Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin was in Seoul in November for the 55th U.S.-Republic of Korea Security Consultative Meeting. The annual summit is a reminder of how deep America’s links to the Indo-Pacific region go; more than 300,000 South Korean personnel served in the Vietnam War, and 5,000 lost their lives. Austin also used his visit to hold a trilateral meeting with Shin Wonsik, Korea’s minister of national defense, and Minoru Kihara, Japan’s recently appointed defense minister, and a major agenda item was the future of Taiwan.
Korea, Japan, Taiwan: these are commitments that reach back almost as far as living memory. American forces have been in Japan since 1945 and Korea the same length of time, with a brief hiatus between 1949 and 1950. Today, U.S. Forces Korea comprises 23,500 personnel, and U.S. Forces Japan has 50,000 men and women under arms. American soldiers were withdrawn from Taiwan in 1979, but a handful of special forces and marines were reinserted by President Trump some time before 2020.
In 2011, then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton wrote an article in Foreign Policy entitled “America’s Pacific Century.” This signaled the U.S. “pivot to Asia,” a rebalancing of its strategic focus towards the East and away from Europe and, to an extent, the Middle East. Now, with China no longer an arm’s-length partner but the most likely global adversary, America’s game plan is having to come into much sharper focus.
Source : The Hill