The Pentagon foresees a \u201cmore limited\u201d role in deterring North Korea, with South Korea taking primary responsibility for the task, according to a policy document released on Friday, a move that could lead to a reduction of US forces on the Korean Peninsula.<\/p>\n
South Korea hosts about 28,500 US troops in combined defense against North Korea\u2019s military threat and Seoul has raised its defense budget by 7.5 percent for this year.<\/p>\n
\u201cSouth Korea is capable of taking primary responsibility for deterring North Korea with critical but more limited US support,\u201d the Pentagon said in the 25-page National Defense Strategy document that guides its policies.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis shift in the balance of responsibility is consistent with America\u2019s interest in updating US force posture on the Korean Peninsula.\u201d<\/p>\n
In recent years, US officials have signaled a desire to make US forces in South Korea more flexible, to potentially operate outside the Korean Peninsula in response to a broader range of threats, such as in defending Taiwan and checking China\u2019s growing military reach.<\/p>\n
South Korea has resisted the idea of shifting \u200cthe role of US \u200ctroops, but has worked to grow its defense capabilities in the past 20 years, with \u200cthe \u2060goal of being \u200cable to take on the wartime command of combined US and South Korean forces. South Korea has 450,000 troops.<\/p>\n
The Pentagon\u2019s top policy official, Elbridge Colby, is due to travel to Asia next week and is expected to visit South Korea, a US official said.<\/p>\n
The wide-ranging document, which each new administration publishes, said the Pentagon\u2019s priority was defending the homeland. In the Indo-Pacific region, the document said, the Pentagon was focused on ensuring that China could not dominate the United States or US allies.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis does not require regime change or some other existential struggle. Rather, a decent peace, on terms favorable to Americans but that China can also accept and live under, is possible,\u201d the document said, without mentioning Taiwan by name.<\/p>\n
China claims \u2060democratically governed Taiwan as its own territory and has not ruled out the use of force to take control of the island. Taiwan rejects Beijing\u2019s sovereignty claims and says only \u200cthe people of Taiwan can decide their future.<\/p>\n
The Pentagon document is based on \u200dUS President Donald Trump\u2019s National Security Strategy, published last year, which said \u200dthe United States will reassert its dominance in the Western Hemisphere, build military strength in the Indo-Pacific, and possibly reassess its \u200drelationship with Europe.<\/p>\n
Iran seeks to rebuild military<\/p>\n
President Trump said on Thursday the United States has an \u201carmada\u201d heading toward Iran but that he hoped he would not have to use it, as he renewed warnings to Tehran against killing protesters or restarting its nuclear program.<\/p>\n
The deployments to the Middle East expand the options available to Trump, both to better defend US forces in the region at a moment of high tension and to take any additional military action after striking Iranian nuclear sites in June.<\/p>\n
The Pentagon document said that while Iran had suffered setbacks in recent months, it was aiming to rebuild its military, with Tehran leaving open the possibility that it \u2060could \u201ctry again to obtain a nuclear weapon.\u201d<\/p>\n
Even with US troops heading to the region, the document said Israel was a \u201cmodel ally\u201d and could be further empowered to defend itself. The United States has had a sometimes strained relationship with Israel over its war in Gaza.<\/p>\n
US to remain engaged in Europe<\/p>\n
Trump\u2019s National Security Strategy from last year drew an outcry from Europeans after it said that Europe faced \u201ccivilizational erasure\u201d and may one day lose its status as a reliable US ally.<\/p>\n
The Trump administration is putting pressure on Kyiv to reach a peace deal in the war triggered by Russia\u2019s full-scale invasion in February 2022, with Moscow demanding Kyiv cede its entire eastern industrial area of Donbas before it stops fighting.<\/p>\n
The Pentagon\u2019s strategy document was more measured on European allies, saying that while the United States would remain engaged in Europe it would prioritize defending the United States and deterring China.<\/p>\n
It said that Russia would remain a \u201cpersistent but manageable\u201d threat for NATO\u2019s eastern members, and that the Pentagon would provide Trump with options to \u201cguarantee US military and commercial access to key terrain\u201d in different parts of the world, including in Greenland.<\/p>\n
Trump said earlier \u200cthis week he had secured total and permanent US access to Greenland in a deal with NATO, whose head said allies would have to step up their commitment to Arctic security to ward off threats from Russia and China.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The Pentagon foresees a \u201cmore limited\u201d role in deterring North Korea, with South Korea taking primary responsibility for the task, according to a policy document released on Friday, a move that could lead to a reduction of US forces on the Korean Peninsula. South Korea hosts about 28,500 US troops in combined defense against North …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":92676,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-92671","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-world"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/92671","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=92671"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/92671\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":92677,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/92671\/revisions\/92677"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/92676"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=92671"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=92671"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=92671"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}