US downplays war games

Trump aims to nudge N. Korea into denuclearisation progress

WASHINGTON: President Donald Trump said that there’s no reason to spend a lot of money on military war games with South Korea, but he warned he could “instantly” relaunch the exercises again and they would be “far bigger than ever before”.

Trump made the comment on Wednesday in a series of tweets that primarily took aim at China, blaming it for lack of progress on getting North Korea to end its nuclear programme, following the president’s landmark summit with Kim Jongun in June.

But there was also a loaded message for Kim: mixing an expression of goodwill to the North Korean autocrat with an implicit military threat that will add to speculation over the direction of Trump’s attempted rapprochement with a longtime adversary.

“The president believes that his relationship with Kim Jong-un is a very good and warm one, and there is no reason at this time to be spending large amounts of money on joint US-South Korea war games,” Trump said, citing what was presented as a White House statement.

“Besides, the president can instantly start the joint exercises again with South Korea, and Japan, if he so chooses. If he does, they will be far bigger than ever before.”

Trump caught military leaders by surprise in June when he announced the suspension with the South, “unless and until we see the future negotiation is not going along like it should”.

He called the drills costly and provocative.

The cancellation was an olive branch to Pyongyang, which has long complained that the exercises were invasion preparations.

Often the North has reacted to the exercises with its own demonstrations of military might, including firing a new intermediate-range missile over Japan last year as a countermeasure to the drills.

There was some hope that the gesture of shelving the fall exercises would foster goodwill and help nudge the North in the denuclearisation talks. But beyond returning the potential remains of about 55 US troops missing from the Korean War, and its continuing suspension in its missile and nuclear tests, there has been little movement from the North.

As a result, the US last week shelved a planned trip to Pyongyang by Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, citing lack of progress on denuclearisation, but remaining open to future talks.