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Multiple US lawmakers have criticized Trump’s order to scale down the war games the US and South Korea are running together this week.
Some shit you should know before you dig in: If you’re unaware, the US and South Korea run two large joint exercises every year, and this week’s is called Ulchi Freedom Shield. The drills are scheduled to run 11 days, with around 18,000 South Korean troops taking part, plus US forces and personnel from 11 of the 18 nations that make up the United Nations Command. North Korea calls the drills a rehearsal for invasion every year and uses them to escalate its rhetoric and occasionally fire off ballistic missiles it says are tests. Notably, Trump has scaled back the drills before and canceled the 2018 edition outright while he was negotiating with Kim Jong Un, calling the war games “provocative” and expensive at the time. They were trimmed again in 2020 during the pandemic before being reworked and brought back under different names.
What’s going on now: On Sunday, Trump said on Truth Social that he had ordered the cuts, posting hours before this year’s exercise was set to begin. He wrote, “Based on the fact that it is too late to cancel, I have instructed Secretary of War, Pete Hegseth, to substantially reduce the Joint Military Exercises!” He called the drills costly and said they send “a signal that is totally inappropriate and hostile” to a country that has been “unthreatening and respectful” throughout his presidency.
He then tied the decision to Iran. “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!'” Later in the Oval Office, he made the link to Seoul’s refusal more explicit. “We have 39,000 soldiers over there guarding you from Kim Jong Un, your next door neighbour, and you’re not going to help us on a very easy military operation in Iran,” he said. “That’s strange.” He also claimed Kim had responded to the order but did not say how, described the state of those conversations as positive, and posted a photo of Kim on a phone captioned “HEY DONALD … WE COOL, RIGHT?”
This has led to bipartisan criticism on Capitol Hill. Sen. Jack Reed, the top Democrat on Senate Armed Services, called the decision “inane” and warned that it tells the world “America’s commitments are negotiable.” Republican Sen. Thom Tillis said trimming the exercises “does nothing more than free up thousands of North Korea’s troops to support Putin’s systematic kidnapping, torture, rape and murder of innocent Ukrainian citizens.”
Sen. Andy Kim wrote that “decisions about joint exercises need to be made jointly – and not announced unilaterally by social media,” and Rep. Greg Meeks, the top Democrat on House Foreign Affairs, said “treating one of America’s closest allies like an adversary weakens our alliances and benefits China and North Korea.”
Despite all this, South Korea says the drills are going ahead. The defense ministry said Monday that Ulchi Freedom Shield was “proceeding as planned” through Aug. 27, and President Lee Jae Myung’s office said the two governments have “maintained close coordination” on joint exercises and will continue to do so, adding that Seoul has been active in ceasefire talks over Iran and in discussions about freedom of navigation through the Strait of Hormuz.
