From todays news:
KUALA LUMPUR (AFP) - The planned withdrawal of thousands of US troops from South Korea is part of a global restructuring of Washington's armed forces and more changes can be expected, a top US officer said.
"You're going to see a fair amount of change not only in the region but globally over the next few years as we try to transform our posture to deal with a changed world," Admiral Thomas Fargo, commander of US forces in the Pacific, told a news briefing during a visit to Malaysia.
Washington told Seoul earlier this month that it wanted to pull a third of its 37,000 troops out of the peninsula by the end of 2005, triggering alarm in a country gripped by uncertainty over North Korea's nuclear weapons drive.
South Korea, which is still technically at war with the North, wants the timeframe to be pushed back to between 2007 and 2113 to allow for the upgrade of its own military forces.
Fargo said, however, that the withdrawal of 12,500 troops from South Korea "makes great sense" and could be done with "minimal risk", while stressing that any shuffling of forces would be carried out in close cooperation with US allies.
The military capabilities of "our friends and partners have vastly improved over the last 15 years," he said.
"Certainly no place is this more true than in South Korea, where you have a very professional army that numbers some 20 divisions of active forces and they fly a very modern capable aircraft.
"They've got a very solid and improving maritime capability. Their capability is vastly improved to take over a larger share of their own defence."
The United States would not do anything to dilute its alliances, but aimed to "end up with a transformed posture that our friends and allies find to be equally in their benefit", Fargo said.
US forces have been in South Korea since the end of the Korean War, but Washington now believes it can deter a North Korean invasion with long distance precision firepower and at the same time lighten a presence that has been the source of political controversy in the south.
>Basically, Noth Korea has nuclear capability so the Americans "strategically withdraw". What message does this end to countries seeking nukes?