Shocked members of Congress are now worried that President Trump may order the same kind of precipitous withdrawal of U.S. troops from Afghanistan as he just did in Syria.
But the president’s bipartisan critics in Congress might do well to focus on another part of the world where the president is frustrated that he can’t bring American troops home, South Korea.
As recounted in Bob Woodward’s book Fear, Trump was ready to abruptly withdraw from the KORUS trade agreement a year ago over his dissatisfaction with the $18 billion annual trade deficit with South Korea and the $3.5 billion annual cost of keeping 28,500 U.S. troops there.
In May of this year, Trump ordered the Pentagon to prepare options for drawing down American troops in South Korea, according to a report in the New York Times, which said, “Mr. Trump has been determined to withdraw troops from South Korea, arguing that the United States is not adequately compensated for the cost of maintaining them, that the troops are mainly protecting Japan and that decades of American military presence had not prevented the North from becoming a nuclear threat.”
In September, Trump signed a revised free trade agreement with South Korea, and proclaimed it “a great day for the United States, and a great day for South Korea,” during a meeting with South Korean President Moon Jae-in.
But the revised KORUS deal, while opening South Korea’s market to U.S. automobile exports, does little to address the trade deficit, nor does it require South Korea to spend more on its own defense or reimburse the United States.
That’s something that rankles the president when it comes to U.S. alliances around the world, including NATO and the fight against ISIS.
“Does the USA want to be the Policeman of the Middle East, getting NOTHING but spending precious lives and trillions of dollars protecting others who, in almost all cases, do not appreciate what we are doing?” Trump tweeted Thursday in the face of vehement bipartisan condemnation of his Syria withdrawal order. “Do we want to be there forever? Time for others to finally fight,” he said.
Pulling U.S. troops from South Korea, where they have been a bulwark against the communist North for 65 years, would be unthinkable under any other administration, but Trump has shown time after time he is willing to flout the conventional wisdom on national security matters, and rely on his business instincts.
Now there is another factor that could motivate Trump to ignore his advisers and go with his gut. Talks with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un over dismantling its nuclear weapons and missile programs have stalled, and Pyongyang is making new demands.
A statement carried by the North’s official Korean Central News Agency seems to suggests Kim will eventually demand the U.S. withdraw or significantly reduce U.S. in the South as part of any disarmament deal.
The North Korean statement said “the meaning of the term ‘denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula’ … includes not only our country’s territory, but also encompasses the southern part of the Korean Peninsula, which includes the U.S.’s nuclear weapons and other invading forces in the territory of the Republic of Korea.”
Trump already made a major concession to Kim when he agreed last year to cancel joint U.S.-South Korean military exercises, over the Pentagon’s objections.
He even adopted Pyongyang’s inflammatory rhetoric calling defensive military drills “war games” that are “very expensive” and “very provocative,” and arguing the U.S. would save “a tremendous amount of money” because the U.S. pays “a big majority of the expenses for them.”
So it’s not that far-fetched to think that Trump, desperate to show his gambit with Kim Jong Un is paying off, would wake up one morning and tweet that having reached an agreement with North Korea, the troops are no longer needed and can come home.
After his first meeting with Kim Jong Un in June Trump tweeted, “[E]verybody can now feel much safer than the day I took office. There is no longer a Nuclear Threat from North Korea.”
The White House is hopeful a second summit between the two leaders will happen in early 2019.
“We are hopeful that in the new year, President Trump and Chairman Kim will get together not too long after the first of the year and make even further progress on taking this threat to the United States away from us,” Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said in an interview with KNSS Radio in his home state of Kansas.
