The commander of the U.S. Eighth Army in South Korea said his troops must be ready for deployment outside the Korean peninsula if ordered, arguing that it would be "irresponsible" to focus "myopically" on threats there. Lt. Gen. Joe Hilbert said that while his command's focus was on fulfilling U.S. commitments under its mutual defense treaty with Seoul, the Eighth Army's location did not limit the missions it could undertake. It would be "irresponsible to focus myopically" on threats on the Korean peninsula alone, he told the South China Morning Post by email, or to "suggest that we cannot do other things simply because we are in Korea." Describing the Eighth Army as part of a "global force" that trains for "readiness so that we can deploy where needed by our national command authority," Hilbert cited the Eighth Army's participation in multinational exercises across the Asia-Pacific as an example of its activities beyond the peninsula. "We view readiness as largely threat-agnostic. If we have a trained, ready force capable of executing the Army's assigned missions, we can apply that forc