Table Stakes - August 17th

Good morning everyone,

I’m Atlas, and welcome to Table Stakes!

Here’s a look at today’s topics:

• Trump Cuts Back Military Drills With South Korea

• Jared Kushner Meets With Hamas Head Over Gaza Peace Plan

• Colombia Seeks U.S. Tariff Relief Following Earthquake

Trump Cuts Back Military Drills With South Korea

_{By: Atlas}

President Donald Trump ordered the Pentagon on Sunday to scale back the annual joint military exercises with South Korea just hours before they got underway, citing his relationship with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un and Seoul's refusal to join the war against Iran.

"Based on my very good relationship with Kim Jong Un, of North Korea, I am not happy with the fact that the United States has, long ago, agreed to participate in Joint Military Exercises with South Korea," Trump wrote on Truth Social. "These exercises are not only costly, with much of these costs paid for by the United States of America (as usual!), but send a signal that is totally inappropriate and hostile, to a Country that, as long as Donald J. Trump has been President, has been unthreatening and respectful."

"Therefore, and based on the fact that it is too late to cancel, I have instructed Secretary of War, Pete Hegseth, to substantially reduce the Joint Military Exercises!" he added.

Trump also aired a grievance with Seoul over the Middle East. "While somewhat unrelated (?), I recently asked the President of South Korea if they would like to join us in the Denuclearization of the Islamic Republic of Iran, and they said, 'No thanks!'" he wrote.

The annual Ulchi Freedom Shield exercise began Monday morning in South Korea as scheduled, running through August 27 with about 18,000 South Korean troops alongside personnel from the 28,500-strong US force stationed on the peninsula. South Korea's Defense Ministry said the drills would "proceed as previously notified and scheduled," and the Joint Chiefs of Staff confirmed they had started while declining to address Trump's post. The presidential office and foreign ministry did not immediately respond on a public holiday in Seoul. A Pentagon spokesperson referred questions to the White House, which offered no details on what a reduction would entail.

What's Being Cut Is Unclear

The exercise was designed around scenarios reflecting North Korea's evolving arsenal, including counter-drone operations, GPS jamming, and cyberattacks, along with a live-fire drill testing joint precision targeting, a river crossing, and the distribution of prepositioned equipment. In recent years the drills have already shifted substantially from field maneuvers toward computer-simulated exercises, leaving open the question of what a further reduction would remove.

Planners had also built this year's training around a battlefield development US commanders consider significant: North Korean troops returning from combat alongside Russian forces in Ukraine with experience in unmanned systems, electronic warfare, and cyber operations. Ukraine said last week that North Korean-made missiles were used in a Russian strike on a steel plant in Zaporizhzhia that killed seven workers, and Lieutenant General Joseph Jarrard of US Northern Command warned days ago that Pyongyang has successfully tested intercontinental ballistic missiles with "enough boost to deliver a nuclear payload anywhere in North America."

The timing bookends a familiar cycle. North Korea fired ballistic missiles on August 6 and again last Wednesday — its first launches since late June — and on Friday threatened unspecified "stern steps," calling the drills "a rehearsal for an aggressive war." A North Korean Foreign Ministry spokesperson said US-Japan-South Korea cooperation is turning into a "nuclear alliance" that Pyongyang would answer with "a new level of deterrent."

A Courtship Resumed

The order extends Trump's long-running effort to trade the exercises for diplomacy with Kim. After his 2018 Singapore summit, he abruptly announced a halt to what he called "expensive" and "provocative" war games. He met Kim three times during his first term, stepping across the demilitarized zone in 2019 to become the first sitting US president to enter North Korea, though the diplomacy produced no change in the North's weapons programs.

On Saturday, a day before the order, Trump posted a photo of himself with Kim at the DMZ, writing that "despite the unfriendly look on this particular picture," the two "get along GREAT!" Kim, for his part, said in September 2025 that he held "good personal memories" of Trump and could return to talks if Washington drops "its delusional obsession with denuclearization" of the North.

"This decision may be part of a larger effort to create a diplomatic opportunity with Pyongyang, as Trump has consistently wanted since coming back to office," said Jenny Town, who leads the Stimson Center's 38 North program, "although the haphazard nature of this move is unlikely to make much of an impression in Pyongyang." Experts note Kim has spent the years since the collapse of his diplomacy with Trump expanding his nuclear and missile forces, likely calculating that a larger arsenal strengthens his hand in any future negotiation.

An About-Face on an Ally

The move marks a sharp reversal in the administration's posture toward Seoul. In May, Hegseth praised South Korea's "commitment to increase defense spending" and its "leadership in assuming primary responsibility for the security of the Korean Peninsula," calling it "alliance burden-sharing that all of America's partners would do well to follow." The US military has long described Ulchi Freedom Shield as reinforcing "the role of the alliance as the linchpin for regional peace and security."

Sunday's order instead grouped South Korea with other allies Trump has faulted for declining to support the Iran war, a list that has included NATO members. It also lands as American military weight shifts away from the region: the USS George Washington, the last US aircraft carrier in the Pacific, is being moved to the Middle East to sustain operations against Iran.

Democratic Senator Mark Kelly of Arizona, a former Navy pilot, criticized the decision within hours. "Hollowing out these joint exercises is shortsighted and a mistake," he wrote.

Whether the reduction becomes a durable policy or an opening bid toward Pyongyang remains to be seen. Kim marked Korean Liberation Day this weekend by reaffirming ties with Russian President Vladimir Putin — a reminder that the leader Trump is courting has spent the intervening years building relationships, and weapons, that did not exist when the two men last shook hands.

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