America’s allies haven’t been too helpful. But now the shoe is on the other foot.
And Donald Trump smacked one ally with a surprise they weren’t expecting.
President Trump ordered the Pentagon to pare back the annual U.S.-South Korea military exercises this weekend, arguing the drills are an expensive and needlessly provocative gesture toward a North Korean leader he says has kept his distance from American forces during his time in office — while pointedly noting that Seoul recently turned down a chance to help pressure Iran.
The directive landed one day ahead of Ulchi Freedom Shield, the 11-day joint exercise involving roughly 28,500 U.S. troops stationed on the peninsula alongside some 18,000 South Korean forces, and comes as Pyongyang has ramped up missile testing amid the broader Iran conflict.
A Cost-Benefit Argument Aimed At An Old Grievance
Writing on Truth Social, Trump made clear the drills themselves were too far along to cancel outright but said he remains skeptical of the decades-old arrangement. “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, adding that the 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.”
It’s a familiar argument from Trump, who took a similar line during his first term after his 2018 Singapore summit with Kim, when he likewise branded the exercises “provocative” and unnecessarily expensive for American taxpayers.
Seoul’s Cold Shoulder On Iran Draws A Pointed Rebuke
Trump connected his frustration over the drills to a separate diplomatic snub, revealing he’d asked South Korean President Lee Jae Myung directly whether Seoul would join U.S. efforts to denuclearize Iran — and been turned down. “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!'” Trump wrote, the parenthetical question mark suggesting he sees the two issues as more connected than he’s letting on.
A Regime Testing Missiles As The World Watches Iran
North Korea has fired two ballistic missiles within the past six days, part of a broader pattern of provocations that experts warn could accelerate while global attention is fixed on the Middle East. Pyongyang’s Foreign Ministry, for its part, has continued to denounce the joint exercises regardless of Trump’s posture toward Kim, calling Ulchi Freedom Shield “a rehearsal for an aggressive war” in a statement carried by state media last week.
U.S. Indo-Pacific Command said its assessment of the most recent launch, on Aug. 12, found no immediate threat to American personnel, territory or allies, and that it was consulting closely with regional partners — language nearly identical to the command’s response following an earlier test on Aug. 6.
Ukraine’s Warning About What North Korea Is Learning
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has separately warned that Pyongyang is using its alliance with Moscow to battle-test its weapons systems against Ukrainian forces, refining capabilities that could eventually threaten U.S. allies across the Pacific. “For the first time in its history, Russia cannot wage war without reinforcements from North Korea,” Zelenskyy said, adding that North Korea’s arsenal is improving through direct combat experience: “The more North Korean strikes there are here in Ukraine, in Europe, the more their missiles and soldiers are used, the more they correct their shortcomings and blind spots, the greater the danger will later be for Japan, the Republic of Korea, the Philippines, and other countries in the region.”
Whether Trump’s latest scaling-back of the Korea drills changes Kim’s calculus — or simply frees up North Korean and Russian military planners to keep refining their arsenals with fewer American forces watching closely — is likely to become clearer as Ulchi Freedom Shield gets underway this week.
