hankyoreh

US Secretary of Defense Mark Esper

During a discussion with high-ranking officials at the Pentagon early in June, US President Donald Trump said he wanted a large reduction of US forces in Afghanistan before the presidential election in November, the Washington Post reported on July 21. The story shows how serious Trump is about keeping his campaign promise to bring home American soldiers stationed overseas.

“Reminded that withdrawals below the current level of approximately 8,600 — about the same as when Trump first took office — were contingent upon still-unmet conditions outlined in the US-Taliban deal signed early this year, [Trump] questioned whether US forces in Syria could be decreased,” the Washington Post reported. A few weeks later, on June 24, Trump announced he would be bringing home 9,500 of the 34,500 American soldiers deployed to Germany.

The Washington Post story, titled “Trump is determined to bring home US troops from somewhere,” describes how “Trump has been struggling to fulfill his 2016 campaign pledge to significantly reduce the nearly 200,000 American military personnel then overseas.”

But figures in the military, Congress and Trump’s own administration have gotten in the way, either thwarting his plans or persuaded him to abandon them. Currently, “the overall total of those serving abroad is believed to have slightly increased since Barack Obama left office,” the newspaper reported.

There is even considerable skepticism about a US troop reduction that Trump announced last month. “At NATO, few diplomats believe that a significant troop pullback from Germany [. . .] can be accomplished before the end of the year,” the Washington Post reported, adding that “US opinion polls detailing Trump's plummeting popularity are being closely watched in alliance capitals and at the Brussels headquarters.”

“NATO policymakers say that if Democrat Joe Biden is elected, they expect the troop reductions to be off the table,” the newspaper said.

“German officials were furious at having learned of the planned cuts from US media reports. Defense Secretary Mark Esper, attempting to allay concerns and smooth ruffled feathers, told NATO on a trip to Brussels in June that the plans were still far from completion,” the Washington Post said.

In connection with this, a rumored reduction of American forces in South Korea recently covered by the American media is very unlikely to be carried out within the year. During a video seminar held on July 21 by the International Institute of Strategic Studies (IISS), a British think tank, Esper responded to those media reports by saying, “I’ve issued no orders to withdraw troops from the Korean Peninsula.”

Esper elaborated on his stance as follows: “I will say that when I took office, I was clear I was going to implement the National Defense Strategy. Part and parcel of that means looking at every geographic combatant command and making sure that we are optimized and positioned as well as possible to accomplish not just fulfilling the NDS but also making sure the regional missions we’ve tasked are there.

Esper continued: “So we will continue to look at adjustments in every command we have in every theater to make sure we are optimized in our forces. We are moving toward additional concepts, new concepts, such as dynamic force deployment, and I continue to want to pursue more rotational force deployments in the theaters because it gives us, the United States, greater strategic flexibility in terms of responding to challenges around the globe.”

During the daily briefing on Tuesday, Pentagon spokesperson Jonathan Hoffman addressed the issue by saying he believed Esper’s remarks about Korea had been very clear. Hoffman said the US would continue to review its global defense posture with its allies.

Esper and Hoffman’s comments expressly deny that an order has been given to reduce the American military presence on the Korean Peninsula while reconfirming American plans to continue redeploying troops around the globe.

“The current position of the US military is that absolutely no steps have been taken that presume a USFK force reduction,” a diplomatic source in Washington told the Hankyoreh. Such a reduction is unlikely given the US focus on containment of China, the source said, adding that even if Trump were to actually give such an order, deliberations with the US would be a time-consuming process, just as they have been in Germany.

By Hwang Joon-bum, Washington correspondent

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