US redeployments afoot in Asia

The vicissitudes of war in Iraq cast a dreary backdrop for Donald Rumsfeld's first visit to Asian military allies since he became US Defense Secretary in 2001.

This was not the trip the Pentagon expected or that Japan and South Korea anticipated even three weeks ago. At that time, both Tokyo and Seoul were brightly discussing significant troop deployments to Iraq, with Japan sending thousands, and Korea even possibly sending a division.

But the close Japanese elections last week, ongoing instability in Iraq after 19 Italians were killed, and a speedier timetable for Iraqi independence have quickly turned Asian allies much cooler about their involvement in Operation Iraqi Freedom. And so as Mr. Rumsfeld wraps up his trip Tuesday, he will leave with mixed messages from Japan about sending troops this year, and a possible contribution of 3,000 Korean troops - though there is still disagreement over whether these will be soldiers or humanitarian support personnel.

"Each country must decide how best to contribute to the global war on terror," Rumsfeld said in Korea, an uncharacteristically mild invitation, and the same one he gave two days ago in Japan.

"He [Rumsfeld] is really swimming upstream right now," says a Seoul-based American analyst. "The timing for this trip could not have been worse."

For Pentagon officials, however, the bright side of a Pacific visit postponed for two years due to Sept. 11, is that the voluble Defense secretary was able to showcase his new strategy of "flexible response" - the first major strategic change in the Pacific in 50 years.

Articulating the new doctrine, Rumsfeld said that US forces in Korea and in Okinawa, Japan, where 29,000 troops are based, needn't any longer be frozen in forward positions on the Korean DMZ or languish in Japan. Highly mobile modern forces can be moved and rotated to address Asia-wide contingencies, and still guarantee security, Rumsfeld said. No plans are on the table to move troops from Korea to Iraq, however, he said in an interview with Yonhap News Agency in Korea Monday.

"It is capabilities, not numbers of things ... capability to impose lethal power, where needed, when needed with the greatest flexibility and with the greatest agility," he told reporters in the newly opened National Defense Ministry in Seoul. "Nothing will be done that weakens our deterrent," he said after announcing that US forces in will "realign and consolidate" for the first time since the Korean war.

The American forces that create the famous "tripwire" to stop an invasion by North Korea are to be "realigned and consolidated" into two major "hubs" south of the Han River. Some 37,000 US troops are based here, with the 2nd Division located in a series of camps along the DMZ, created in 1953 by a truce agreement that ended the war.

Korean military officials have expressed concern that a US withdrawal could leave remaining Korean forces vulnerable in the same strategic valley the North attacked from more than 50 years ago. US military planners say these fears are unfounded. No dates were given for completing the new hubs.

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