President Donald Trump’s recent decision to scale down American military exercises in South Korea, which he said is linked to that nation’s refusal to help in the US-Israel war against Iran, was just met with scathing criticism by a foreign policy expert.
“Thanks to @realDailyWire for publishing my commentary about President Trump’s order to scale down military exercises with South Korea,” Michael Sobolik, a Senior Fellow in Indo-Pacific Studies at the American Foreign Policy Council (AFPC), posted on X. In the attached article, he warned that “confusing adversaries and allies is a basic foreign policy mistake. Leveraging enemies to attack friends is a deeper failure. President Trump committed both errors on Sunday when he announced that he was ordering the Pentagon to ‘substantially reduce the Joint Military Exercises’ with South Korea.”
Noting that Trump earlier claimed America didn’t need South Korea in its effort against Iran, Sobolik added that even though Seoul has given Trump valid cause for criticism — most importantly by cozying up to China — it does not serve America’s interests to weaken our alliance with that nation.
“It is equally true that America’s partners should expect the global hegemony to act predictably in its own interests,” Sobolik wrote. “Regardless of Seoul’s behavior, Washington benefits when Pyongyang is hemmed in and deterred from adventurism and belligerence. More broadly, America’s interests demand that North Korea never unify the peninsula. For these reasons alone, military exercises with South Korea should persist.”
Furthering his theme of the danger of confusing allies and adversaries, Sobolik warned that it was “like a chef mistaking sugar for salt. Trump needs to maintain deterrence in East Asia. Two wars are already raging in Eastern Europe and the Middle East. In response to the latter, the Pentagon recently redeployed the USS George Washington from the Indo-Pacific to the Persian Gulf to relieve the USS Abraham Lincoln. No carriers are now in or near East Asia.”
He added, “Compounding this capability shortfall is the drawdown of Tomahawk missiles and other standoff platforms the Pentagon would need in a China scenario. Trump is coupling a numbers problem with a judgment problem.”
Overall Sobolik concluded that through his scale down Trump “is projecting weakness to Kim Jong-un’s northern neighbor and East Asia’s most powerful dictator. Canceling military exercises with South Korea is likely unfinished business from Trump’s first term. The day may come when the president sees the wisdom of his former advisors who counseled against doing so.”
Sobolik is not alone in criticizing Trump’s decision. Writing on Monday, The i Paper's Max Melzer described it as "latest in a series of moves minimizing America’s presence in the Asia-Pacific region" and argued that it will strengthen China. Additionally, Melzer argued that “the announcement was unusual given it was apparently a unilateral decision made just days before the drills were set to begin."
Jane Hardy, a former Australian envoy to the U.S. Indo-Pacific Command and now a non-resident senior fellow at the Australian Strategic Policy Institute, told Melzer that “China is the beneficiary of almost everything that Trump does. China, now, holds so many cards. It is a country that dominates the world economy, it is developing highly sophisticated industry, it has overtaken Japan and Germany, I believe, in its assessed production of strategic goods, and it is the only country in the world that can rival the US on the new front – the new front, of course, being artificial intelligence.”
Conservative MS NOW host Joe Scarborough was even more angry, blasting Trump for his "love letters" to North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un, who the former Florida Republican congressman characterized as the "worst, most repressive tyrant on the face of the earth."
Foreign policy expert Richard Haass, on MS NOW, said that Trump’s actions in South Korea help explain why many allies feel they "can no longer trust the United States."
Criticism of Trump’s actions toward the two Korean nations trace all the way back to 2019. Speaking with this journalist for Salon at the time, former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright pointed out that “when I was in North Korea [President] Kim Jong-il, the father of the current president there, said that he didn’t have any problems with us having our troops in South Korea.”
She continued, “I do think that what is worrisome to me is, in an effort to be flattered by Kim Jong-un, that he gives away something that might have a longer term effect for the next administration.”
