Trump says Kim Jong-un has responded to his overtures when asked about scaling back US drills with South Korea – live

# Analysis Trump's proposal to scale back joint military exercises with South Korea represents a fundamental shift in US deterrence strategy on the Korean Peninsula, one with serious implications for both regional stability and alliance credibility. The US-South Korea drills serve as a concrete demonstration of America's security commitment and provide essential coordination practice for defending against North Korean aggression—reducing them unilaterally, particularly in response to North Korean overtures rather than concrete concessions, signals to Pyongyang that military provocation can extract tactical concessions without requiring substantive denuclearization steps. This approach risks emboldening further missile testing and weapons development by removing consequences while rewarding hostile behavior, the opposite of how traditional deterrence operates. For South Korea, which faces a genuine conventional military threat from the North, any reduction in joint training and coordination with its primary security guarantor raises immediate concerns about defense readiness and whether the US commitment to the alliance remains ironclad—concerns likely to intensify if Japan perceives similar shifts in US reliability.