Academia
The consequences of Trump’s behavior are even more serious for East Asia than they are for Europe.
Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi (right) and South Korean President Lee Jae Myung pose on Jan. 12, 2026, for photographs before performing on drums after their meeting in Nara, Japan. (Reuters/Yonhap/Reuters/Yonhap)
On Aug. 16, one day after the anniversary of Emperor Hirohito’s announcement of Imperial Japan’s unconditional surrender to the Allies in 1945, United States President Donald Trump ordered the Pentagon to “substantially reduce” joint military exercises with South Korea. His reasons were odd, to say the least. He wrote on his Truth Social platform that the annual Ulchi Freedom Shield exercises “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.”That respectful and unthreatening country is none other than North Korea, which has been ramping up its nuclear capabilities since Trump’s ill-advised and fruitless meetings with North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un in 2019. Seven years later, Kim’s regime has been respectfully launching ballistic missiles over the Sea of Japan with some frequency.
