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SEOUL, South Korea — A senior Trump administration official’s frank remarks about strategic U.S. priorities in Asia have sent ripples of fear across South Korea.
Elbridge Colby, a former deputy undersecretary of defense for strategy and force development, said in interviews with leading news outlets that Washington should not “break its spear” fighting for South Korea against the threat from North Korea while China poses the main challenge to U.S. interests in the region.
Mr. Colby, a China hawk, made clear he was speaking for himself, but he is considered an influential foreign policy voice and could be in line to become national security adviser in a second Trump administration.
“Unbelievable,” said Chun In-bum, a retired South Korean general. “If the U.S. is really thinking this, it’s ‘Thanks very much, United States, for helping us for the last seven decades.’”
Some say Mr. Colby’s remarks foreshadowed potential new monetary demands for stationing U.S. troops in South Korea, a favorite talking point of President Trump.
Asked at a press conference Thursday whether a reelected Mr. Trump might demand more money from Seoul for the stationing of 28,500 U.S. troops on the peninsula, South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol instead talked up the strength of the bilateral alliance.
“What’s clear is that there is strong support for the South Korea-U.S. alliance from across the public and private sectors in the U.S., both parties, the Senate, the House, and the executive branch, and I am certain the firm alliance between South Korea and the U.S. will not change,” he said. “If we tackle issues based on that, I believe we will be able to smoothly resolve various negotiations and problems.”
A person who briefs senior U.S. officers in South Korea said privately that Mr. Colby’s statements appeared to reflect a continuing priority of a Trump foreign policy: pressuring South Korea, Japan and possibly NATO to pay more for the security U.S. troops provide around the globe.
According to the World Bank, the U.S. spends 3.5% of its gross domestic product on defense. Japan, home to 50,000 U.S. service members, spends 1.1% of its GDP, and South Korea spends 2.7%. Among NATO countries, Canada spends 1.2% of GDP on defense, Germany 1.4%, the Netherlands 1.6%, Italy 1.7%, France 1.9%, Britain 2.2% and Poland 2.4%.
Mr. Colby gave an unusually blunt voice to matters usually discussed behind closed doors and off the record.
U.S. troops in South Korea, he said, “should not be held hostage to dealing with the North Korean problem because that is not the primary issue for the U.S.,” he said in an interview Tuesday with the Yonhap News Agency. “The U.S. should be focused on China and the defense of South Korea from China over time.”
Most U.S. troops in South Korea are posted well away from the tense border with North Korea. They are deployed in a series of bases on the Yellow Sea Coast facing China.
Yet with China the No. 2 market for South Korean exports after the U.S. and a key location for South Korean corporate investment, Seoul officials usually refuse to discuss the possibility of war with China. Gen. Paul LaCamera, commander of U.S. forces in South Korea, told a press conference that his primary mission remains to deter the nuclear-armed regime of North Korean leader Kim Jong-un.
In the event of war, U.S. forces are expected to massively reinforce South Korea and counterattack. Mr. Colby, however, said the U.S. should not deploy its main force against what he characterized as a secondary threat.
“If you are assuming that the United States is going to break its spear, if you will, fighting North Korea, that is an imprudent assumption for us to make or for you to make,” he told Yonhap. “South Korea is going to have to take primary, essentially overwhelming responsibility for its own self-defense against North Korea because we don’t have a military that can fight North Korea and then be ready to fight China.”
Stating that a U.S. president might be unwilling to take the ultimate risk in the face of a nuclear threat from North Korea, Mr. Colby’s frankness impressed some listeners.
“I was rather convinced by [Mr. Colby’s] honest comment that Uncle Sam cannot promise to defend Korea’s security at the cost of sacrificing an American city to North Korea’s nuclear attack,” the Washington correspondent of the JoongAng Daily, a leading newspaper, said after an April interview.
Mr. Chun suggested that a Trump win in November could fuel a move widely debated in South Korea over the past two years.
“If the U.S. is really thinking this, I am assuming it recognizes that [South Korea] needs its own nuclear deterrent,” he said.
Proponents say that strategy would slash Seoul’s dependence on Washington and stabilize the Korean Peninsula under the “mutually assured destruction” principle. Opponents fret it would ignite a chain reaction and end the global campaign to curb the spread of nuclear weapons.
Mr. Colby’s remarks faced immediate pushback online.
“South Korean media is talking about Elbridge Colby’s comments on reshaping the alliance and maybe the withdrawal of [U.S. troops],” Harry Kazianis, senior director of national security affairs at the Center for the National Interest, wrote on X. “What we often forget is that … Congress mandated hearings and oversight if this were to happen.”
Others questioned Mr. Colby’s motives, noting the jockeying for influence of those around Mr. Trump should he win in November.
“There is a major trend in D.C. right now among Republicans starting to confess their undying loyalty to the coming regime,” said David Park, a Washington-based businessman and retired U.S. Army major. “This guy and many others are parroting or buttressing what we thought was the Trump policy four years ago so that they can get a seat in February 2025 in his administration.”
Mr. Park, who is Korean American, said Mr. Colby’s statements make strategic sense if a Trump administration downgrades other issues — including the North Korean threat and Russia’s war in Ukraine — to turn all its guns against Beijing.
“His interpretation makes sense if Trump does indeed stop supporting Ukraine to make room for a major stance against China,” he said. “Korea would be a distraction.”
• Andrew Salmon can be reached at asalmon@washingtontimes.com.
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