U.S. Defense Secretary Mark Esper ends Asia tour with the same trio of troubles on the Korean peninsula that he found on arrival last week. Together they pose risks to U.S. national security and to the future of Washington’s alliance with South Korea.
U.S. Defense Secretary Mark Esper, left, and Vietnamese Defense Minister Ngo Xuan Lich talk before a meeting in Hanoi, Vietnam Wednesday, Nov. 20, 2019. Esper is on a visit to Vietnam to strengthen the military relations with the Southeast Asian nation.
The toughest of these problems, and arguably the most consequential, is North Korea’s refusal to restart negotiations with Washington on eliminating its nuclear weapons. Esper told reporters Thursday in Vietnam’s capital, Hanoi, that he was disappointed by the North’s negative response. Esper himself asserted last week that when he became Army secretary in late 2017, “we were on the path to war; it was very clear to me because the Army was making preparations.”
Bennett thinks it’s possible that the North will be satisfied with nothing less than a withdrawal of all 28,500 American troops from South Korea and a dissolution of the U.S.-South Korean defense alliance that emerged from the 1950-53 Korean War. Complicating that effort is a new fissure between Seoul and Washington. The Trump administration is demanding a five-fold increase in the amount Seoul pays to keep U.S. troops in the country — up from just under $1 billion this year.
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