There will come a time when we as a society can safely ignore the content on Truth Social, but alas, we all have miles to go before we sleep.
For anyone who missed it, the week in geopolitics began Sunday evening with a post from President Trump in which the president celebrated his “very good” relationship with North Korean Supreme Leader Kim Jon Un. He cited that relationship as the predicate for substantially reducing this week’s joint military exercises between the U.S. and South Korea, a decision he made a day before those drills were set to begin. In an addendum that Trump wrote was “somewhat unrelated (?),” he noted that South Korea and its president recently said “No thanks!” to joining the U.S. efforts toward the denuclearization of Iran.
23 hours later, Trump punctuated the news with a meme:
And 3,000 people ReTruthed his message.
I think this week’s news is useful as a snapshot of how it’s felt to follow Trump foreign policy for the past two years. Because while the plain text of Trump’s initial message lends credence to the popular notion that he simply admires dictators on a personal level and is happy to punish any ally who isn’t 100% in lockstep with his agenda—as ever, Trump is happy to throw red meat to his critics—there was probably more at play with the South Korea move.
But what, exactly, is at play?
Who is the target audience for that message?
And why?
My honest and disappointing answer is that I’m not sure. Anytime Trump says or does something that sends the foreign policy and think tanker establishment into a fit of hysterics, there’s also an army of posters who emerge with multi-step “it’s time for some game theory”-type explanations of the strategy underlying Trump’s absurd rhetoric. I read all those explanations and sometimes enjoy them, but I’m not quite irresponsible enough to write one. The safest explanation for Trump’s post is that we just don’t know precisely what he’s signaling, and we’ll have to wait awhile to find out. It’s the confusion in the interim that will be my focus today.
First, some background. Most China-watchers and foreign policy experts were appalled by Trump’s post on Sunday night, and that backlash is understandable. South Korea is a critical American partner in shipbuilding, batteries, memory for AI and the entire tech stack, and potentially critical minerals if this tungsten mine can successfully scale its production. And of course, Pyeongtaek, South Korea is also home to Camp Humphreys, a 3,500-acre installation that’s home to more than 40,000 American troops and family members. That’s the largest U.S. military base outside the United States. For nearly 75 years the U.S. security guarantee to South Korea has been foundational to American power projection in the Pacific, while North Korea remains a dangerous nuclear state overseen by a dictator who’s friendly with Xi Jinping, currently has 15,000 troops deployed to aid Vladimir Putin’s war in Ukraine, and brutally subjugates his own people.
To the latter point, the Trump post sparked outrage for reasons that should be familiar to anyone who’s studied his foreign policy rhetoric. Trump is a leader who tends to be friendly and complimentary when addressing America’s greatest enemies while he’s harsh and unsparing with American allies. Many people loathe this strategy, and while I can’t help but roll my eyes at pundits who still feign outrage and surprise at a pattern that’s been very consistent, I do ultimately hate it right along with them. Trump’s staff will often play the good cop with allies and bad cop with adversaries, but that doesn’t make the public posturing any less exhausting. (So South Korea should’ve done more to support the war in Iran? As opposed to Kim Jon Un, the dictator who’s actively supporting Russia, a country that in turn is actively shipping drones and ammunition to Iran?)
Finally, Trump’s announcement on South Korea drills (which have been an annual tradition for nearly 50 years) came mere hours after the Associated Press reported that the U.S. would be moving its lone aircraft carrier in the Pacific, the U.S.S. George Washington, to the Middle East. That triggered another round of fears that the Iran War has been a death blow to American deterrence in the Pacific:
As an aside on that aircraft carrier story: I encourage everyone to calm down. There are political incentives to frame the Iran War as a catastrophic strategic error that will do permanent damage to American credibility and capacity all over the world. Whether that’s ultimately true or not, the people making that argument are likely to jump at any bit of evidence that seems to prove their case. In reality, American aircraft carriers have left the Pacific before (e.g., in 2021), there are still four nuclear submarines in Guam and all kinds of other American and allied assets embedded throughout the region, and per the AP’s own reporting, the U.S. is likely to deploy the U.S.S. Theodore Roosevelt sometime in the near future, clearing the way for the U.S.S. Washington to return to the Pacific. The notion that a temporary reduction in America’s carrier presence in the Pacific is a meaningful shift to U.S. policy in the region, or added incentive for China to invade Taiwan, is nonsense.
Speaking of Taiwan though: when I saw the news from President Trump on Sunday night I was reminded of a conversation I had with a friend after Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi told the Diet that an attempted Chinese invasion of Taiwan could trigger Japanese military intervention. At the time, I mentioned in passing that regardless of what’s said in public by CCP leaders, China has to be fully aware that Japan and South Korea would work with the U.S. and mobilize on Taiwan’s behalf in response to any PLA move on Taiwan.
This was almost 12 months ago now, and I was quickly corrected at the time. “I wouldn’t necessarily put South Korea in that category,” the friend said. “That’s a separate conversation.”
