By Kim Young-jin
Staff reporter
The United States will deploy some of its troops stationed in Korea to other conflict regions in the coming years as part of its strategic deployment stance, the top U.S. military officer said this week in Seoul.
"Part of the discussion we are having with the Republic of Korea, with the leadership, and what we will be able to do in the next several years is support for deployments, literally, off the peninsula," Adm. Mike Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, told an audience of U.S. soldiers at Camp Red Cloud, north of Seoul, Tuesday. "But we're not there yet. We haven't got to that point in time."
Mullen was in town to attend the “2+2” meeting of foreign and defense ministers of the two allies Wednesday, held as a show of solidarity after North Korea torpedoed a South Korean warship earlier this year, killing 46 sailors.
The top diplomats announced that joint military exercises will be held from Sunday as a deterrent against further provocation, despite protests from the North, as well as its major ally, China. The war games will take place in the West Sea, near where the Cheonan went down on March 26, as well as in the East Sea, over the next month.
Strategic flexibility changes the focus of American forces abroad from stationary missions to defend host nations to a rapid deployment scheme under which they can be swiftly dispatched to other parts of the world where the United States is in need.
The U.S. maintains 28,500 troops in South Korea as a deterrent against the North, part of the over 400,000 American forces stationed abroad, including on the battlefields of Iraq and Afghanistan.
"We have longstanding relations not just with the ROK, but also with Japan," Mullen said. "We have emerging relationships with other countries in the area... so the forces we have here are very much in support of all that. We haven't worked any of the details out on how that might happen in the future, and whether it would include a deployment to Iraq or Afghanistan or somewhere else. So we're just not there, yet."
Mullen reiterated, however, the U.S. pledge to maintain the current level of troops here for the time being. Regarding the troop level of 28,500, he said: “That's the commitment and that's where we are."
Mullen’s comments back up those he made in December, when he characterized the strategic flexibility stance "one we are addressing with the South Korean leadership," which is "very important part of a strategic concept for security both for the region and globally."
South Korean officials have been mum on the posture, saying it should be seen as a routine rotation of troops without a reduction of troops stationed here.