Trump Orders Pentagon to Slash South Korea Drills
Trump Orders Pentagon to Slash South Korea Drills
The News
President Donald Trump said Sunday he has instructed Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth to "substantially reduce" joint US military exercises with South Korea, pulling back support for a treaty ally while praising North Korean leader Kim Jong Un.
"I have instructed Secretary of War, Pete Hegseth, to substantially reduce the Joint Military Exercises," Trump wrote in a post on his Truth Social site, according to Bloomberg.
The Associated Press reported the order came after Trump said South Korea had declined to help denuclearize Iran.
What Trump Said
Trump said it was too late to cancel the exercises entirely, but that he was "not happy" the United States had previously agreed to take part, the New York Post reported.
He called the drills "totally inappropriate and hostile" toward North Korea, according to Mediaite, which also reported he described Kim as "unthreatening and respectful."
Bloomberg reported the move reduces US support for a longtime ally at the same time Trump praised the North Korean leader.
Timeline
South Korean forces fired warning shots at North Korean troops, as The Frank reported.
Trump posts on Truth Social that he has directed Hegseth to substantially reduce the joint exercises, saying it is too late to cancel them outright.
Reactions
Coverage split immediately along predictable lines. Raw Story, on the left, cast the order as Trump "bowing" to a dictator's demands in what it called a stunning move.
Reuters, the AP, Axios and Bloomberg reported the instruction straight, with the AP tying it to Trump's complaint about Seoul and Iran.
Neither the Pentagon nor the South Korean government had a response in the initial reporting.
What's Next
The scale of the reduction has not been spelled out. Hegseth's department will have to decide which drills are trimmed and by how much, and whether exercises already underway continue.
Watch for a response from Seoul, which co-plans the exercises, and from members of Congress in both parties who have historically defended the US-South Korea alliance.
More
Joint US-South Korea exercises are a decades-old fixture of the alliance and a recurring irritant to Pyongyang, which calls them rehearsals for invasion. Trump curtailed drills during his first term as well, after meeting Kim.
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