(CNN) — By suddenly scaling down war games with South Korea, US President Donald Trump risks working against his own stated goal of having Seoul assume more responsibility for its own defense.
The annual Ulchi Freedom Shield exercises, involving tens of thousands of troops, have been cut in half at Washington’s request, after Trump said last weekend that the exercises antagonized his friend, North Korea’s leader Kim Jong Un, while also costing the US a lot of money.
These exercises “send a signal that is totally inappropriate and hostile,” Trump posted on Truth Social on Sunday in what appeared to be an attempt to appease the reclusive Kim, who Trump is eager to meet with again.
The “hostile” part is hard to reconcile with the defensive nature of the exercises and is strikingly similar to how North Korea’s state media have described the drills. Washington and Seoul have said repeatedly they are about deterrence and defense, not about taking territory north of the demilitarized zone that has divided the Koreas since the armistice struck in 1953.
Contained within the military exercises is training to give South Korea something it hasn’t had since the Korean War began in 1950: wartime operational control of the combined South Korea-US forces on the peninsula, analysts point out.
It’s a key goal for both countries. Once Seoul shows it can take on that burden, Washington can take a backseat in any future conflict, providing some firepower but letting South Korea assume most of the responsibility and cost of its defense.
The current control set-up came about shortly after the start of the Korean War, when South Korea turned command of its forces over to Washington, which – vastly better equipped and more experienced – was more suited to dealing with the communist threat at the dividing line.
Control of South Korean troops was assumed by United Nations Command, and in 1978, by the Combined Forces Command (CFC), which has always been led by an American general.
The CFC gave peacetime operational control of South Korean forces to Seoul in 1994, but wartime control has remained with Washington. Calls for change and timelines to accomplish it have been pushed back several times since, leaving in place a status quo that is no longer needed.
Over the past several years, South Korea has emerged as a world-class military power – not quite on the level of the US or China, but certainly capable of defending itself against North Korea.
Citing that ability, South Korean President Lee Jae Myung on Tuesday used the launch of this year’s exercises to try to bring new momentum to a campaign promise he made in 2025 to bring wartime operational control back into Seoul’s hands by 2030.
“From the aspect of weapons systems and military strength, our capabilities to defend ourselves is already among the top few in the world. It’s not an exaggeration to say that we are more than capable,” Lee said Tuesday.
But Trump has thrown a spanner into the works.
The plan was to use the Ulchi Freedom Shield drills to assess systems so Seoul could assume wartime operational control, Yu Ji-hoon, a research fellow at the Korea Institute for Defense Analyses, wrote in The Diplomat.
“A major last-minute change could therefore affect more than readiness; it could complicate an alliance project that Washington itself has long encouraged,” Yu wrote.
“Curtailing (the exercises), especially without prior discussion, makes burden-sharing harder to implement, even as Washington demands more of it,” he said.
Lee Jeong-kyu, a visiting research fellow at South Korea’s Sejong Institute, wrote earlier this year of momentum building for more South Korean control, with it laid out in black and white in the US National Defense Strategy released in January.
The document was “a clear signal of intent to strengthen alliance burden-sharing that is expected to provide grounds for accelerating the conditions for (operational control) transfer,” Lee wrote.
With his deference to North Korea’s Kim, Trump has put a nuclear-armed adversary of the US above a treaty ally that wants to do what Trump has asked of it.
That keeps US forces tied up with responsibilities on the peninsula at a time when they could be sorely needed in a place like Iran or possible future conflicts, both in Asia and around the world. And it means future defense budgets can’t factor in cost savings in Korea when demand for new weapons is only growing.
South Korea has long been a close American ally; since the end of the Korean War the two nations have had a mutual defense treaty primarily designed to protect the South from North Korea.
But Trump’s touted personal relationship with North Korea’s Kim –– who has significantly expanded his country’s military capabilities since Trump’s first term and is now believed to have dozens of nuclear warheads –– has tested the long-standing partnership.
For its part, North Korea has not responded positively to Trump’s new olive branch.
Before news of the curtailment broke Wednesday morning, North Korean state media KCNA called the exercises “the most immediate and open threat” to Pyongyang, and regional security.
Trump’s sudden involvement appears to be forcing a rethink wider than just the exercises, with Seoul’s military chiefs saying Wednesday the two sides would now need to discuss “combined defense posture going forward.”
For Trump, already weakened on the world stage by the ongoing war with Iran, it’s another own goal, analysts said.
“The cost savings from downsizing drills are marginal, while the diplomatic benefits for relations with North Korea are doubtful,” said Leif-Eric Easley, a professor at Ewha University in Seoul.
Just what Trump might want to achieve by meeting again with Kim is opaque. He failed in his first term to strong-arm the North Korean leader into giving up his nuclear ambitions, which have only grown. Meanwhile, Kim has moved closer to Russia and China.
Trump might see it as “unthreatening and respectful” to himself, but North Korea has become a much stronger military power in the near-decade since Trump first took office.
“Scaling (the drills) back can damage alliance coordination, slow the process of South Korea taking on greater responsibility for its own defense, and weaken deterrence against possible conflicts in Asia,” Easley said.
The-CNN-Wire
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