[Editorial] Troops, trust and alliance

Korea Herald

25-05-2025

Even a partial US troop withdrawal from South Korea can cast doubt on deterrence
In geopolitics, ambiguity is seldom accidental. The Wall Street Journal's report Thursday that the Pentagon is weighing the withdrawal of some 4,500 troops from South Korea — roughly 16 percent of the 28,500-strong United States Forces Korea — landed like a spark in a dry forest.
Both Seoul and Washington issued swift denials. But those denials failed to fully dispel the speculation. A Pentagon spokesperson, when asked directly about the reported drawdown, said only that 'there were no policy announcements to make,' according to the Journal. In Washington-speak, such phrasing often signals possibility, not closure.
At the center of the report is the rotational Stryker Brigade Combat Team, a nine-month deployment unit that has no permanent base in South Korea but plays a vital role in ensuring combat readiness on the peninsula. Its potential relocation — likely to Guam or elsewhere in the Indo-Pacific region — would not amount to a wholesale abandonment of American security commitments. But it would mark a discernible shift in posture and priorities, one that adversaries such as North Korea would scrutinize closely for signs of faltering resolve.
South Korea's Ministry of National Defense responded by stressing that any changes to the USFK presence must proceed through established bilateral frameworks, including the Security Consultative Meeting and the Military Committee Meeting. Meanwhile, the Pentagon alternated between denial and ambiguity. A spokesperson rejected the report as 'not true,' while reiterating the United States' 'ironclad' commitment to South Korea's defense.
The facts behind the report, however, hint at a deeper recalibration in Washington. US President Donald Trump's administration, now in the first year of its renewed tenure, has revived familiar patterns: transactional diplomacy, threats to dilute alliances and an unapologetic focus on cost-sharing. As a candidate in April 2024, Trump criticized South Korea's current contributions to the alliance, claiming that Seoul — which he described as a 'money machine' — would be paying $10 billion annually had he remained in office. Under the current Special Measures Agreement, South Korea is set to contribute 1.52 trillion won ($1.1 billion) in 2026 — already an 8.3 percent increase from the prior year.
Seen through this lens, the proposed troop reduction may function less as strategic realignment than as tactical pressure. Washington could be testing Seoul's tolerance ahead of the next round of cost-sharing negotiations, or signaling conditionality in advance of potential talks with Pyongyang. Trump has used both tactics before — and often simultaneously.
Yet the ramifications of even a partial withdrawal extend well beyond the realm of negotiation. A drawdown of 4,500 troops, particularly from a combat-ready ground force, would not be read in Seoul, Pyongyang or Beijing as a mere administrative adjustment. Since 2008, the USFK troop level has remained largely steady — both as an operational necessity and a symbol of an enduring alliance. To reduce that footprint now would risk conveying that US security commitments are elastic, that the alliance itself is subject to leverage.
China would undoubtedly read such a move as a shift in focus. Should the Stryker Brigade be redeployed to Guam, it would align with the broader strategic pivot toward deterring Beijing. But such a repositioning could leave the Korean Peninsula more exposed, especially at a time when North Korean provocations are growing more frequent.
As South Korea prepares to turn the page with a new president after the June 3 election, the incoming administration faces the urgent task of reestablishing clarity with Washington — not only on trade and tariffs, but on the fundamentals of the alliance itself.
For an alliance to endure, it must be built not on ambiguity or transactional calculation, but on trust, transparency and a shared understanding of deterrence. In their absence, signals are misread, intentions are doubted — and the cost of miscalculation can become unthinkably high.