The Senate Armed Services Committee, right as the U.S. negotiates the removal of nuclear missiles from North Korea, is set to consider a new Army general to head U.S. forces on the Korean Peninsula.
Gen. Robert “Abe” Abrams will testify in a committee hearing Tuesday on his nomination to command U.S. Forces Korea and two other key military commands in South Korea.
The Army general would take charge of 28,500 troops stationed in the South after a year of rollercoaster relations, and as President Trump considers a second summit meeting with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un on the regime’s nuclear weapons arsenal.
“Now, as we’ve drawn down out of Iraq and Afghanistan, world events in other regions have created an environment that is volatile, uncertain, complex, ambiguous, and dangerous. It’s unpredictable and requires our Army to be prepared and ready at all times,” Abrams said in an article put out by the Army in May, echoing U.S. Korea forces’ “ready to fight tonight” motto.
“We have the ability to be ready all the time, and that starts with changing our mindset. We need to go back to the readiness mentality that I grew up with as a young officer in Germany,” Abrams said in the interview.
Senators are expected to ask the general about the U.S. posture on the peninsula and how he would handle the growing threats of a nuclear North. Democrats will most likely press him on Trump’s decision to suspend some bilateral U.S.-South Korea military exercises.
The president had taunted Kim last year as the North tested intercontinental ballistic missiles that analysts believe could hit the mainland U.S. and reportedly considered pulling military dependents from South Korea.
But Trump has touted a close relationship and mutual respect between himself and Kim since an historic June summit meeting in Singapore.
Abrams, who could replace Gen. Vincent Brooks, would be charged with managing the military through any conflict or negotiated peace. He is now head of Army Forces Command at Fort Bragg, N.C., has led combat units in Iraq and Afghanistan, and is the son of a famous Army general.
His name was thrust briefly into the limelight this year during the court-martial of Bowe Bergdahl, the former Army specialist who was booted from the service after deserting in Afghanistan and being held captive by the Taliban.
Abrams was the general who oversaw the trial, called the “convening authority,” and in June approved Bergdahl’s sentence of a demotion in rank, fine, and a dishonorable discharge.
Senators may also ask, at least in passing, about his father Gen. Creighton Abrams, who commanded U.S. forces during the Vietnam War, managed a drawdown during the latter period of that war, and was serving as Army chief of staff when he died in 1974. The services’ M1A1 Abrams main battle tank is named for him.
