{"id":4906,"date":"2026-08-17T22:11:31","date_gmt":"2026-08-17T22:11:31","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/nextaddressamerica.com\/?p=4906"},"modified":"2026-08-17T22:11:31","modified_gmt":"2026-08-17T22:11:31","slug":"conservatives-pile-on-trump-for-making-us-weaker","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/nextaddressamerica.com\/?p=4906","title":{"rendered":"Conservatives pile on Trump for making US weaker"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

President Donald Trump\u2019s recent decision to scale down American military exercises in South Korea, which he said is linked to that nation\u2019s refusal to help in the US-Israel war against Iran, was just met with scathing criticism by a foreign policy expert.<\/p>\n

Read more Pirro\u2019s \u2018galaxy-brain plan\u2019 to appease Trump will \u2018spectacularly backfire\u2019<\/a><\/p>\n

\u201cThanks to @realDailyWire for publishing my commentary about President Trump\u2019s order to scale down military exercises with South Korea,\u201d Michael Sobolik, a Senior Fellow in Indo-Pacific Studies at the American Foreign Policy Council (AFPC), posted on X. In the attached article, he warned that \u201cconfusing adversaries and allies is a basic foreign policy mistake. Leveraging enemies to attack friends is a deeper failure. President Trump committed both errors on Sunday when he announced that he was ordering the Pentagon to \u2018substantially reduce the Joint Military Exercises\u2019 with South Korea.\u201d<\/p>\n

Noting that Trump earlier claimed America didn\u2019t need South Korea in its effort against Iran, Sobolik added that even though Seoul has given Trump valid cause for criticism \u2014 most importantly by cozying up to China \u2014 it does not serve America\u2019s interests to weaken our alliance with that nation.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt is equally true that America\u2019s partners should expect the global hegemony to act predictably in its own interests,\u201d Sobolik wrote. \u201cRegardless of Seoul\u2019s behavior, Washington benefits when Pyongyang is hemmed in and deterred from adventurism and belligerence. More broadly, America\u2019s interests demand that North Korea never unify the peninsula. For these reasons alone, military exercises with South Korea should persist.\u201d<\/p>\n

Furthering his theme of the danger of confusing allies and adversaries, Sobolik warned that it was \u201clike a chef mistaking sugar for salt. Trump needs to maintain deterrence in East Asia. Two wars are already raging in Eastern Europe and the Middle East. In response to the latter, the Pentagon recently redeployed the USS George Washington from the Indo-Pacific to the Persian Gulf to relieve the USS Abraham Lincoln. No carriers are now in or near East Asia.\u201d<\/p>\n

He added, \u201cCompounding this capability shortfall is the drawdown of Tomahawk missiles and other standoff platforms the Pentagon would need in a China scenario. Trump is coupling a numbers problem with a judgment problem.\u201d<\/p>\n

Overall Sobolik concluded that through his scale down Trump \u201cis projecting weakness to Kim Jong-un\u2019s northern neighbor and East Asia\u2019s most powerful dictator. Canceling military exercises with South Korea is likely unfinished business from Trump\u2019s first term. The day may come when the president sees the wisdom of his former advisors who counseled against doing so.\u201d<\/p>\n

Read more Trump\u2019s \u2018obvious neurological decay\u2019 poses historic danger: diplomat<\/a><\/p>\n

Sobolik is not alone in criticizing Trump\u2019s decision. Writing on Monday, The i Paper’s Max Melzer described it as “latest in a series of moves minimizing America\u2019s presence in the Asia-Pacific region” and argued that it will strengthen China. Additionally, Melzer argued that \u201cthe announcement was unusual given it was apparently a unilateral decision made just days before the drills were set to begin.”<\/p>\n

Jane Hardy, a former Australian envoy to the U.S. Indo-Pacific Command and now a non-resident senior fellow at the Australian Strategic Policy Institute, told Melzer that \u201cChina is the beneficiary of almost everything that Trump does. China, now, holds so many cards. It is a country that dominates the world economy, it is developing highly sophisticated industry, it has overtaken Japan and Germany, I believe, in its assessed production of strategic goods, and it is the only country in the world that can rival the US on the new front \u2013 the new front, of course, being artificial intelligence.\u201d<\/p>\n

Conservative MS NOW host Joe Scarborough was even more angry, blasting Trump for his “love letters” to North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un, who the former Florida Republican congressman characterized as the “worst, most repressive tyrant on the face of the earth.”<\/p>\n

Foreign policy expert Richard Haass, on MS NOW, said that Trump\u2019s actions in South Korea help explain why many allies feel they “can no longer trust the United States.”<\/p>\n

Criticism of Trump\u2019s actions toward the two Korean nations trace all the way back to 2019. Speaking with this journalist for Salon at the time, former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright pointed out that \u201cwhen I was in North Korea [President] Kim Jong-il, the father of the current president there, said that he didn\u2019t have any problems with us having our troops in South Korea.\u201d<\/p>\n

She continued, \u201cI do think that what is worrisome to me is, in an effort to be flattered by Kim Jong-un, that he gives away something that might have a longer term effect for the next administration.\u201d<\/p>\n

Read more Judge hands Trump 23rd straight loss as she rips apart \u2018fishing expedition\u2019<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

President Donald Trump\u2019s recent decision to scale down American military exercises in South Korea, which he said is linked to that nation\u2019s refusal to help in the US-Israel war against Iran, was just met with scathing criticism by a foreign policy expert.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":711,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4906","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news"],"yoast_head":"\nConservatives pile on Trump for making US weaker - Next Address America<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/nextaddressamerica.com\/?p=4906\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Conservatives pile on Trump for making US weaker - 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