HONOLULU -- U.S. Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld is planning a sweeping revision of the command apparatus through which American military forces are controlled in Asia in an effort to make them more responsive to contingencies from the Korean Peninsula to Australia.
Military officers said the revision would take place primarily in South Korea and Japan, but would affect U.S. deployments throughout the Pacific Command's area of responsibility -- which runs from the U.S. West Coast across the Pacific and Indian oceans to the shores of Africa. This command, from its headquarters overlooking the naval station at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, controls 300,000 military people and is the largest unit of the U.S. armed forces.
Among the command elements that will most likely be dismantled in South Korea are the United Nations Command (UNC), United States Forces Korea (USFK), the Combined Forces Command (CFC) and the Eighth U.S. Army.