Ritter’s Rant 073: To Be or Not to Be

Hello and welcome to this episode of Ritter's Rant. Uh to be or not to be. No, I haven't gone Shakespearean on you. Not yet. But um it's it's an apt phrase when we are talking about what's transpiring today between the United States and South Korea. uh in particular about, you know, this joint uh nuclear submarine uh acquisition plan that was conceived last November um in a deal between the South Korean president and the American President Donald Trump. Um a deal that had as its genesis um you know trade disagreements. Donald Trump had slapped a 25% tariff on South Korean goods. And then part of the deal that lowered the tariff from 25% to 15% was this arrangement where South Korea would invest $350 billion dollar into into the United States, including $150 billion in the ship building. Um, but not just any ships, you see, because Donald Trump also agreed with the South Korean president that South Korea was going to enter the nuclear submarine club. It's something South Korea always has has been aspiring to recently, you know, because it's the cool boys club of you know, we have Alus, Australia, United Kingdom, United States, where Australia got to join the cool boys club uh by, you know, dumping a French submarine for American nuclear submarines. Now, these submarines don't exist. The Australians don't have them. And there's some question as to whether they'll ever have them. But, you know, it's just typical of how the United States operates with its core allies where we promise something that becomes very difficult to deliver uh down the road because we're not really serious about it. We're in for the optics. We're in for the headlines. We're in for, you know, the the perception as opposed to the reality. And I think South Korea's fallen into this same trap. I mean, it was obvious that there was a problem early on when Donald Trump said, you know, they're going to build these submarines in Philadelphia, uh, the Philadelphia shipyard, and the South Korean president went, I think we're going to build it sort of 100% here at home. Um but you know the 150 billion uh that was supposed to be invested in American ship building a large amount of that supposed to go to you know building up the Philadelphia shipyards capabilities so they can produce you know Donald Trump's South Korean nuclear submarines. Um so we we we had a problem there. But there's other issues as well. Um you know one of which is where does South Korea get this money? you know, the South Korean president does have to work through um you know, his parliament. There has to be budgets allocated. Money has to be approved and uh it's just not happening to the speed which Donald Trump wants it to happen to his trade representative wants it to happen. Um you know, and we saw this play out to this week. Eldridge Colby the uh uh I guess under secretary or deputy sec under secretary for policy in the department of defense or department of war depending on you know whose lexicon you're operating off of. He traveled to South Korea to have these discussions with you know this core ally um South Korea is you know listed as one of our better allies here. Uh they talked about a number of things. talked about how if there was a war involving North Korea, the United States would transfer u command and control of the war from American leadership to South Korean leadership early on that the South Koreans will play uh major role in nuclear war planning so that if the war did go nuclear, South Korea would have a say on, you know, what nuclear weapons were used, what targets were hit, etc. Um so they they they discussed this. Um I just want to point out that it's still in the discussion phase. No real uh nothing real has really happened here beyond creating planning groups etc. The United States still controls the war powers capability, the command and control capability and total control over its nuclear arsenal. Uh but they also talk about these nuclear submarines and again the United States reiterated how it was willing to help the South Koreans on issues such as u uranium enrichment. I mean, how are they going to you, you know, build and manufacture the fuel to be used for these if these are going to be 100% South Korean uh submarines? Um, fuel reprocessing, when what happens when the the the the fuel cells need to be replaced? South Korea owns these things. How do they reprocess them? Um, these are technologies that the United States has that need to be shared with South Korea. So, they discussed sharing them. But then it got down to the brass tax about the submarine itself. Um, you know, as the admiral in command of the US Pacific Fleet said, you know, the submarine's still in the nent phase. Now, I had to go look up that word just to make sure that I understood what it meant. It means very preliminary. Yeah. As in, it doesn't exist. And this is the case. Um, you know, the the South Korean shipping company, Hanwa, has purchased the Philadelphia shipyard in 2024, I think, for a price of hundred million. And they've promised a $5 billion renovation of the shipyard. In fact, they're looking to buy land uh to expand the shipyard to do the kind of ship building that Donald Trump wants. One of the things that they plan on building are they're going to produce frigots for the US Navy. But they also are talking about producing these nuclear submarines. But no investments have been made into the kind of infrastructure upgrades that are required. This shipyard as it currently exists cannot be involved in nuclear ship production. There's a whole host of safety issues, technologies, um reconfiguration of the workspace again when dealing with nuclear reactors, etc. that haven't been done. And it's not going to happen overnight. Uh it's these are things that you know could take more than a decade to uh to happen if at all if the funding is ever there. Um you know the the deal is for South Korea to produce at least four maybe more nuclear submarines by the mid 1930s but they're nowhere near on track to do this. uh you know, people need to understand that that realistically speaking, this just isn't going to happen, especially since none of the money has been released from South Korea, which now brings us back to the original issue here. This was always a trade deal. This was always Donald Trump, you know, talking about I lowered tariffs from 25% to 15% so that you, South Korea, could invest $350 billion into the American economy. So I, Donald Trump, could stand for the American people and said, "I made you $350 billion, part of his multi-trillion dollar economic expansion." Except that money hasn't been invested. It's still in South Korea. It's not coming this way. The South Koreans have a lot of issues. One of the which is that they're waiting for the United States Supreme Court to come down on a ruling on the legality of Donald Trump's tariff policy. So nothing's happened. So what did the US Trade Representative do? He's chastised the South Koreans and Donald Trump immediately threatened to put the 25% tariff back on. I would imagine that if he did that, that sort of ends the U nuclear submarine program, ends the concept of South Korean investment, brings everything back to square one. Now, they're trying to sort things out. Donald Trump says, "We'll we'll hold off on that. We're going to work things out." But my point is a lot of people got really excited when Eldidge Colby went to South Korea and talked about nuclear submarines and a lot of people started moving pieces on a map talking about how if the South Koreans had nuclear submarines they could with their long patrol capability extend and interdict Chinese shipping lanes the same way they did with Australian nuclear submarines that don't exist and talked about how they could do long range patrolling interdicting and suddenly we have American back power projection into the Pacific controlling the Chinese. It doesn't exist. It's theoretical. And given Donald Trump's, you know, proclivities for, you know, slapping tariffs on anybody who doesn't agree with them, probably won't exist. To be or not to be, the South Korean nuclear submarine. My guess is not to be. Anyways, that's my rant. The next time a thought crosses my mind, I'll be sure to let you know. Thanks.

The dysfunction of the Trump administration is on display when it comes to the South Korean Nuclear Sub deal.