Trump’s South Korea move rattles foreign policy world
The Hill · C · trust 48/100
Comments: by Mallory Wilson and Ellen Mitchell - 08/17/26 6:35 PM ET Comments: Link copied by Mallory Wilson and Ellen Mitchell - 08/17/26 6:35 PM ET Comments: Link copied NOW PLAYING President Trump’s decision to reduce joint military exercises with South Korea is being met with derision from Democrats and fears from other allies who are already worried over the president’s past willingness to toss aside longtime defense commitments.
Trump said it was too late to fully cancel what he called expensive and provocative joint exercises known as Ulchi Freedom Shield, but directed the Pentagon to “substantially reduce” the drills on Sunday, just a day before they were set to start.
The war games are a major part of a mutual defense treaty between the U.S. and South Korea, meant to protect Seoul from possible North Korean aggression.
The announcement, made in a Truth Social post, further added insult to injury by excoriating Seoul for refusing to help the U.S. in its war against Iran.
This is not the first time Trump has criticized the exercise. In 2018, he said he was suspending the drills after meeting with North Korea’s Kim Jong Un.
But in curtailing the planned 10-day wargame, he risks further alienating vital allies and partners and making the U.S. less safe in the process, analysts say.
Rear Admiral (Ret.) Mark Montgomery, a senior fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, said that “watering down U.S.-South Korea military exercises is a risky move that lowers coalition readiness and puts U.S. forces at risk with no real tangible benefit to the United States.”
He said Trump “does not seem to understand that North Korea is part of the ‘bad guys’ team.”
“North Korea threatens key American allies and trade partners — South Korea and Japan — daily,” he added. “Kim Jong Un is not America’s friend, he cannot be reasoned with, and he won’t give up his nuclear weapons. There is no Nobel Prize in Pyongyang.”
The president has said the exercises come across as unnecessarily hostile toward North Korea and has touted his “very good relationship” with Kim.
“Based on my very good relationship with Kim Jong Un, of North Korea, I am not happy with the fact that the United States has, long ago, agreed to participate in Joint Military Exercises with South Korea,” he wrote.
“These exercises are not only costly, with much of these costs paid for by the United States of America (as usual!), 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,” he added.
He noted Seoul’s decision not to get involved with the Iran war.
“While somewhat unrelated, I recently asked the President of South Korea if they would like to join us in the Denuclearization of the Islamic Republic of Iran, and they said, ‘No thanks!’” the president wrote.
On Monday, Trump said he was turned off by South Korea not agreeing to help the U.S. denuclearize Iran even though the U.S. has troops in South Korea to deter aggression from North Korea.
He said he recently spoke on the phone with South Korean President Lee Jae Myung and asked if he would give the U.S. “a little hand” with Iran.
“I called him. I said, ‘Would you like to give us a little hand? We don’t need help with Iran, but if you’d like, give us a hand with Iran.’ He said, ‘No thanks,’ and I said, ‘Wait a minute. We have 39,000 soldiers over there, guarding you from Kim Jong-un, your next-door neighbor, and you’re not going to help us on a very easy military operation in Iran. That’s strange,’” Trump said in the Oval Office.
“We can’t go around and protect all of these countries, especially when they’re not there to help us,” he added.
Outside observers said it was obvious the president was frustrated with a lack of support from key U.S. allies on the Iran front.
“Trump obviously he’s got his mind fixed on Iran right now, and it’s pretty clear that he still holds some frustration toward American partners and allies whom he asked for help and rebuffed him, and South Korea is on that list,” said Michael Sobolik, a senior fellow at the Hudson Institute.
Sobolik also said Trump has long held the perspective that South Korea is not doing enough in housing some 28,500 troops on the peninsula – most notably trying in his first term to pull American forces out of the country.
“I think he has locked in this distrust not just of the Koreans but of the value that America being there actually has,” he told The Hill.
That leaves the relationship between the two, “not in a great place,” Sobolik said. “This definitely feeds into pre-existing doubt that the Koreans have had about the United States and Trump specifically.”
Lawmakers have also weighed in with their frustration over the scaled back exercises.
“China and Russia are watching how easily this President abandons America’s allies, and they will remember it the next time they test us,” Sen. Jack Reed (D-R.I.), ranking member of the Senate Armed Services Committee, said in a statement Monday.
Sen. Mark Kelly (D-Ariz.) called Trump’s decision “shortsighted [and a] mistake.”
“North and South Korea are still technically at war,” Kelly wrote Sunday in a post on the social platform X. “Our ability to help defend our ally against the North Koreans is because our forces are well trained and able to coordinate with the South Koreans.”
“Hollowing out these joint exercises is shortsighted and a mistake,” he added.
Sen. Thom Tillis (R-N.C.) wrote on social media that the reduction…
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