Trump Cuts Back on American-South Korean War Games in Retaliation for Seoul’s Refusal To Support War Against Iran

President Trump ordered a severe cutback in annual American-South Korean military exercises Sunday after troops from both countries had already taken to the field Monday morning, Korea time, Sunday in America.The order dealt a shocking blow to American and South Korean military leaders and was expected to deal a severe setback to Washington’s relations with Seoul at a time when South Korea’s left-leaning government was already at odds with Washington on a range of economic and security issues.Mr. Trump, posting on Truth Social, stressed his “very good relationship” with North Korea’s leader, Kim Jong-un after North Korea’s foreign ministry had vowed “to frustrate outsiders’ hostile acts with the most powerful and overwhelming force and absolutely defend the supreme interests of the state security.”Mr. Trump has seen Mr. Kim three times, at Singapore in June 2018, at Hanoi in February 2019 and on the North-South line at Panmunjom in June 2019.Mr. Trump said he was “not happy with the fact that the United States has, long ago, agreed to participate in joint military exercises with South Korea” but was clearly moved to act precipitously by his frustration over South Korea’s failure to support America in the war with Iran.“While somewhat unrelated (?),” he wrote, inserting the question mark to make clear the issues were indeed intertwined, he noted that he had asked South Korea’s President Lee Jae-myung if South Korea “would like to join us in the Denuclearization of the Islamic Republic of Iran, and they said, ‘No thanks.’” Adding his signature signoff, he concluded, “Thank you for your attention to this matter.””Mr. Trump said it was “too late to cancel” the war games but that he had asked Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth “to substantially reduce the Joint Military Exercises!” They were to be conducted on land, in the air, and at sea, an annual show of force involving 18,000 South Korean and several thousand American troops.South Korea’s biggest newspaper, Chosun Ilbo, reported as the exercises began Monday, Korea time, that the American military command had “used the phrase ‘projecting combat power within the First Island Chain,’ sparking speculation that the U.S. Forces Korea might take on a role beyond the Korean Peninsula.” The term “first island chain” refers to island groupings from Japan extending south through Taiwan and the Philippines to Australia and New Zealand.The U.S. Eighth Army, including most of America’s 28,500 troops in South Korea, according to Chosun Ilbo, had stated, “This exercise includes procedures for the rapid distribution and preparation of Army Prepositioned Stock-4,“ meaning forces in wait for any contingency. The paper reported they would demonstrate “the alliance’s ability to swiftly project combat power within the First Island Chain and secure key terrain.”A spokesman for the American command was quoted as saying the war games were “designed to respond to security threats.”Mr. Trump in his posting repeated that complaint that he had made in his first term about the cost of American forces in Korea. “These exercises are not only costly, with much of these costs paid for by the United States of America (as usual!),” he wrote, “but send a signal that is totally inappropriate and hostile, to a Country that, as long as Donald J. Trump has been President, has been unthreatening and respectful.”That country, of course, is North Korea, whose leader, Mr. Kim, has ignored frequent attempts at negotiations with Washington or Seoul despite the personal relationship that Mr. Trump formed with him in their three meetings in 2018 and 2019. North Korea since then has declared North and South Korea as totally separate countries, ruling out any talk about reconciliation, much less reunification. He even ordered the destruction of a “reunification arch” over the main highway entering the capital of Pyongyang.Without hinting at what had appeared to be a pattern of worsening relations between the two Koreas and between Pyongyang and Washington, Mr. Trump did not hint at any such problems. In his first term, however, he hinted at a significant cutback in the number of American troops in South Korea, most of them headquartered at Camp Humphreys, America’s largest overseas base, about 40 miles south of Seoul. American warplanes fly regularly from nearby Osan Air Base.American and South Korean troops opened the exercises Monday one day after the 81st anniversary of the Japanese surrender and 78 years after the founding of the Republic of Korea, i.e., South Korea, as a sovereign nation.North Korea has called the joint American and South Korean Ulchi Freedom Shield exercises “a rehearsal for an aggressive war” while a top allied general in Korea warned of the mounting danger posed by North Korea’s role in support of Russian forces against Ukraine.Hinting at the potential of weapons of mass destruction, a spokesman for the North Korean foreign ministry responded to American and South Korean plans to gear their war games to new battlefield conditions and contingencies.The foreign ministry spokesman, as quoted by Pyongyang’s Korean Central News Agency, said it would be “a consistent principle of ensuring security to respond to a new level of a threat with a new level of a deterrent.” North Korea is believed to have fabricated 100 or so nuclear warheads but has not tested any since its sixth test in September 2017.Deepening the sense of confrontation, Australian Lieutenant General Scott Winter, deputy commander of the UN Command comprising all allied troops in South Korea, described “North Korean involvement in the Ukraine war” as “a timely reminder to all of us.“ North Koreans, General Winter said at the Seoul Foreign Correspondents’ Club, had gained battlefield experience in a new kind of war. General Winter serves under the commander of UN forces, General Xavier Brunson, who also commands U.S. Forces Korea and the Combined Forces Command, covering American and South Korean troops.North Korea said that the American-South Korea exercises were “Intended to master the ability of fighting a war on the basis of the new aspects of modern warfare” and “did not conceal its aim to complete preparations for the substantial military confrontation with the DPRK.”

Trump Cuts Back on American-South Korean War Games in Retaliation for Seoul’s Refusal To Support War Against Iran

Trump Cuts Back on American-South Korean War Games in Retaliation for Seoul’s Refusal To Support War Against Iran

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