Suggesting that a cut may be announced soon, the Pentagon has reportedly provided a review of force options in South Korea, and given President Trump different options for reducing the number of troops in the country.
This follows months of Trump pushing South Korea to pay more for US troops, and failing to secure new deals. This latest announcement is likely leverage on the US threats to cut troops if they don’t get more money out of Seoul.
The US has about 28,500 troops in South Korea. It’s not clear the cuts being considered. The Pentagon referred reporters to the White House, and the White House just flat out refused to comment on the matter.
However much of the cut they want, they will face resistance in Congress, where several resolutions have aimed to prohibit unilateral cuts without Congressional approval.
The South Korean military is five times stronger than North Korea. We
could eliminate fat by cutting massive headquarters and excess bases
there since only 8000 GIs are combat troops, but US Army Generals plan
to occupy Korea forever.
Well how else can the profits keep rolling in to the military-industrial complex if we don’t have lots of mythical threats?
Will Dems, GOP & never Trumpers allow him to do this, nope
Do what? Extort more money? I think they’d be fine with that and that is the real problem. No one wants to remove the troops for the right reason, including Trump. No, make that, especially Trump.
You say this, yet Trump has come up with a more than acceptable premise to withdraw troops and is actively trying to implement that policy.
Even speaking the words ‘Let’s withdraw from South Korea’ are far more than Biden would ever do.
Sure, if by “acceptable premise” you mean extort more money, then we agree. Would Trump want to leave if South Korea was willing to pony up what the Don wants in protection money? And I really don’t care if Trump will utter words that Biden won’t. Neither will leave Korea regardless.
Its extortion, and has always been extortion, but mutually beneficial extortion. At least for the moneyed elites.
A genuinely independent SK free of U.S. bases would have its privileged access to the U.S. market subject to far greater scrutiny than it is now. There’s no reason to use Samsung any more than Huawei.
There’s a lot more going on than just bases and protection money; SK’s fig leaf of independence is being given a tug. They appear to be being reminded they have become too independent and too close to China/Eurasia, and perhaps Europe.
Trump would leave any war zone he could get away with to save a buck; his idea of war is economic and diplomatic. This makes sense in a nuclear-armed world, insofar as the fragmented logic of war can make sense.
Meanwhile, the War Machine has no better sense of economics than Hitler’s Generals; the Wehrmacht had no idea where oil came from, the War machine, no idea where money comes from. Its easy to wreck an economy; much harder to build one.
Trump overplayed his hands by demanding 5 billion.
South Korea has already raised the payment for US occupation and now pays nearly $1 billion.
But when you cave in to a gangsters demands, he just raises the bar.
The 800+ U.S bases around the globe will get similar demands, Germany has already rejected the demands and 9500 US occupation troopers will leave.
5 biilion is cheap; Trump could easily have doubled that. NK has the atom bomb now.
The U.S. deterrent value is reduced and the risk factor far greater. Simply being a formal SK ally has always been deterrent enough.
The U.S. is far better off exited from South Korea in the event of conflict, saving resources to counter-invade should such a need ever become necessary.
Trump already raised it 5 times the amount.
NK also had nukes by the time Obama entered office.
Bush and Obama never fulfilled a previous agreement with NK and finally broke it………just like Trump with the JCPOA in 2018.
The JCPOA was a joke; not even a treaty. Essentially, the contract allows Iran access their frozen U.S.-based assets and transfer them to European banks in a much-needed spending spree.
Then the U.S. Israel lobby would be allowed to have its way and the U.S. would have to re-contain Iran by any means, including war, because nothing fundamentally had been resolved.
The Clinton era and onwards agreements with NK were a massive mistake; NK should never have been given light water reactors, because those can be used to produce fissionable material.
NK was all but given nuclear capability by the clandestine West, virtually guaranteeing the Korean War would never end. At least until Trump gave it a shot, but NK figures its better off with obsolete nukes than none at all.
Nothing short of Iran and North Korea being allowed to return to the world community with no strings and swords of damocles overhead can be trusted as real, and not part of some Deeper game.
“5 biilion is cheap; Trump could easily have doubled that. NK has the atom bomb now.”
Trump could have tried but I don’t see why South Korea would be willing to pay double unless we were willing to eliminate the North’s nuclear arsenal. Doubling the payment while the North keeps her nukes wouldn’t make the South any safer.
The U.S. made SK the economic powerhouse it is through generous access to the U.S. market. Trump wants a bigger direct cut of that ‘investment’, though its safe to assume American finance already benefits bigly from SK support of U.S. dollars and banking.
Five billion dollars seems like a lot but a NK nuclear strike against the U.S. could run into the tens of billions of dollars, especially if they use EMP nukes, versus if the U.S. just stayed out of such a conflict.
The U.S. wants to stay on SK for geopolitical reasons, SK knows that. That gives them a fair amount of leverage over how much they actually pay in ‘protection’, while reaping the benefits of a U.S. base presence. SK mooches not unlike Germany except SK does have to spend on its military against a real (but conventionally limited) threat.
