{"id":122792,"date":"2026-08-18T02:19:07","date_gmt":"2026-08-18T02:19:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/korea\/122792\/"},"modified":"2026-08-18T02:19:07","modified_gmt":"2026-08-18T02:19:07","slug":"trumps-decision-to-scale-back-south-korea-drills-unsettles-asian-allies-makes-no-sense","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/korea\/122792\/","title":{"rendered":"Trump\u2019s decision to scale back South Korea drills unsettles Asian allies: \u2018makes no sense\u2019"},"content":{"rendered":"

President Donald Trump<\/a>\u2019s decision to scale back joint military exercises with South Korea does not just slight a long-time ally but raises broader concerns about the security interests of the United States<\/a> in Asia and elsewhere.Trump explained his decision by citing South Korea<\/a>\u2019s refusal to join his war against Iran and pointing to what he said was his good relationship with North Korea\u2019s reclusive dictator Kim Jong-un<\/a>, a transactional and personal approach to foreign policy that has defined the Republican\u2019s presidency.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere is no American interest that I can see in this,\u201d said Dan Fried, an assistant secretary of state for European affairs in the George W. Bush administration. \u201cOn all levels it makes no sense. It undermines the South Koreans, undermines the Japanese, frightens the Taiwanese, unnerves Nato and emboldens the Chinese, not to mention the North Koreans.\u201d<\/p>\n

Trump\u2019s decision to side with North Korea<\/a>, which strongly objects to the annual joint military exercises, was \u201cfirmly in the \u2018hard-to see-how-it-could-be-worse\u2019 category\u201d, said Danny Russel, former assistant secretary of state for East Asia and the Pacific in Barack Obama<\/a>\u2019s administration.Trump is punishing an ally while encouraging an adversaryDanny Russel, a scholar at the Asia Society Policy Institute<\/p>\n

\u201cIt is tragically upside-down. Trump is punishing an ally while encouraging an adversary,\u201d said Russel, now a scholar at the Asia Society Policy Institute in New York. \u201cHe is protecting Kim Jong-un\u2019s sensitive feelings from an unfriendly signal at the expense of US-South Korean security.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"President Donald Trump\u2019s decision to scale back joint military exercises with South Korea does not just slight a…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":122793,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[519,63597,59127,134,11243,63599,74,63601,63600,63598,890,141,31,8015,34,33],"class_list":["post-122792","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-north-korea","tag-asia","tag-asia-society-policy-institute","tag-atlantic-council","tag-china","tag-congress","tag-council-on-foreign-relations","tag-donald-trump","tag-east-asia-and-the-pacific","tag-george-w-bush","tag-house-foreign-affairs-committee","tag-japan","tag-kim-jong-un","tag-korea","tag-nato","tag-north-korea","tag-south-korea"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/korea\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/122792","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/korea\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/korea\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/korea\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/korea\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=122792"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/korea\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/122792\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/korea\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/122793"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/korea\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=122792"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/korea\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=122792"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/korea\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=122792"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}