By Richard Halloran

A drive to compel the United States to withdraw its military forces from South Korea is picking up steam with a curious alignment of advocates from the left and the right.

This complicates President Bush's effort to persuade North Korea to abandon its ambitions for nuclear arms and to engage in valid negotiations with the United States, because the North Koreans are certain to see this development as a bargaining advantage. As the president said in Texas last week: "I believe this is not a military showdown, this is a diplomatic showdown."

On the left, the leader in the drive is North Korea, of course, with almost daily demands from its propaganda machine that the "Yankee, go home."

Support for a withdrawal comes from an increasingly broad spectrum of South Koreans, including the middle class, which sees continued South Korean reliance on the United States for defense as insulting to national sovereignty.

The demands for withdrawal from young people are especially noteworthy, as they seem ignorant of the 54,000 Americans who died in the Korean War of 1950-53 to help prevent their nation from being overrun by the North Koreans and their Chinese allies.

On the American right, influential New York Times columnist William Safire recently called for the withdrawal.

A South Korean border policeman at Panmunjom, north of Seoul: What happens in East Asia if 37,000 U.S. troops, who now serve as a vulnerable but largely unloved tripwire, are removed from South Korea? Associated Press

Among other conservatives, Doug Bandow of the Cato Institute has renewed his five-year-old call for the United States to get out of South Korea. Patrick Buchanan and other isolationists have demanded the United States break its alliance with South Korea.

The United States has 37,000 troops in South Korea. Most military observers agree that U.S. ground forces are not needed militarily, as the South Korean army can defend its nation. Rather, the mission of U.S. forces is political, to guarantee that the United States will fulfill its treaty obligations to South Korea if the North attacks.

Confronted with these spreading demands, the Bush administration would appear to have five options:

• Seek to retain the status quo and to muddle through with cosmetic changes intended to appease critics. This has often been the favored tactic in the past.
• Move the headquarters of U.S. forces out of Seoul to the southern part of the peninsula, where it would be not so visible. That headquarters sits on prime property — and in a one-time post of the Japanese imperial army, making it a vivid reminder of Japan's harsh rule over Korea from 1910 to 1945.
• Match the rhetoric and the reality of the U.S. alliance with South Korea to that of the U.S. alliance with Japan. Many South Koreans are irked by what they consider to be American favoritism toward Japan. The United States, for instance, has certain kinds of operational control over South Korean forces, but not over those in Japan. The agreements governing jurisdiction over U.S. military who commit crimes while off duty appear to favor Japan.
• Offer to negotiate a reduction of U.S. forces in South Korea in return for a North Korean pullback of its forces from positions just north of the DMZ, the demilitarized zone dividing the peninsula. North Korea today has a large portion of its offensive power within striking distance of Seoul, which is just 35 miles south of the DMZ.
• Stage a unilateral withdrawal of U.S. forces and abrogate the security treaty between Washington and Seoul. The South Koreans would be left to fend for themselves and might seek an alliance with China. The United States would strengthen its alliance with Japan.

Given the emotional anti-Americanism that seems to be raging through South Korea today, the first option seems unlikely to satisfy the increasingly nationalistic South Koreans.

Moving the U.S. military headquarters has long been under consideration. The United States has offered to move if South Korea will provide a new space for the headquarters and pay for the move.

The South Koreans have so far declined, but the current spasm of anti-American demonstrations may give new life to this possibility.

The third option, matching the U.S.-Korea alliance to the one with Japan, would require a bold change in American thinking. Combined with a new headquarters outside Seoul, this could be the basis of a new and far more satisfactory alliance for both the Americans and the South Koreans.

The chances for the fourth option being selected are slim, given the heightened suspicions between Washington and Pyongyang.

And the fifth option would be tantamount to surrender. It is a nonstarter all the way around.

Richard Halloran formerly was a New York Times correspondent in Asia and Washington. Reach him at oranhall@hawaii.rr.com.