US senator slams Trump administration after report of possible troop reduction in South Korea
U.S. Sen. Ben Sasse / AP
A Republican senator slammed the Trump administration, Friday, in response to a news report that the White House was considering reducing American troop levels in South Korea.
According to The Wall Street Journal, the Pentagon presented the White House with options for reducing the U.S. presence in March.
"This kind of strategic incompetence is Jimmy Carter-level weak. Why is this so hard?" Sen. Ben Sasse (R-NE), a member of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, said in a statement posted on his website.
"We don't have missile systems in South Korea as a welfare program; we have troops and munitions there to protect Americans. Our aim is to give the Chinese communist leadership and the nuclear nut tyrannizing his North Korean subjects something to think about before they mess with us," he said.
Carter pledged as a presidential candidate in 1976 to withdraw U.S. troops from South Korea. Upon taking office the following year, he ordered a review of options to execute the plan. Faced with opposition from within his own Democratic Party, he ultimately abandoned the goal in 1979.
Around 28,500 American troops are currently stationed in South Korea to deter North Korean aggression, a legacy of the 1950-53 Korean War, which ended in an armistice, not a peace treaty.
News reports have suggested that U.S. President Donald Trump might threaten to pull troops from South Korea unless Seoul agrees to significantly increase its financial contributions to the cost of keeping the U.S. military presence.
The reports come as the allies' negotiations for a new cost-sharing agreement have stalled since the previous arrangement lapsed at the end of last year. (Yonhap)