WASHINGTON/SEOUL– U.S. President Joe Biden has no intention to reduce the presence of American troops in South Korea or Europe, his top security advisor has said, as the U.S.’ pullout from Afghanistan raised doubts over Washington’s security commitments to allies.
National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan made the remarks during a White House press briefing on Tuesday, stressing that “our commitments to our allies and partners are sacrosanct and always have been.”
“The president, as he has said repeatedly, has no intention of drawing down our forces from South Korea or from Europe, where we have sustained troop presences for a very long time — not in the middle of a civil war, but to deal with the potential of an external enemy and to protect our ally against that external enemy,” he said.
“So, it is a fundamentally different kind of situation from the one we were presented with in Afghanistan,” he added.
Since May, the United States and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization have started to withdraw their forces to conclude nearly 20 years of war under a plan to complete the pullout by the end of this month.
The withdrawal has led to the collapse of the Western-backed government in Kabul, the Taliban militant group’s return to power and a chaotic exodus of Afghans fleeing to safe places — a scene that has unnerved U.S. countries reliant on Washington for security.
Biden has defended the withdrawal and chided the Afghan military for its unwillingness to fight and Afghan leaders for disunity, while stressing the U.S. goal had been preventing terrorism rather than “nation building.”
Source: Yonhap News Agency