Army Gen. Xavier Brunson, commander of U.S. Forces Korea, greets Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth at Osan Air Base, South Korea, Nov. 4, 2025. (Sarah Williams/U.S. Air Force)
The commander of U.S. Forces Korea is urging military planners to rethink how they view East Asia — literally — by rotating the map.
Army Gen. Xavier Brunson argues that turning a regional map 90 degrees to place east at the top reveals overlooked strategic advantages for the United States and its allies. He outlined the idea in an opinion piece posted Sunday on USFK’s website.
“The most profound strategic insights sometimes emerge from the simplest shifts in perspective,” he wrote. “In the Indo-Pacific theater, where geographic relationships determine operational possibilities and alliance effectiveness, military planners may be overlooking critical advantages simply because of how they view their maps.”
An ”east-up” map, Brunson wrote, highlights how South Korea, Japan and the Philippines — all U.S. treaty allies — gain strategic depth through cooperation at a time when Washington has encouraged closer coordination in the face of challenges from China, North Korea and Russia. Historical grievances and territorial disputes have often slowed such efforts.
In the article, titled “The East-Up Map: Revealing Hidden Strategic Advantages in the Indo-Pacific,” Brunson wrote that the traditional U.S. view emphasizes the Indo-Pacific’s vast distances and downplays the benefits of deployed forces.
The east-oriented perspective, he said, shows that troops on the Korean Peninsula are not “distant assets requiring reinforcement,” but instead are already situated inside the “bubble perimeter” the U.S. would need to penetrate during a crisis.
USFK’s headquarters at Camp Humphreys lies just 158 miles from Pyongyang, 612 miles from Beijing and 500 miles from Vladivostok.
“Korea is positioned to address northern threats from Russia while simultaneously providing western reach against Chinese activities in the waters between Korea and China,” Brunson wrote.
From Beijing’s vantage point, Brunson added, U.S. installations such as Osan Air Base south of Seoul do not appear remote but instead offer “resources positioned to achieve effects in or around China.”
“Perhaps the most significant insight from east-up mapping is the emergence of a strategic triangle connecting Korea, Japan and the Philippines,” he wrote. “When these three mutual defense treaty partners are viewed as vertices of a triangle rather than isolated bilateral relationships, their collective potential becomes clear.”
In written responses to South Korean media — provided to Stars and Stripes by USFK — Brunson expanded on that concept: “Each partner brings a distinct capability: Korea’s central depth, Japan’s technological advantage and maritime reach, and the Philippines’ access to key southern sea lanes.”
Brunson argues that U.S. forces already in the region can impose costs on adversaries while retaining defensive advantages and that current force posture, particularly in South Korea, may provide greater strategic value than widely recognized.
The east-up approach mirrors longstanding Australian strategic thinking and aligns with India’s “Look East” perspective, said Paul Buchanan, an American security analyst based in New Zealand. U.S. commanders, he told Stars and Stripes by email Tuesday, should study regional geopolitics in countries such as Thailand, Japan, South Korea, Indonesia and Australia “to get more well-rounded East-Up perspective rather than something more narrowly construed by U.S. interests alone.”
Ralph Cossa, former president of the Pacific Forum think tank in Hawaii, said the map-rotation concept is eye-catching but may have limited staying power.
“It does stress the importance of Korea and also of Japan and the Philippines to regional security,” he said by email Tuesday. “It also subtly (or perhaps not so subtly) makes the point about Korea’s regional role.”
