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Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsKorea Exercises Canceled After North Korean Demand - By Josh Marshall
By Josh Marshall | May 18, 2018 12:41 pm
North Korean leader Kim Jong Un threatened to call off next months presidential summit in Singapore with President Trump over scheduled US-ROK military exercises which Kim had appeared earlier to say would not be an obstacle to the summit. Now the US seems to have given way and indeed scrapped the exercises.
The details are important and kind of complicated. There are at least two separate exercises which are either currently underway or were scheduled to be. The major one is Max Thunder, which is primarily focused on fighter jet training. Then theres Blue Lightning which is focused on B-52s, strategic bombers. I had not realized these were seen as two separate exercises. Its that latter exercise which appears to have been canceled. (The situation is further complicated by the fact that Blue Lightning was supposed to involve the US, South Korea and Japan. South Korea dropped out.)
B-52s are inherently more menacing to the North Koreans. Theyre strategic bombers. Theyre an obvious tool of attack the US would use against North Korea and the US has used them in the past to threaten the North Koreans.
The article and the US says that it was the South Koreans who wanted to pull back from this exercise, not the Americans. Thats not implausible. The current South Korean government is from the more left/dovish political party, historically more interested in a rapprochement with the North. The South Korean President Moon Jae-in has been proactive in trying not only to advance a general rapprochement including the US but particularly between the two Koreas. Having said this, I would not necessarily take at face value that this was driven by South Korea as opposed to the US.
More broadly, there is often a place for confidence building measures in the course of a general rapprochement. We shouldnt see an adjustment like this as inherently a bad thing or a sign of weakness. Here though we need to see this in the general context that North Korea is not coming to discuss giving up their nuclear deterrent. Theyve made that pretty clear and I see no reason to think theyre bluffing. Why would they? At the same time, the US government has continued suggesting that the North Koreans are ready to do just that. That disconnect makes the build up to this summit, the preliminaries, very significant.
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https://talkingpointsmemo.com/edblog/korea-exercises-canceled-after-north-korean-demand
dalton99a
(81,569 posts)spanone
(135,862 posts)no_hypocrisy
(46,160 posts)Caliman73
(11,744 posts)I am not particularly hopeful, especially with that inept idiot Trump being involved, but South Korea really seems to be doing some genuinely good work. I also know that the North Koreans have flirted with, then scrapped agreements once they got all they could.
I imagine that Kim is telling the North Koreans how he just got the US to flinch by scrapping the exercises. I am sure Trump will spin it, but he had originally said that concessions would be extracted from the North before anything would happen, but it seems like we just made a concession.