Washington may completely withdraw its forces from Korea and restation the U.S. Marines away from their current base in Okiwana, Japan, over the next decade, the Economist reports.
The United States plans to scale down its overseas troops by one-third, the British magazine reported in its recently published book entitled, “The World in 2006.” It argued that this would see the superpower cut 60,000 to 70,000 of its soldiers from the two former Cold War frontiers of Germany and Korea, with troops being pulled rapidly out of Europe and more gradually taken out of Asia.The Economist predicted that over the next ten years the U.S. Forces in Korea and U.S. Marines in Okinawa will be completely removed and restationed. The manpower will instead be used to reinforce the U.S. Forces in Guam, Hawaii and the British territory of Diego Garcia, it claimed.
It suggested the United States will seek Forward Operating Locations (FOLs) in friendly countries like India, Singapore, and Australia. [Via Digital Chosunilbo.]
Hmm, this is interesting. This would change a lot of things for Okinawa. I told my wife about this, and she said that the states has been promising this for a long time though. So like you said, only time will tell, about 10 years.
It’s rather odd that they closed and/or scaled down many of the military operations in Hawaii (i.e. removing the air force from Wheeler Air Force Base to become Wheeler Army Air Field) only to bring them back in. But, hey, who can fathom the military. AL