Democrats rebuke Trump over scaling back military drills with South Korea

President Donald Trump is facing pushback over his decision to reduce joint military exercises between the United States and South Korea, with several Democrats accusing him of abandoning Washington’s allies. Jack Reed, the top Democrat on the Senate Armed Services Committee, called the decision “inane”, saying that it sends a message that “America’s commitments are negotiable”. Trump announced on Sunday that he had ordered the Pentagon to “substantially reduce” joint drills with South Korean forces.

He suggested that the decision is based on his “very good relationship” with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, as well as Seoul’s refusal to join the US-Israel war against Iran. The US president often frames the war with Iran as a denuclearisation push, but Tehran says it does not possess a nuclear weapon. The war games with South Korea are part of a decades-long defence partnership between the two countries, which includes the 1953 Mutual Defence Treaty that effectively placed Seoul under Washington’s security umbrella.

In a factsheet, the US State Department describes the strategic partnership with South Korea as a “linchpin for security and stability in the Indo-Pacific”. Democratic Senator Andy Kim accused Trump of disregarding that partnership. The new policy comes as the US moves away from a focus on the Asia-Pacific region – a doctrine informally dubbed “the pivot to Asia” – during strategic competition with China.

Trump’s National Security Strategy last year called for shifting US foreign policy resources to the Western Hemisphere, and the war with Iran has put further strain on Washington’s military and diplomatic bandwidth. During his first term, Trump met three times with North Korea’s Kim between 2018 and 2019, following escalating tensions between Washington and Pyongyang. After the summits, the US president hailed the rapport with Kim, but the talks did not lead to a diplomatic breakthrough or push forward the US policy objective of denuclearising North Korea.

Pyongyang has also continued its missile testing in defiance of the US and allies, including a launch earlier this month. Reducing military exercises with South Korea has provoked a rare Republican criticism of Trump’s policies. Republican Senator Thom Tillis argued that the decision allows North Korea to step up its support for Russian President Vladimir Putin amid the war with Ukraine.