May 19, 2004

Rolling away the tripwire

The AFP reports 4,000 Army troops will leave South Korea and redeploy to Iraq. This will be first reduction in US force levels on the Korean peninsula since the early 1990s. US Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz remarked:

"We have moved troops off of the DMZ, where frankly, they were performing nothing except, a kind of useless -- and indeed I would say counterproductive -- tripwire function."

The US force structure on the Korean peninsula is obsolete. The threat from the North is no longer an army marching across the DMZ; it is Kim's nuclear collection which poses the real danger. The US troops are merely potential nuclear hostages.

The reduction is the second step in a necessary reconfiguration. (The first being the plan to move troops from the DMZ to bases south of Seoul.)

AFP also reports:

"South Korea is seeking assurances that the 4,000 troops will return once their Iraq mission is concluded and has vigorously opposed any reduction in US troops, finding comfort that the presence of US troops in the region virtually guarantees immediate US military involvement if North Korea were to invade the South."

Maybe that is what the South Koreans have said, but it's not what they really mean. We all know that lack of US involvement is not the issue. Rather, the South Koreans worry that America will be more likely to make a preemptive strike against the North's nuclear plants once our own people are out of harm's way.

And that's not such a bad idea . . .


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