By Phil Stewart and Idrees Ali
Jan 23 (Reuters) – The Pentagon foresees a “more limited” role in deterring North Korea with South Korea taking primary responsibility for the task, a Pentagon policy document released on Friday said, a move likely to raise concern in Seoul.
South Korea hosts about 28,500 U.S. troops in combined defense against North Korea’s military threat and Seoul has raised its defense budget by 7.5% for this year.
“South Korea is capable of taking primary responsibility for deterring North Korea with critical but more limited U.S. support,” the National Defense Strategy, a document that guides the Pentagon’s policies, said.
“This shift in the balance of responsibility is consistent with America’s interest in updating U.S. force posture on the Korean Peninsula,” the document added.
In recent years, some U.S. officials have signaled a desire to make U.S. forces in South Korea more flexible to potentially operate outside the Korean Peninsula in response to a broader range of threats, such as defending Taiwan and checking China’s growing military reach.
South Korea has resisted the idea of shifting the role of U.S. troops, but has worked to grow its defense capabilities in the past 20 years, with the goal of being able to take on a wartime command of the combined U.S.-South Korean forces. South Korea has 450,000 troops.
The wide-ranging document, which each new administration publishes, said the Pentagon’s priority was defending the homeland. In the Indo-Pacific region, the document said, the Pentagon was focused on ensuring that China could not dominate the United States or U.S. allies.
“This does not require regime change or some other existential struggle. Rather, a decent peace, on terms favorable to Americans but that China can also accept and live under, is possible,” the document said, without mentioning Taiwan by name in the roughly 25-page document.
China claims democratically governed Taiwan as its own territory and has not ruled out the use of force to take control of the island. Taiwan rejects Beijing’s sovereignty claims and says only the people of Taiwan can decide their future.
(Reporting by Idrees Ali and Phil Stewart; Editing by Chris Reese and Kate Mayberry)
