TIL Desk/World/Washington/ United States Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said on Thursday that the Chinese threat to India and Southeast Asian nations is one of the reasons America is reducing its troop presence in Europe and deploying them to other places.
Pompeo made the remarks in response to a question at the Brussels Forum that he had addressed virtually. When asked why the US had reduced the number of troops in Germany, Pompeo said that if US troops were no longer there, it was because they were being moved to other places.
He said the actions of the ruling Chinese Communist Party meant there were ‘threats to India, threats to Vietnam, threats to Malaysia, Indonesia and the South China Sea challenge’. “We are going to make sure the US military is postured appropriately to meet the challenges,” he said. Last week Pompeo criticised the Chinese Army for ‘escalating’ the border tension with India and militarising the strategic South China Sea.