Trump considering troop reduction in South Korea: report
Source: The Hill
The Pentagon has reportedly given the White House options to reduce the U.S. troop presence in South Korea following President Trump’s demands that Seoul pay significantly more to keep U.S. forces there.
A U.S. military official told The Wall Street Journal that the Pentagon’s Joint Staff has reviewed forces in South Korea — currently 28,500 troops strong — as part of a broader look at potentially repositioning and reducing deployments across the globe. The Defense Department referred questions to the White House, which did not respond to requests for comment.
The potential move drew immediate blowback from Congressional lawmakers, including Sen. Ben Sasse (R-Neb.), who called such a decision “strategic incompetence.”
“We don’t have missile systems in South Korea as a welfare program; we have troops and munitions there to protect Americans,” Sasse said in a statement. “Our aim is to give the Chinese communist leadership and the nuclear nut tyrannizing his North Korean subjects something to think about before they mess with us.”
The drawdown plan has sparked a bipartisan backlash from lawmakers who say it would undermine U.S. alliances and benefit Russia. Reducing U.S. troops on the peninsula would also be seen as a win for North Korea, which has long pressed for U.S. forces to leave Seoul and would itself have to make no major compromises for the drawdown.
Read more: https://thehill.com/policy/defense/507867-trump-considering-troop-reduction-in-south-korea-report
The administration since 2018 has already canceled several large-scale military exercises between the United States and South Korea in an effort to move along nuclear disarmament talks with Pyongyang.
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