American and South Korean Troops Poised To Stage War Games Against a North Korean ‘Enemy’ Hardened by the Real War for Ukraine

Next Monday American and South Korean troops open their biggest joint exercise of the year amid increasing doubts about the strength of American defenses in Asia while the Pentagon acknowledges running short on missiles and drones due to the war against Iran.The 11-day exercises, in which several thousand American troops join 18,000 South Koreans in annual war games on land, in the air, and at sea, raise the question of whether the Americans have enough missiles and drones to fight a real war against the increasingly dangerous North Koreans.American forces have now used “half of the initial inventory” for the most powerful missiles, including Patriots, according to a study by a Washington think tank, the Center for Strategic and International Studies. While “enough remains for any plausible scenario in the war against Iran,” says the study, “the risk comes from potential future wars, particularly with China — but potentially also with Russia or North Korea.”Called Ulchi Freedom Shield, the upcoming war games focus as never before on the reality that North Korean forces have gained strength and experience from joining the Russians in the war for Ukraine. The spokesman for U.S. Forces Korea, Colonel Ryan Donald, acknowledged this grim reality at a joint press briefing, conducted with a South Korean officer, in which they talked about shifts in emphasis in this year’s war games.Using the initials, DPRK, for Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, he said “DPRK soldiers” had “taken those lessons they learned” in Ukraine” and “brought them back to North Korea.” Says he: “That changes the DPRK capability. Our training accounts for that threat.”More than in previous years, the exercises will simulate battles against drones and cyber-attacks, but the CSIS analysis indicated that American forces in the region, including 28,500 troops in South Korea and about 50,000 in Japan, have far to go to be able to regain the strength they had before the war with Iran and its proxies, notably Hamas in Gaza.“Wars fought by the United States in the past half decade have required high-end munitions at levels not needed during the counterterrorism campaigns of the early twenty-first century,” said the report, by two CSIS experts, Mark F. Cancian and Chris H. Park. “Both the Biden and second Trump administrations expended munitions in the Middle East to deal with the regional war precipitated by Hamas’s October 7 attack on Israel.”Doubts about the depth of the American commitment increased with a call by the undersecretary of war, Elbridge Colby, for America’s allies in Asia to do more for their own defense. In his remarks, as reported from Washington by Seoul’s Yonhap News, Mr. Colby said America was “more engaged than ever in the Indo-Pacific” but relied on “a newfound but common sense expectation of much greater effort and contribution by our allies and partners.” America, he said, wanted its friends and allies to do more for their own defense “in a spirit of partnership, not dependency.”A former CIA analyst, Bruce Klingner, noted that Mr. Colby had once referred to the Middle East as a “tertiary region” compared with the Indo-Pacific. By now, however, “the Trump administration has dangerously depleted US stocks of offensive and defensive missiles in its war on Iran,” Mr.Klingner told the Sun. “Units and war materiel have had to be redirected from the Indo-Pacific to the Middle East.” In Mr. Trump’s second term, he said, “national security and national defense strategies are far weaker against despotic regimes, China, North Korea, and Russia, than during the first term.”A former senior American diplomat in Korea and Japan, Evans Revere, summarized the problem. “The strains affecting the U.S. arsenal undermine the credibility of the U.S. commitment to defend our allies and interests in the Asia-Pacific region,” he told the Sun. “South Korea is particularly concerned that the U.S. ability to defend the ROK against missile attacks has been diminished.“The war against Iran “has taken its toll on the U.S. stockpile of critical weapons systems, particularly air defense systems, long-range missiles, ground-to-ground missiles, precision munitions, and more,” he said. “The strains affecting the U.S. arsenal undermine the credibility of the U.S. commitment to defend our allies and interests in the Asia-Pacific region … it will be important to ensure that North Korea, for example, does not conclude that this situation presents an opportunity to be exploited.”

American and South Korean Troops Poised To Stage War Games Against a North Korean ‘Enemy’ Hardened by the Real War for Ukraine

American and South Korean Troops Poised To Stage War Games Against a North Korean ‘Enemy’ Hardened by the Real War for Ukraine

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