ìIn Agreement With South Korea, U.S. to Move Troops From Seoul,î by Thom Shanker, New York Times, 24 July, p. A4.

This is the real conundrum of the current Defense Department effort to scour the Core for extra troops needed for the Gap: if only Asia were as far along historically as Europe, we could reduce our presence there as quickly as weíre going to in Europe. But the essential difference is that Europe is essentially Old Core whereas Asia is essentially New Core, and so treating both as the same does not work.

There is no NATO counterpart in Asia, and until there is, any efforts to reduce our troop presence there will come at a real costóand at a real risk to the Coreís possible fracturing. We will never shrink the Gap by fracturing the Core, so we need to be very careful here.

The obvious solution is that we need to put a NATO-like entity in place in Asia ASAP. But that will not happen under any circumstances, I will argue, except in the successful takedown of the Kim Jong Il regime in North Korea. Doesnít have to be a military invasion, but there must be military unity of purpose on our sideóa side that is defined as the U.S., China, Japan, Russia and South Korea.

We can dick around with Kim Jong Il like we did with Saddam for another decade or so, but we will inevitably bite this bullet. Doing so with a clear sense of what we want to get out of it will make our chance of success all the more probable, not just in terms of ridding the world of Kim, but in cementing Asia to the Core in a very permanent sort of way.