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The Pentagon has presented the White House with options to reduce the American military presence in South Korea as the two countries remain at odds over President Trump’s demand that Seoul greatly increase how much it pays for the U.S. troops stationed in the country, U.S. officials said.
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Trump Administration Weighs Troop Cut in South Korea
Options for reducing U.S. military presence in South Korea, coming amid tense talks over cost sharing, follow partial American withdrawal from Germany
Currently, 28,500 U.S. troops are stationed in South Korea. U.S. military helicopters at Camp Humphreys in Pyeongtaek, South Korea, in February.
Photo: Hong Ki-won/Associated Press
By
and
Updated July 17, 2020 1:02 pm ET
The Pentagon has presented the White House with options to reduce the American military presence in South Korea as the two countries remain at odds over President Trump’s demand that Seoul greatly increase how much it pays for the U.S. troops stationed in the country, U.S. officials said.
The Pentagon’s Joint Staff has reviewed the structure of U.S. forces in South Korea as part of a broader re-examination of how to reposition and potentially reduce military deployments world-wide, a U.S. military official said.
Trump administration officials declined to spell out contingency plans to shrink the American military presence in South Korea below the current level of 28,500 U.S. troops and said no decision to reduce the force has been made.
The Price of SecurityAfter years of gradual increases, Washingtonwants Seoul to pay much more for the U.S.military presence.South Korean contributionsSources: South Korea's Ministry of National Defense;Statistics Korea
.billion
The disclosure comes as Mr. Trump has unnerved allies by deciding
to remove 9,500 of the 34,500 U.S. troops permanently stationed in Germany and as one of the president’s most outspoken advisers has signaled that more troop withdrawals might occur.
“Donald Trump was very clear,” Richard Grenell, the former U.S. ambassador in Germany who pushed for the troop withdrawals in that country told the German newspaper Bild last month.
“We want to bring troops from Syria, Afghanistan, Iraq, from South Korea, Japan and from Germany,” he said.
Americans “are getting a little bit tired of paying too much for the defense of other countries,” Mr. Grenell added in comments that reverberated in Seoul.
The U.S. and South Korea have been military allies since the Korean War. In 1991, the two countries concluded the first of a series of agreements under which Seoul provides funds and other support to defray the Americans’ cost of keeping troops there.
Mr. Trump, however, has long insisted that South Korea pay more.
Yielding to administration pressure,
Seoul agreed to pay $926 million in 2019, an 8.2% increase for a one-year, a stopgap deal. Mr. Trump
hailed the development in a tweet, but later
demanded a fivefold increase in the payment to $5 billion for the following year.
Less Presence
The U.S. troop presence in South Korea peaked in wartime in the 1950s and stands
at about 28,500 today.
U.S. troop levels in South Korea
400,000
Korean
War
300,000
200,000
100,000
Range
0
1950
’60
’70
’80
’90
2000
’10
Source: Institute for Military History
South Korean President Moon Jae-in made a counteroffer to give Mr. Trump more than $5 billion, but spread over five years, according to a person familiar with the talks.
Under the terms of the South Korean offer, Seoul would boost its payment 13.6% during the first year with annual increases after that of about 7% a year that would be tied to the growth of South Korea’s defense budget. In the fifth year, Seoul would pay the U.S. $1.3 billion.
Senior U.S. officials thought that the issue might be ripe for resolution after Mr. Moon agreed in March to Mr. Trump’s request that it
send test kits to help the U.S. deal with the coronavirus pandemic. But instead of embracing the South Korean offer, Mr. Trump raised the stakes by proposing that South Korea pay $1.3 billion for another one-year deal, a person familiar with the talks said.
Mr. Moon rejected that proposal. Cost-sharing agreements generally have lasted up to five years, and Mr. Trump’s proposal would have left South Korea open to new American demands a year later.
National Security Council officials didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment on Mr. Trump’s proposal and the details of the continuing negotiations.
U.S. soldiers participated in a military tactical demonstration at Osan Air Base in Pyeongtaek, South Korea, in 2019.
Photo: jung yeon-je/Agence France-Presse/Getty Images
No cost-sharing accord has been in effect since the 2019 deal, known as the Special Measures Agreement, lapsed in December.
“The president has been clear in the expectation that our allies around the world, including South Korea, can and should contribute more,” a senior Trump administration official said.
At the same time, officials said, Mr. Trump has continued to question the rationale for overseas deployments.
“He has made it clear he wants options,” another administration official said.
The White House asked the Pentagon last fall to provide preliminary options for withdrawing troops from around the world, including in the Middle East, Africa, Europe and Asia.
By December, the Pentagon had come up with broad ideas, which also reflected its strategy for competing with China and Russia and its emphasis on rotational forces. In March, the Pentagon refined a number of options and presented them to the White House, including some for South Korea, one of the administration officials said.
U.S. soldiers walking at a shopping zone outside Camp Humphreys in Pyeongtaek, South Korea, in 2019.
Photo: jung yeon-je/Agence France-Presse/Getty Images
A U.S. military official declined to say whether Gen. Mark Milley, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, has informed his South Korea counterpart regarding the U.S. review of troop levels. The fact that the Pentagon developed options for adjusting troop levels was reported in April by the South Korean newspaper Dong-A Ilbo.
Earlier this month, Gen. Robert Abrams, the commander of U.S. forces in South Korea, described reports that the U.S. might withdraw troops from South Korea as wildly speculative, while noting that the Pentagon continuously assesses the U.S. military’s deployments globally.
“No decisions have been made to alter our force posture in South Korea,” added a U.S. Defense official. “But regardless of the outcome of the review, we are confident that we will maintain our ability to address any threat on the Korean Peninsula.”
Mr. Trump’s diplomacy toward South Korea has stirred up debate among American experts, who assert that the president isn’t giving sufficient weight to the role allies can play in helping to safeguard U.S. interests.
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“This reflects Trump’s transactional view of alliances,” said Bruce Klingner of the Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank. “It is counter to the U.S. post-World War II strategy that sees allies as in our strategic interests. Keeping U.S. troops forward deployed can deter America’s opponents from doing bad things and allow U.S. troops to respond more quickly.”
Congress has been concerned as well.
Legislation passed by the House Armed Services Committee this month that would preclude the Pentagon from reducing troops in South Korea below 28,500 unless the defense secretary certifies that the North Korean threat has eased and the reduction wouldn’t hurt U.S. security. The Senate Armed Services had drafted a similar measure.
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South Korean officials have said that the country spent about 2.5% of its GDP on defense in 2019. The White House has complained Germany has failed to meet a North Atlantic Treaty Organization goal of spending 2% of its GDP on its military.
Progress in talks over a new U.S.-South Korea cost-sharing agreement seems unlikely in the near future, experts say. In June, the two countries agreed that Seoul would spend about $200 million to pay the salaries of roughly 4,000 South Korean workers, who had been furloughed from their jobs on U.S. bases for months. That development eased the domestic pressure on the South Korea government to reach accord with the U.S.
Paul Choi, the managing director of StratWays Group, a Seoul-based geopolitical-risk advisory, said the matter is distracting the allies from larger issues such as North Korea and China.
“We’re shooting ourselves in the foot,” he said.
—Andrew Jeong in Seoul contributed to this article.
Write to Michael R. Gordon at
michael.gordon@wsj.com and Gordon Lubold at
Gordon.Lubold@wsj.com