SK is more than able to defend itself provided the U.S. provides the same economic support as now. The money would still cycle back into U.S. dollar support and U.S. banks. However, SK bases provide a pretext for more direct financial support of the war machine SK can well afford and affirms allegiance.
“Five billion dollars seems like a lot but a NK nuclear strike against the U.S. could run into the tens of billions of dollars, especially if they use EMP nukes, versus if the U.S. just stayed out of such a conflict.”
So we want the 5 billion to cover the costs of a nuclear attack by the North? Damn, we should demand 20 billion from Germany since Russia has nukes that actually could wipe out US cities.
… EMP nukes could disrupt cities with minimal initial destruction or loss of life.
https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/washington-secrets/north-korea-reveals-nuclear-emp-attack-plans
EMP nukes target unsheilded technology and electrical grids.
Since there is no threat of a nuclear winter that comes with incinerating cities, they are the ‘safest’ nuke to use, especially for countries like North Korea, whose objective is survival, not mass destruction.
Despite the non-existent threat from Russia, even Angela Merkel pays some lip service to American troops leaving Germany. It’s a cash cow Germany would have difficulty replacing in turbulent times.
With that in mind as well as a potential domestic Muslim uprising for which the Germany is ill-equipped to handle, I see one benefit of keeping American troops there. Would the Americans accommodate those wishes.
While she’s playing all sides, Germans are leaving to more conservative locales as Hungary and Russia. Whether this can be described as trickle or flood, I don’t have that information. I do feel confident in saying the ruble will be one of the last fiat currencies standing–with or without metal backing.
The world won’t feel or look the same.
Germany became Europe’s industrial powerhouse by directing almost all her GDP into the civilian economy, and hardly anything at all into the military.
Making demands for U.S. protection against non-existent foreign threats is bad enough; using U.S. troops for internal order, well that’s ridiculous and few sovereign nations would do that anyway… although the idea can’t be completely precluded..
If there’s a Muslim uprising, it will be from all the migrants Merkel let in, though the Muslims who like being German and came to Germany for that, or are German converts, would probably damp that down pretty hard.
Islamic militancy is a very minority force, even within the Islamic world. There are 1.8 billion adherants to Islam; the Islamic State barely tapped the 1% that are psychopaths in any large general population or they would have been a far more potent force given all the tacit help they had to become a thing.
“Islamic militancy is a very minority force, even within the Islamic world.”
As I’m sure you would concur with global Zionist influence.
We could discuss the Zionist and Muslim influence throughout the UK. I wouldn’t expect the UK government to seek Pentagon for assistance against a “foreign power.”
Even here in perpetual fantasyland (US), no mass vote was held to accept uneducated refugees from earth’s far flung regions. The same goes for US war declarations wherever it suits the Davos gang.
China is not bribing US legislators either.
The Islamic State has mostly overtly victimized the Islamic world. Zionism, has not inflicted much overt material damage on Judeo-Christian societies.
Although, the qualitative decline of Western civilization is in some ways, so much worse than just death. So much potential to do genuine good, simply denied.
Germany also used its post WEII economic miracle to pay off high war reparations. It has just bern about two years that Germany paid of WWI debt, still paying off WWII. The pressure to pay more to NATO started about the same time Germany payed off WWI.
I guess it had some spare money.
Today, the differences between east and west Germany are stark. West is liberal, globalist, east conservative, nationalistic. There is a growing religious divide, The West Germany is now close to majority catholic, east more protestant. But catholic population in Germany is more liberal and globalist. The next election will be very important — and may exacerbate the divide.
I’m only making a guess here, but the Germans know the “value” of a printing press. I can understand why an occupied nation would have other budget priorities other than funding their NATO share.
Accepting Muslim immigrants hasn’t proven a boon to the German budget’s bottom line.
I find it interesting that since Russia changed Constitution to define marriage as union between men and women, US came out with new recommendations for defending human rights. The report criticizes the practice of proliferation of rights, recommend focus in basic values like property rights, religion, etc. Notably missing are LGBT and women’s rights. I am wondering if more traditional societies are having more appeal, making US position radical and out of touch with the non-Western world.
The US still hasn’t ratified the Equal Rights Amendment, so I don’t think we have to worry about the US becoming too radical.
The ERA was flawed, insofar as it effectively said all women were to be like men, not that men and women were human beings first who should be allowed to excel without prejudice.
The ERA was unlikely to have reversed the recent male domination of computing technologies, for example, even though women once dominated the industry. Women also excel at STEM until social pressure to conform causes them to withdraw, willingly, from competing with men.
Once a job delivers power and status, it become a male thing. The ERA was rejected by many women because it did not recognize women on their own terms, but required women to be morel like men.
There’s a report?
The Western elites are out of touch with the Western world of real people, let alone everyone else. They may find some resonance at the grassroots, but far from overwhelming.
LGBTQP may be more a refection of the personalities on top, as much as looking for the next populist cause to exploit.
Expect lots of pushback from the alcohol, drugs, prostitution, gambling, and golf cartels in S. Korea and all the congresscum who are getting kickbacks from them for keeping the troops there supporting their industries.