Donald Trump has publicly questioned why America should continue protecting South Korea and claimed that reducing joint military exercises with Seoul would make the peninsula “much safer.” The US President also said that Kim Jong-un had responded to his request for talks, describing the North Korean dictator as someone who had always treated him with “great respect.”
USSC CEO Dr Michael Green spoke with The Australian on this development, saying that US foreign policy “restrainers” as well as hard power realists had “long been sceptical about the value of having US Forces on the peninsula" but this was a Pentagon policy debate and if Trump was now pushing a reduction in military drills with South Korea “then something else may be at play. Last time he did this in 2018 it was at the suggestion of Putin and designed to get a big summit result from Kim Jong-un.”