US Reviewing Force Deployment, Will Shift Troops To India, Southeast Asia Against China's 'Expansionism': Pompeo

This comes days after US announced troops cut in Germany. US State Secretary Mike Pompeo said that US is recalibrating its defence commitments in Europe and looking at tackling fresh threats emerging in Asian countries like India, Malaysia, Indonesia and the Philippines.

Image: Getty Images

New Delhi: The United States on Thursday said that it its reconsidering its global forces posturing in view of the threats from China to other Asian countries, citing Chinese People Liberation Army (PLA)’s violent confrontation with India in Ladakh as one of the major reasons. This comes days after US announced troops cut in Germany. US State Secretary Mike Pompeo said that US is recalibrating its defence commitments in Europe and looking at tackling fresh threats emerging in Asian countries like India, Malaysia, Indonesia and the Philippines.  He also said that China's expansionism is "the challenge of our time" and the US wants to ensure that its resources are in place to meet it. The threats from China to India and countries in Southeast Asia and the challenges in the South China Sea are going to dictate the allocation of defence resources as US cuts troop levels in Germany, he said on Thursday at a virtual meeting of the Brussels Forum of the German Marshall Fund. During his interactions during the forum, he repeatedly emphasised the multifaceted threats from China. Pompeo said that the reposting of the forces is being done on the directions of President Donald Trump, as part of which the US is reducing the number of its troops in Germany from about 52,000 to 25,000. Pompeo said that the force posture would be dictated by the ground realities. "In certain places there will be fewer American resources. There'll be other places - I just talked about the threat from the Chinese Communist Party, so now threats to India, threats to Vietnam, threats to Malaysia, Indonesia, South China Sea challenges, the Philippines," he said. US has openly criticized China over the border conflict with India, Several US officials have said that China was taking advantage of the time of pandemic when other countries are busy countering it. Last week, China and India were engaged in the worst confrontation in five decades in Ladakh’s Galwan Valley, in which 20 of Indian Army soldiers were killed, after dealing several casualties to the Chinese side. Though de-escalation talks are going on between the two countries, China’s activities at the site of clash has not ceased completely. A tent was resurrected that the same point in Galwan valley, eve while both the countries had reached mutual consensus to disengage. Watch:Security beefed up at the Indo-Nepal border