Sign up for The Week’s free daily newsletter, Today’s Best Articles
Join 350,000+ subscribers and keep yourself informed with a selection of
The Week’s most interesting, enlightening and entertaining stories - plus daily puzzles.
You are now subscribed
Your newsletter sign-up was successful
Want to add more newsletters?
An account already exists for this email address, please log in.
Trump curtails joint South Korea military drills
The president called the longtime drills “totally inappropriate and hostile”
President Donald Trump said on social media Sunday night he had instructed the Pentagon to “substantially reduce” America’s annual joint military exercises with South Korea, citing their cost, his own “very good relationship” with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un and Seoul’s disinclination to join the U.S. in the Iran war. The defensive drills, which began this week, are “totally inappropriate and hostile,” he said, as North Korea “has been unthreatening and respectful” while he is president.
Who said what
This is the “latest example” of Trump “appearing to turn against an ally in favor of a leader that previous administrations have cast as an adversary,” The Associated Press said. North Korea has been “pushing hard to enlarge its nuclear and missile arsenals since Kim’s high-stakes diplomacy with Trump collapsed in 2019.” Trump may intend this as “part of a larger effort to create a diplomatic opportunity” with Kim, Jenny Town at the Stimson Center think tank told Reuters, but the “haphazard nature of this move is unlikely to make much of an impression in Pyongyang.”
The Pentagon was “taken aback” by Trump’s “convoluted social media post,” The New York Times said, citing a senior U.S. military official. “We need South Korea as an ally more than ever to maintain deterrence on the Korean Peninsula and to reinforce our industrial base in critical sectors like shipbuilding and semiconductors,” Hudson Institute Asian security expert Patrick Cronin told The Wall Street Journal. “We should not punish Seoul for our lack of a strategy in the Middle East.”
The Week
Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.
The annual Ulchi Freedom Shield exercises are scheduled to last until Aug. 27.
Sign up for The Week’s free daily newsletter, Today’s Best Articles
Join 350,000+ subscribers and keep yourself informed with a selection of
The Week’s most interesting, enlightening and entertaining stories - plus daily puzzles.
Peter has worked as a news and culture writer and editor at The Week since the site's launch in 2008. He covers politics, world affairs, religion and cultural currents. His journalism career began as a copy editor at a financial newswire and has included editorial positions at The New York Times Magazine, Facts on File, and Oregon State University.
