A top Republican lawmaker has urged the Pentagon to begin moving U. S. military dependents — wives and children — out of South Korea, warning th
A top Republican lawmaker has urged the Pentagon to begin moving U. S. military dependents — wives and children — out of South Korea, warning that war with nuclear-armed North Korea is “getting close.”
The warning by Sen. Lindsey Graham came as the U. S. kicked off a massive joint aerial exercise with South Korea involving 12,000 U. S. personnel and more than 230 aircraft from both countries, including advanced U. S. stealth fighter jets.
“It’s crazy to send spouses and children to South Korea, given the provocation of North Korea,” Graham, a member of the powerful Senate Armed Services Committee, said on CBS’s “Face the Nation.” “So I want them to stop sending dependents. And I think it’s now time to start moving American dependents out of South Korea.”
Graham, who is close to U. S. President Donald Trump, said the North’s test-firing of an intercontinental ballistic missile Wednesday that could potentially reach hit all of the continental United States had made the threat of military conflict erupting more of a possibility.
“We’re getting close to military conflict because North Korea is marching toward marrying up the technology of an ICBM with the nuclear weapon on top that cannot only get to America, but deliver the weapon,” he said. “We’re running out of time.”
The Trump administration’s policy, he said, is “to deny North Korea the capability to hit America with a nuclear-tipped missile. Not to contain it.”
“Denial means pre-emptive war as a last resort. That pre-emption is becoming more likely as their technology matures. Every missile test, every underground test of a nuclear weapon, means the marriage is more likely.”
Graham’s comments echoed White House national security adviser H. R. McMaster, who said a day earlier that the odds of conflict with Pyongyang are “increasing every day.”
The United States has 28,500 troops in South Korea as a legacy of the 1950-53 Korean War, which ended in an armistice and not a formal peace treaty, leaving the warring parties still technically at war.
Any move by Washington to evacuate dependents or other American nationals from the Korean Peninsula would heighten fears of military action against the North.