Along those lines, South Korean President Lee Jae Myung is a far-left progressive who has sought warmer relations with China since taking office last year, and those efforts are bearing fruit. The day before Trump’s post, Xi Jinping sent a note of congratulations on South Korea’s National Day and wrote that he “attaches great importance to the development of China-Korea relations” and hopes to “work together with President Lee to ensure that the strategic cooperative partnership between our two countries continues to follow the right path.” During a well-timed visit to Seoul this week, in the wake of Trump’s decision, Chinese foreign minister Wang Yi said, “China-ROK relations have entered a track of improvement and development.”
After taking office last year, Lee became the first president to visit China since 2019, and he’s argued against South Korea using military intervention to defend Taiwan. He has also balked at U.S. efforts to make American forces stationed in South Korea “strategically flexible” in the event of a Taiwan scenario (thereby shifting more burden to South Korea to defend itself against North Korea).
All that’s to say, the US-ROK alliance is more complicated than one might think. Despite economic interdependence, a mutual defense treaty, and 75 years of military history, South Korea under any president would have understandable concerns about provoking China and incinerating its own economy. I also understand their concerns with the U.S. signaling to the world that American troops and military assets deployed to Korea, which Korea helps pay for, would be available for redeployment to the South China Sea in the event of a kinetic conflict around Taiwan. As War on the Rocks observed last year, that’s “precisely the moment when broader regional instability [would be] increasing” and threats to Korean sovereignty could become more acute.
Meanwhile, the U.S. can only spend so much on allies who benefit more from the U.S. than the U.S. does from them. The U.S. has complained in the past few months about discriminatory trade practices in South Korea and brutally slow follow-through on promised U.S. investments, all while the Lee regime telegraphs sympathies to China. If Trump’s decision Sunday night was in part a signal to South Korea that breaking with the United States on these issues and others will have costs, that message wouldn’t be coming out of nowhere. Politico, for example, cited sources who highlighted the investment breakdown as one explanation for Sunday’s Trump post.
So sure, maybe it was all about China, or investments, or perhaps both. Access to America’s economic and security upside requires investment in U.S. growth on one hand and tolerating the downsides of frosty relations with China on the other. But again, we have no idea.
Seoul’s apparent drift toward Beijing is not new, and American investments notwithstanding, the administration has repeatedly praised Lee’s commitment to defense spending. Moreover, given recent history, I can’t stress enough that the impetus for Sunday’s decision could’ve been anything. Jensen Huang wasn’t invited to last spring’s China summit until Trump saw a report about his absence on CNBC and took matters into his own hands (and memorialized his decision with a Truth Social post, of course).
It’s equally possible that pundits are right when they say this decision on joint exercises is a doomed effort to re-open talks with North Korea and Kim—which, to be clear, South Korea would support. Joint exercises were downsized in 2018 for exactly that purpose, and everyone survived (though not much was accomplished with Kim). So look back at last weekend: Marco Rubio called South Korea “an indispensable partner” on August 15th. On the 16th, President Lee expressed a desire for peace talks between North and South Korea. On the 17th, Trump announced that drills would be curtailed in furtherance of peace talks.
Could that timing really be a coincidence? Is it possible that Trump is working in tandem with Korea toward a more stabilized relationship with Kim? At worst, Trump is driving toward an outcome that’s mutually agreeable to the Lee regime, and this effort is not quite the setback to the alliance that many feared earlier in the week. For his part, President Lee released a long statement on Wednesday applauding the U.S. decision and signaling, at least publicly, that the alliance is unaffected.
Or perhaps the motivation had nothing to do with either side of the Korean peninsula. I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention the argument that Trump sent Sunday’s message in a craven bid to distract the media from a very expensive stalemate in Iran, or the claim that Trump citing Kim Jon Un is cover for scaling back the drills as a low-cost concession to China ahead of Xi’s visit to D.C. in September. I actually find the latter theory plausible.
In any event: If you now feel like you’re being held against your will on a hamster wheel where every rung is a half-baked strategic initiative that may or may not be substantiated by reality, then congrats and welcome to the party. This is what it’s like to follow American foreign policy in 2026.
Where the Biden admin had a bias toward deliberation and process that often looked like paralysis, Trump has a bias toward adaptability and action that does have real virtues but also comes with costs—namely, a sense of low-grade chaos that is effectively permanent. Everyone is off balance at all times, including members of the administration. The media fans these flames, but so does the president himself. What results is a foreign policy environment full of lies, threats, and memes, along with an unbelievable number of moving pieces. Don’t believe anyone who speaks too confidently about what any of it means, and don’t trust anyone who’s completely comfortable with how any of this is working.
And if you’re anxious about Korea, don’t worry. We’re already onto ECONOMIC D-DAY as the weekend approaches.
Sharp Text is an extension of the Stratechery Plus podcasts Sharp Tech, Greatest of All Talk, and Sharp China. To subscribe and receive weekly posts via email, click here.