Elbridge Colby, the undersecretary of defense for policy, has long advocated pushing South Korea to assume more of the burden of defending itself with conventional forces to enable the U.S.to better confront China, even as the U.S.maintains its commitment to defend Seoul from Pyongyang, if necessary with nuclear weapons.“I’m not in favor of withdrawing forces from South Korea, as I have repeatedly laid out,” Colby said in a post on X last year before he was nominated for his Pentagon post.“I’m in favor of reshaping U.S.forces in the ROK to focus on China while the ROK takes the great burden of conventional defense against the DPRK.”ROK refers to the Republic of Korea, the formal name for South Korea, while DPRK stands for the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, as North Korea is called.
South Korea, along with Japan and the Philippines rely on close coordination with American armed forces to defend themselves and project power in an increasingly contentious region.The U.S.military presence there has long been seen as a deterrent against a renewed war on the Korean Peninsula, as well as against an aggressive China, which asserts claims over a swath of the South China Sea and has threatened to take control of Taiwan.
WASHINGTON—The Trump administration is weighing a withdrawal of thousands of American troops from South Korea, according to defense officials familiar with the discussions, a move that could stir new anxiety among allies worried about the White House commitment to Asia.
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