Trump Will Make South Korea Pay For His Iran Humiliation

Last winter, Donald Trump plunged recklessly into war with Iran.

The United States is now losing that conflict.

Iran remains defiant, much of the world economy is more threatened now than it was six months ago, U.S. military resources are overextended, and munition stores are dangerously depleted.

Trump and the United States have suffered one embarrassment after another; last week, he had to sneak away from the region on a backup plane because of a possible assassination threat from Tehran.

And so the president of the United States has taken the logical next step: He is punishing South Korea, a loyal American friend, and tempting U.S. enemies to doubt America’s will to defend its allies.

Early Sunday evening, Trump instructed the Defense Department to “substantially reduce” its participation in an annual joint military exercise with the South Koreans.

He did this, he said in a post on Truth Social, in part because such activities are expensive, but worse, they are insulting to his friends in North Korea, a country that has been “unthreatening and respectful” while he’s been in office. (Trump seems unconcerned about the dozens of nuclear weapons Pyongyang is pointing at U.S. and South Korean forces—many of them developed on his watch.

Just a reminder: There are roughly 28,500 American troops currently stationed in South Korea, some just a few miles from the DMZ.) More to the point, he complained that the South Koreans have not helped him defeat Iran: While somewhat unrelated (?), I recently asked the President of South Korea if they would like to join us in the Denuclearization of the Islamic Republic of Iran, and they said, “No thanks!” When Trump makes the effort to say something is “unrelated” to his actions (and then adds a coy question mark) it usually means it is completely related—and probably his central motivation.

Scaling back the exercise is, of course, an insane decision, which does nothing but hurt an ally, and tempt an adversary to think—correctly—that American leadership is feckless.

You could be forgiven for wondering why South Korea and the rest of the free world must pay for Donald Trump’s failures.

Such confusion is understandable, except that in Trump’s world, every loss, every defeat, is a personal insult.

When things go wrong, someone must be held responsible—and that someone is never Donald Trump.

America and the rest of the world are now witnessing a public exhibition of narcissistic rage.

Trump embarked on a war for personal glory, and what he got instead was ongoing humiliation.