President Trump must not withdraw U.S. forces from South Korea regardless of the outcome of the nuclear negotiations with North Korea, according top a senior Republican senator.
“The one thing that I would violently disagree with is removing our troops,” Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., said on NBC’s “Today” show. “I can’t imagine I would vote for any agreement that requires us to withdraw our forces because that would destabilize Asia.”
Trump said he wants to withdraw U.S. troops from the Korean Peninsula following a summit with North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un. While emphasizing that a full withdrawal is “not part of the equation right now,” the president announced the cancellation of joint military exercises with South Korea, on the grounds that they are expensive and “very provocative” to the North Koreans. Neither issue was covered by the joint statement signed by the two leaders.
“That’s what China wants,” Graham said of withdrawing U.S. forces. “That doesn’t make the world more peaceful, it makes it more dangerous.”
[Related: Did Mike Pompeo just open the door to pulling some US troops out of South Korea?]
Trump volunteered the comments during remarks to the press in Singapore. “I want to get our soldiers out,” he said. “I want to bring our soldiers back home. We have, right now, 32,000 soldiers in South Korea. And I’d like to be able to bring them back home. But that’s not part of the equation right now. At some point I hope it will be, but not right now.”
He said the “war games” would be put on hold as long as the denuclearization process appears to be going well. “But we’ll be saving a tremendous amount of money,” Trump said. “Plus, I think it’s very provocative.”
China and Russia repeatedly have blamed the United States for the North Korean nuclear crisis, as they faulted Trump for building up the U.S. military presence in the region and conducting military drills with South Korea. Graham downplayed the significance of Trump’s decision to cancel such exercises. “I don’t think canceling a war game is going to matter over the arc of time,” he said.
But Chinese President Xi Jinping, who has blocked American efforts to impose the stiffest possible sanctions on North Korea, is suspected of using the issue to force a withdrawal of U.S. forces from the region.
“I suspect that maybe President Xi, behind the scenes with Kim Jong Un, is saying, ‘Listen, you give this crap up, but what you have to get for it is, you got to get the U.S. to pull out; that’s your price for complete denuclearization,’” Senate Homeland Security and Government Affairs Chairman Ron Johnson, R-Wis., told the Washington Examiner during a recent interview.
Trump said that the topic wasn’t discussed during his meeting. “We’re not reducing,” he said.
