The top US commander in South Korea told Congress Wednesday that US forces on the peninsula wouldn't be ready if diplomacy between the US and DPRK suddenly collapsed and the military standoff returned. His fears reflected a Western belief that Pyongyang is withdrawing from denuclearization plans, but in Korea, the situation isn't so clear.
US Army Gen. Robert Abrams, the commander of US Forces Korea, told the House Armed Services Committee Wednesday that, so long as the diplomatic push for denuclearization on the Korean Peninsula continues, his forces have enough intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance resources to maintain an adequate defense of South Korea and detect an attack from the North. However, if things got worse and the atmosphere suddenly returned to the hostile tension of the past, “then our stance, our posture is not adequate to provide us an unblinking eye to give us early warning and indicators.”
“We're short to be able to do that if things start to turn bad,” he said.
“Their activity that we have observed is inconsistent with denuclearization,” Abrams said, who commands the roughly 29,000 US troops garrisoned in South Korea. “Despite a reduction in tensions along the Demilitarized Zone and a cessation of strategic provocations, coupled with public statements of intent to denuclearize, little to no verifiable change has occurred in North Korea's military capabilities.”
At the same hearing, Randall Schriver, the assistant…
