Trump scales back military drills with South Korea, alarming allies and raising questions about US reliability.
WASHINGTON: President Donald Trump’s decision to scale back military drills with close ally South Korea sends an alarming message at a time when the US military is stretched by the Iran war.
Trump announced Sunday that he told the Pentagon to scale back “inappropriate and hostile” yearly military drills with South Korea, hours before they were to begin on Monday. He cited his “good relationship” with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, in his latest instance of undermining long-standing alliances with global partners.
Trump said the exercises were “costly” and inappropriate because Kim had always been “unthreatening and respectful” to him. He also took aim at South Korea, saying it had refused his offer to take part in what he called the “denuclearization” of Iran.
The 11-day Ulchi Freedom Shield exercises are designed to prepare for the prospect of war with nuclear-armed North Korea. It is not the first time Trump has intervened to modify the exercises, which North Korea denounces as a rehearsal for invasion. After his first summit with Kim, held in Singapore in 2018, Trump suspended the exercises altogether to facilitate what turned out to be fruitless talks on North Korea’s nuclear weapons.
South Korea reacted in measured terms, expressing hope that the Trump-Kim relationship “will lead to meaningful dialogue.” But Trump’s abrupt move triggered concerns even within his own Republican Party that the United States under his leadership is not a reliable ally and seems to suggest US disengagement from Asia.
The drills announcement came as the USS George Washington aircraft carrier is being redeployed from the Pacific to the Middle East. At least for now, there will be no such vessel in the region, a boon for an assertive China.
“The US has long sought to pivot to Asia. Now we are seeing a pivot from Asia as forces depart, munitions grow short, and this Potus (president) chooses totalitarian foes over allies,” Richard Haass, the former president of the Council on Foreign Relations, wrote Monday on X.
Democrats in Congress sounded the alarm. “China and Russia are watching how easily this President abandons America’s allies, and they will remember it the next time they test us,” said Jack Reed, the top Democrat on the Senate Armed Services Committee.
Victor Cha, the Korea chair at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, said “Trump has been clear about his desire to meet Kim again, and the scaling down of the JME is the latest signal.” But Kim may be uninterested in meeting Trump until after the US midterm elections in November so as to gain more leverage, Cha said in an email to AFP. Trump may also be trying to draw Kim away from President Vladimir Putin of Russia, where North Korea has contributed troops and weapons for Moscow’s war on Ukraine, Cha added. Since the war started, Moscow has steadily boosted its ties with Beijing and Pyongyang.
Trump’s shift could also be about shifting attention away from the unpopular war in Iran, which the United States started in late February along with Israel and is struggling to end, the analyst said.
In a recently released national security strategy reflecting Trump’s “America First” mantra, Trump repeated calls for a “free and open” Asia-Pacific region, a reference to countering China. The blueprint also called on Japan and South Korea to do more to support self-ruling Taiwan as it fends off pressure from China and to spend more on their own defence, echoing Trump’s appeals to NATO allies to rely less on the United States.
Richard Fontaine, the head of the Center for a New American Security, said it was puzzling for Trump to act like this now toward South Korea when just months ago Washington was praising it as a “model ally.” “A little more consistency would go a long way. On Korea, for example: the South is our ally, the North is not,” Fontaine wrote on X. “Clarifying that would make a good start.”
