Trump’s Gift to North Korea’s Ruler
TEHRAN (Defapress) - Just hours before tens of thousands of US and South Korean troops were due to begin their annual major military exercise on the Korean Peninsula, US President Donald Trump made an unprecedented announcement to scale back the exercises. He cited his excellent relations with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un and Seoul’s refusal to side with Washington in its conflict with Iran as reasons for the sudden decision, an unexpected move that has posed serious new challenges to the foundations and commitments of the two countries’ 70-year-old alliance.
On Sunday, Trump posted a message on Truth Social, clearly expressing his displeasure with the Ulchi Freedom Shield joint military exercise, calling it a “misguided” move. He wrote that the military exercises are not only costly for the US budget, and that the bulk of them are paid for by the American people, as usual, but also send an inappropriate and hostile signal to a country that has behaved respectfully and safely until he was in the White House.
These controversial statements were made while South Korea has had a mutual defense treaty with the US for more than seven decades and hosts Camp Humphreys, the largest US military installation overseas. Despite Trump’s sudden announcement, the South Korean Joint Chiefs of Staff told the media that the exercises had begun on Monday as previously planned. But what remains unclear is whether the ten-day exercises, which were supposed to involve at least 18,000 South Korean troops and focus on new battles such as countering drones, cyber warfare, and GPS disruptions, have actually been limited and scaled down.
The dimensions of Trump’s message were not limited to Washington’s complicated relationship with Pyongyang, as he revealed a new axis of his dissatisfaction with his long-time ally. In the same message, the US president revealed Seoul’s negative response to his request for cooperation against Tehran and wrote that, although it may seem an unrelated issue, he recently asked the South Korean president to join the US in a regional war with Iran, but he was met with a resolute negative response from Seoul.
On the other side of the equation, Pyongyang, which has always considered these joint exercises a rehearsal for an aggressive war and a serious threat to its security, has not yet given a direct official response to Trump’s decision. However, Kim Jong-un has recently considered the US war with Iran as proof of the correctness of his country’s decision to maintain and develop nuclear weapons.
This is not the first time that Trump has sacrificed joint military exercises on the Korean Peninsula for personal diplomacy or financial calculations. During his first term, after meeting with Kim in 2018 and then the inconclusive Hanoi summit in 2019, the scale of the joint military exercises was drastically reduced, as Trump had also announced at that time that he was seeking to save hundreds of millions of dollars that the United States spends on these exercises and that will never be compensated.
The continuation of this approach reflects Trump’s transactional view of traditional US security agreements. He had previously spoken in May of numerous messages between himself and the North Korean leader, and shortly before announcing the cancellation of the exercises, he also released a joint photo of himself and Kim, emphasizing the extraordinary relationship between himself and the North Korean leader. Now, with the exercises starting in a haphazard manner in light of this sudden order, Washington’s Asian allies once again find themselves caught between Trump’s double game of personal diplomacy with yesterday’s enemies and applying financial and political pressure on old partners.
