Posted on: Sunday, June 13, 2004

THE RISING EAST
Shifting of troops also about politics

By Richard Halloran

The implications of the forthcoming withdrawal of one-third of the 37,000 U.S. troops in South Korea and two Army divisions from Germany are as much political as military, since both nations have been the site of vigorous anti-American eruptions in the last few years.

A researcher at the East-West Center in Honolulu, Richard Baker, asserted Wednesday that the planned reduction in Korea "basically calls the bluff of those in Korea who have been calling for the United States to go away."

He added: "The U.S. alliance has for too long become a target of rhetorical cheap shots because nobody thought Americans would go away."

On a wider angle, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, in Singapore for a conference of defense ministers, said last weekend: "We want to have our forces where people want them. We have no desire to be where we're not wanted."

Polls by the Pew Research Center in Washington suggest that Rumsfeld has solid backing in the American public for his stance on Europe. Where 83 percent of Americans saw Germany in a favorable light two years ago, only 50 percent say so now. Similarly, France dropped from a 79 percent favorable rating to 33 percent.

Despite expressions of European and American unity last week during commemorations of D-Day, in a U.N. vote on Iraq, and at the Georgia summit of industrial nations, the Economist magazine of London called U.S.-European relations "a creaking partnership."

U.S. forces in Europe have been there since World War II ended in 1945; those in Korea since that war ended in 1953. In a Pentagon briefing Wednesday, a senior official said those deployments "froze in place a long time ago [and] had a logic that was based on an earlier time technologically and an earlier time historically."

Administration officials further suggested it was time for allies in Asia and Europe to do more for their own defense. Said one official: "There's a bigger piece in security cooperation — how we can build up capability in allies?"

The military intent of the worldwide repositioning of U.S. forces, the officials said, was to be able to contend with uncertainty, operate across regions rather than be tied down to one nation, and respond to crises with speed. Perhaps most important, said one official: "The focus here has been on capabilities and not numbers."

Politically, the delay of President Roh Moo-hyun's government to dispatch troops to Iraq has generated a perception that South Korea may not be a reliable ally. Some American officers have wondered privately whether South Korea could be counted on if the United States got into hostilities with North Korea or China.

Pro-China leanings of many South Koreans, especially in the younger generation, have caused some South Korean specialists in international relations to caution that their nation should not weaken what one called its "maritime alliance" with the United States in favor of Korea's traditional role as a vassal of China.

A subtle factor in American strategic thinking is Korea's continuing anti-Japanese posture even though Japan's occupation of Korea ended nearly 60 years ago. In U.S. military planning, Japan and Korea are part of the same area of operations and Korean animosity toward Japan is seen as a hindrance to U.S. action.

American officials have been discussing changes in U.S. deployments to Japan, officials in the Pentagon briefing said, but did not give specifics. Among the changes speculated in the Japanese press are moving Navy aircraft out of Atsugi and Air Force units out of Yokota.

In addition, there has been speculation that the Marines might move some units out of Okinawa to ease long-standing frictions between Okinawans and Americans on that crowded island. Those Marines would go to Hokkaido where they would have more room to train and would be closer to South Korea.

The Army's I Corps at Fort Lewis in the state of Washington is slated to go to Iraq and then to be posted in Japan to take command of U.S. Army forces in Asia. Officers at U.S. Forces Japan contend that their unit should continue to work day-to-day with the Japanese Self-Defense Force, a task that requires constant attention.

Even so, Japan is seen as a steady ally despite constitutional constraints on its military actions. Said one U.S. officer: "The Japanese have done everything we asked them to do in Afghanistan and Iraq."

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