understanding that we can be disrupted and that we will have to operate in a disrupted, denied, and degraded environment inorder to accomplish anything in the region.

Brunson

If I could just throw in one quick point on this. Back to your previous question, General Ryan alluded to it many times already. We’ve done this before in this region, and we had to fight our way in. We had to fight our way out and then fight our way back in again. So, whether you look at the Korean War or whether you look at operations in the Pacific in the way that we arrange those sub unified commands, if you will, in that region, I think that there are numerous lessons in history that if we don’t mind these things, we could violate the Hippocratic oath. We will do harm.

The Hippocratic oath says do no harm, but we could do significant harm if we don’t understand the places we’ve been before.

Going into Iraq, my dad gave me the US Army’s handbook for operations in Iraq. It’s a little, small book— maybe 40 pages or so. But the army had been in Iraq before I got there in 2003, and as I read through this thing, I started noticing, wow, they already solved this problem. They solved the problem with scorpions and what to do about the scorpions. They solved the problem with water and how to do desalination. All these things had already been solved for. And I think that we’ve got togive ourselves the opportunity to read some history and see those same problems because I still see them today.

If I look at commanders like [General Douglas] MacArthur [and] his role in the Philippines and understand that deep history, understand that the Buffalo Soldiers, some of them, went AWOL in the Philippines [and that General Romeo Brawner Jr.], who’s the previous Chief of Staff of their [the Philippines’] Army, his great-grandfather was a Buffalo Soldier who fell inlove with a Philippine woman and thought, “Life is better for me in the Philippines than it is back in America. So, I’m not leaving, Mr. Roosevelt.” And he stayed. So, we have historic ties to the region—some good, some bad. But we’ve got to try to understand those things in history.

Back to your question here. One of the things that I keep thinking about and wrestling with—some of it falls into that transformative trinity that General Ryan spoke about—but it’s this thought that any conflict in the region is going to go across all the domains—and we don’t have primacy in any of them. And we’ve got to find ways to maneuver in every domain. And we have to think about it that way. So, sustainment—we have to maneuver to sustain. Heretofore, it’s like, “Hey, G4. Get me this gas, now.”

Well, we’ve got to maneuver to get there. We’ve got to converge. And our partners realize that, too.

But I also think—and we just experimented with this as I talked to General [Ryoji] Takamoto of the Ground Combat Command in Japan—I talked with him about, how about we change the shape of our operating environment by utilizing your fires to help us in this one small area of convergence and not uncover my fires but have ours prepared to do counter fire?

And giving functions of things, that’s one thing—taking best advantage of our partners. We don’t have to do everything in the air domain. We could possibly use Japanese assets in this instance to use them at the best of their ability.

And I think that convergence in our region has to be thought of deeper because, remember, when things kick off, when it goes to cracking, and I believe, personally—this is Xavier Brunson’s thought. So, levels of certainty say there are things that I believe, things that I think, and things that I know. What I believe is that there’s going to be sympathetic detonation of all the treaties that are in that area. Why? Because those rings that the Chinese can draw from their mainland, they can hold all ofour allies atrisk. And that’s going to cause asympathetic detonation of these treaties that exist out there. But that’s going to also give us the opportunity totake other people’s stuff to utilize it in a more Joint and Combined fashion—where the US Navy might not be able to do it, maybe the Philippine Navy can; [or] where the US Navy can’t, maybe the Japanese Navy can—to provide us different ways to change the shape of the environment and, thus, present multiple dilemmas to the enemy.

But if we don’t account for [these possibilities] in the planning and in the rehearsals of doing these things, we won’t be there. And that’s a threat that we cause ourselves. That’s blue on green, that’s green on blue. However you want to look a tit, that’s us cutting ourselves out [and] committing fratricide on opportunities because whatever conflict comes is going to be built solely on someone’s ability to take best advantage of opportunities as they present themselves—whoever can see first, understand first, and act decisively.

I don’t think we should have as dour a perspective as we have. And as General Ryan said, we’ve got friends, partners, and allies in the region. The Chinese do not. And if they miss, that’s an opportunity that we’ve got to seize on. It’s going to take everybody. There’s this realization now that wecan’t do this standing alone and unafraid. That’s not going to be able to happen because we’re playing in a bunch of stadiums in a region that’s wide. It’s gonna take our ability to think through how we would change the shape of that operating environment that we might take actions.

=Brunson

I also am reminded ofthe thing our service Secretary [Christine Wormuth] has said routinely, just to echo General Ryan’s points, and that’s the importance of Landpower as the linchpin to Joint operations in the Indo-Pacific, that Landpower does have a role. Landpower is intricately woven into our ability to achieve national strategic objectives in the region, and that’s going to play a part.

Another thing that I’ve been thinking about is this need to show, through a mathematical equation, the importance of information in any future conflict. I think that you could take, if you wanted to shorten it, you’d say [large-scale combat operations or] LSCOs in the numerator with information in the denominator. Or you could take every principle of war and place them in the numerator and place information in the denominator. And I think it’s the skillful understanding and the ability to maneuver in the information space that’s going tomake way for our ability to not only counter narratives in the region but also to get our stories out there about what nations are doing together.

And I think that when we do that, we provide time and space for the diplomatic element of national power across the nations to operate in such away that we mean what we say when we say, “The goal is no-first-use policy And that’s at the heart of what integrated deterrence truly is, and I think that mastering the ability to maneuver in the information space is going to make all the difference in the world. And it might even stop the authoritarian collusion that’s going on that we see across the globe, most recently affecting my nation—and all nations, to be quite honest with you—there within Jordan.

I think when people underwrite bad behaviors, it’s the express purview of militaries to ensure that we’re ready by building partnerships and alliances across the globe that we might maintain peace. And that’s the aim of everyone that wears a uniform, or has worn a uniform, is peace. So, thank you all for the opportunity to speak again. General Ryan, sir, I look forward to seeing you in the near future.