In the wake of President Donald Trump’s Sunday announcement that the U.S. would “substantially reduce” its role in joint military exercises with South Korea, there have been wide-ranging attempts to understand his motivation. But according to Noah Rothman of the National Review, “it would be wise to avoid the temptation to attribute strategic thought to the president’s impulses.” Trump, admits this highly conservative publication, is just thoughtlessly “lashing out.”
As Rothman notes, after Trump turned his “vengeful gaze” on South Korea – a vital U.S. ally for 70 years – he “did not provide the public with much of a rationale for his maneuver… He said he was ‘not happy’ with America’s legacy commitments to these exercises in which he has had no input. Additionally, he said he has a ‘very good relationship’ with North Korean despot Kim Jong-un and, presumably, didn’t want to upset that applecart. But there was another matter ‘somewhat unrelated (?)’ — yes, the president threw a question mark in there — of the Republic of Korea’s refusal to ‘join us in the Denuclearization of the Islamic Republic of Iran.’” Trump made it clearer the next day that South Korea’s lack of involvement with the war spurred his hostility.
But according to Rothman, “The president risks being accused of a double standard. After all, he’s attempting to drum up support for a campaign designed to prevent nuclear proliferation even as he cozies up to a notorious nuclear proliferator.” Rothman notes that the press and Democrats were quick to question the logic behind Trump’s move, with the New York Times accusing him of lashing out, and raising the fact that North Korea has “become more hostile in recent years” in preparation for “an aggressive war.” Senate Democrats have called the decision “shortsighted and a mistake,” arguing that the president is punishing South Korea “for no reason beyond Trump’s ego.”
“Partisans though they are, these Democrats echo the concerns of the Western defense community,” admits Rothman. “Combined with the president’s decision to leave the Western Pacific without a deployed U.S. aircraft carrier group (the USS George Washington has been tasked with relieving the long-deployed USS Abraham Lincoln in the Middle East), some fear a breakdown of deterrence in the far East. ‘Anyone that says this whole package of steps is a net positive for deterrence is deluded,’ said one George W. Bush-era State Department official.”
For its part, there are major limits to how South Korea could support Trump’s war even if it wanted to. According to Rothman, “Seoul likely cannot deploy its naval assets — its destroyers, in particular — without weakening deterrence on the Korean Peninsula.” Its navy simply isn’t large enough to send ships while maintaining its own security. What’s more, over 60 percent of South Koreans oppose involvement in military action in Hormuz.
As Rothman concludes, “Perhaps the president’s bullying will shake something loose in Seoul. And if it does, maybe the other U.S. allies to whom Trump has put the screws — Japan, France, and the U.K., in particular — will follow suit. ‘It will work out,’ Trump said of the presently unnavigable impasse in the strait. ‘It always works out.’ Maybe it will. But it would be wise to avoid the temptation to attribute strategic thought to the president’s impulses. He does, indeed, seem to be lashing out.”
