WASHINGTON - Dialing back annual joint summer U.S.-South Korea military drills runs counter to North Korea’s continued missile launches and lack of denuclearization, said experts pointing to the computer simulation training unaccompanied by field combat exercises that is underway.
“If there were no North Korean threat, maybe I wouldn’t be as concerned,” said Bruce Bennett, a senior defense analyst at the Rand Corp.
“But North Korea keeps building its nuclear capabilities so they’re increasing their threat. They’re testing more missiles, which is increasing their threat. Scaling back the U.S. and South Korean preparations to deal with that threat doesn’t make a lot of sense,” Bennett continued.
, the fourth test in less than two weeks. This came just as the U.S. and South Korea began their annual joint military exercises that Seoul confirmed began Monday.
The U.S. has about 28,000 soldiers stationed in South Korea, and every year, U.S. and South Korean military forces conduct joint drills as they prepare to defend against potential attacks from North Korea. President Donald Trump said Wednesday via Twitter that South Korea “ to the U.S. in order to defend itself from North Korea” as its share of defense cost.
Following the launch Tuesday, North Korean leader of a tactical guided missile was a “warning to the joint military drills now underway by the U.S. and South Korean authorities,” according to a statement released Wednesday by the official Korean Central News Agency (KCNA).
Pyongyang also said Monday that the drills, which it sees as an invasion rehearsal, prompted the country “to develop, test and deploy the powerful physical means essential for national defense.” The ” is being conducted, although it said it remained committed to dialogue.
Bennett, who specializes in Northeast Asian military issues, said joint drills are a “fundamental part of the alliance,” and Kim’s objective is to “decouple South Korea and the United States” to get them to “abandon their alliance.”
Military officials are calling the drills “” this year in a move to avoid using the word “exercises,” which might provoke North Korea. The training is scheduled to end Aug. 20.
Bruce Bechtol, a former intelligence officer at the Defense Intelligence Agency and now a professor at Angelo State University in Texas, said that because the exercises are planned months in advance, the decision to exclude field training was not “done in reaction to the missile launches.”
This year’s drills are not a proportional response to Pyongyang’s continued provocations and military buildup, Bennett said, because the to match its words.
“They’ve done zero denuclearization,” he said. “They haven’t surrendered a single weapon. … Instead, they’ve been making more nuclear weapons.”
Bennett estimates Kim “roughly increased his nuclear destructive potential by 50%” since he promised to denuclearize in March.
“That doesn’t justify an end or a major suspension of exercises,” he added. “That instead says we ought to be ramping up our exercises.”
The U.S. and South Korean military trimmed back joint exercises after Trump began his summit with Kim in June 2018. At the Singapore Summit, describing them as expensive and provocative.
The annual exercise dubbed following the Singapore Summit. . The computer-simulation Key Resolve was replaced with the (which means alliance in Korean) in March.
David Maxwell, a former U.S. Special Forces colonel and current fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, said Pyongyang’s complaints about the joint drills reveal “Kim Jong Un’s hypocrisy.”
Maxwell said while the allies have significantly cut back the joint exercises in good faith, “the North has not responded in any positive manner, either with working-level negotiations or a reduction of its own offensive exercises in its winter and summer cycles.”
North Korea has about 70% of its combat forces deployed along its side of the demilitarized zone separating the two Koreas, Maxwell said, even as it protests allies’ exercises designed to defend against potential North Korean attacks.
American and South Korean forces will exercise defensive war plans through computer-generated attack scenarios to enhance their coordination and “try to prepare to deal with North Korean threats,” Bennett said.
Multiple giant screens would display computer simulations of friendly and enemy forces as well as lots of maps, displays, tables and weather reports, among other things, that they would see in a real crisis, according to experts.