“President Donald Trump’s decision to scale back joint military exercises with South Korea,” Matthew Lee and Ben Finley write for the Associated Press, “does not just slight a longtime ally but raises broader concerns about the security interests of the United States in Asia and elsewhere.”
Trump’s reason for supposedly, and in unspecified ways, downsizing the annual “Ulchi Freedom Shield” exercise is that South Korea has been insufficiently supportive of his war against Iran. That doesn’t seem like a very good reason … but there ARE good reasons, and it’s a tiny move in the correct direction of drawing down US military entanglement on the Korean Peninsula.
The history, in brief:
After World War 2, Korea — which had been occupied by the Japanese — was split into two states. In the north, a Soviet/Chinese-backed communist regime under Kim Il Sung held power, while the south was ruled by a US-backed fascist regime under Syngman Rhee. Each side wanted to invade, conquer, annex, and absorb the other’s territory, but the US held Rhee back from doing so and Kim beat him to the punch.
The resulting war technically goes on to this very day, although it’s been in a tense state of ceasefire since 1953. More than 35,000 American troops, hundreds of thousands of South Korean, North Korean, Chinese, and Soviet soldiers, and millions of civilians died to reach that stalemate.
North Korea remains “communist” in name and pageantry while actually embodying absolute , quasi-religious monarchy under the Kim dynasty’s third generation.
South Korea is theoretically a “democracy,” but mostly just a big state capitalist enterprise operating under military protection from, and advantageous trade deals with, the US . The US spends $5-6 billion per year to support 80 military bases and 27,000 deployed US troops, and has now been doing that much or more for 80 years.
Interestingly, the AP story quotes Dan Fried, an official in George W. Bush’s administration, to the effect that “there is no American interest I can see” in reducing US military commitments to South Korea.
But in 2004, Bush himself proposed a much bolder plan than small cuts to joint military exercises. He wanted, he announced, to completely withdraw US forces from the Korean peninsula over the course of ten years.
Granted, Bush made that proposal under duress after rushing to New Mexico when his campaign learned that Libertarian Michael Badnarik was polling at 5% in the state, that Democrat John Kerry had scheduled a speech of his own there, and that New Mexico’s electoral votes might hang in the balance. He needed an olive branch to the growing anti-war movement, and quickly dropped the plan once he was re-elected.
But it was a good idea then, and it’s a great idea now.
American taxpayers have been throwing blood and treasure at South Korea for most of a century even as it has become an economic powerhouse that competes with US producers, and that commitment also feeds into US entanglement in every regional argument involving not just the Koreas, but China, Taiwan, Japan, the Philippines, etc. It’s a raw deal for America.
South Korea possesses abundant means to provide for its own defense , especially since Kim Jong-Un certainly understands that even success at military conquest of a population twice the size of the one he already rules would eventually bring his own regime down.
I hope that President Trump will continue on, and accelerate ambitiously along, this course. The US armed forces should stand down in South Korea. Whether the South Korean regime stands up in their place, and if so in what ways, isn’t a matter for the US regime to decide. Bring the troops home.
Thomas L. Knapp (X: @thomaslknapp | Bluesky: @knappster.bsky.social | Mastodon: @knappster) is director and senior news analyst at the William Lloyd Garrison Center for Libertarian Advocacy Journalism (thegarrisoncenter.org). He lives and works in north central Florida.
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