Washington:U.S. President Donald Trump appears to regard the potential transfer of wartime operational control (OPCON) to South Korea as a possible strategy for withdrawing American troops from the Korean Peninsula, according to assessments by U.S. experts.
According to Yonhap News Agency, Victor Cha, the Korea chair at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, discussed this perspective during an online event hosted by the Washington-based think tank, emphasizing that President Trump sees the OPCON transition as a method to pull U.S. forces from the region. Cha noted that while Congress might set a minimum level of U.S. troop presence through the National Defense Authorization Act, Trump could still seek ways to reduce that military footprint.
Randall Schriver, a former assistant secretary of defense for Indo-Pacific security affairs, concurred with Cha's assessment. He supported the notion that Trump has long been inclined to lessen the U.S. military's presence in South Korea, and views the OPCON transfer as a potential avenue for doing so.
Vincent Brooks, a former commander of U.S. Forces Korea, expressed disappointment with South Korean Defense Minister Kang Shin-chul's earlier approval of the idea that Seoul could defend itself without significant issues if wartime OPCON were transferred immediately. Brooks stressed that such a transition should occur only after meeting mutually agreed conditions, not merely as a political decision.