SEOUL: President Donald Trump’s sudden pledge to discontinue US-South Korean “war games” has sent shockwaves through the South Korean military.
Many security experts have expressed concern that a halt to the annual military exercises could be seen as a major concession to North Korea and eventually lead to the withdrawal of, or a major reduction in, US forces in the South.
“You simply can’t have troops stationed anywhere and not train them,” said Bruce E. Bechtol Jr., associate professor of political science at Angelo State University, Texas.
“So what he (Trump) called ‘war games’ may be changed to something else like ‘field exercises’ or ‘table-top drills,’ but hopefully that doesn’t mean we’re going to stop training to maintain the readiness of the troops defending our friend South Korea.”
About 28,500 US troops are stationed in the South, holding large-scale exercises and computer simulation-based command post drills with South Korean forces every spring and autumn.
The exercises largely focus on enhancing their defense readiness against an attack, with an operational scenario of up to 690,000 US forces being deployed from outside the Korean Peninsula in wartime.
“We haven’t seen any details regarding North Korea’s nuclear disarmament pledge, even though the leaders of the US and North Korea took a symbolic step toward ending their 70 years of hostility during their summit in Singapore,” said Park Hwee-rak, professor of political science at Kookmin University in Seoul.
“Any move or change to weaken the decades-old joint defense posture is likely to bring great risk to the security of South Korea before the North’s complete disarmament,” he added.
“Security is very different from business or gambling. You may decide to invest all your money in a business or gamble for a huge win, but as far as security is concerned, you shouldn’t call an all-in bet. You must prepare for the worst-case scenario.”
South Korean President Moon Jae-in said on Thursday: “If North Korea truly carries out denuclearization measures, sincere dialogue continues and hostilities with the US and South Korea are resolved, there is a need for flexible change in military pressure and a careful review of US-South Korea joint training.”
He referred to “the spirit of mutual trust of the Panmunjom Declaration” of April 27, in which both Koreas promised to end hostile actions against each other.
US and South Korean defense authorities are in close consultation over the matter of stopping joint exercises, said the South’s Ministry of National Defense.
The US ambassador-designate to South Korea, Harry B. Harris Jr., backed Trump’s decision to freeze the drills “in good faith” on the peninsula.
“I believe we should give exercises, major exercises, a pause to see if (North Korean leader) Kim Jong Un is in fact serious about his part of the negotiations,” Harris Jr. said at his Senate confirmation hearing on June 14.
“We were in a different place in 2017,” he added, referring to Pyongyang’s test-firing of ballistic missiles and its sixth nuclear test.
“Today, following the president’s summit with Kim Jong Un in Singapore, I think we’re in a dramatically different place.”
But worries over an eventual pull-out of US troops from the South are lingering, said Shin Won-shik, former deputy commander of South Korea’s joint chiefs of staff.
“It’s like pulling out the linchpins sustaining the security posture in Northeast Asia as well as on the peninsula,” the former three-star general added.
“What I’m most worried about is that a prolonged freeze of joint drills could lead to the pulling of troops out of Korea,” he said.
“It remains unclear how long the denuclearization negotiations will take and how fast it will be completed. If the negotiations are prolonged, talk of US troops pulling out will emerge inevitably.”
Trump said after the summit: “We will be stopping the war games, which will save us a tremendous amount of money.”
Kim Dae-young, an analyst at the Korea Research Institute of National Strategy in Seoul, said: “If cost-sharing negotiations for US troops between Washington and Seoul fail, Trump could have an excuse to push forward with large troop reductions. Then inevitably, the South Korean military would face a major shift in its defense policy, probably with much more burdens in terms of costs and capabilities.”
Seoul’s initiative to take back wartime operational control of its armed forces from the US military will pick up speed, the analyst added.
South Korean generals are in charge of peacetime command of their forces, while in wartime operational control is supposed to be handed over to the chief of the US-South Korea Combined Forces Command. The South aims to take back command authority by 2023.
“Even if inter-Korean relations have improved, strong national defense power is necessary to cope with various threats,” the analyst said, referring to potential territorial disputes with Japan and China.
“But questions still linger over how we could bolster our military power for self-reliant defense, reducing dependence on US forces and not eroding confidence on the alliance of the two militaries.”
Freezing of military drills with US raises South Korean concerns
Freezing of military drills with US raises South Korean concerns
- The exercises largely focus on enhancing their defense readiness against an attack, with an operational scenario of up to 690,000 US forces being deployed from outside the Korean Peninsula in wartime
- US and South Korean defense authorities are in close consultation over the matter of stopping joint exercises, said the South’s Ministry of National Defense
India’s Bollywood star Saif Ali Khan stabbed at Mumbai home — media
- Khan has received six stabbing injuries, with one located close to his spine
- Hospital says the extent of the damage will become clear after the surgery
NEW DELHI: India’s Bollywood star Saif Ali Khan, 54, is being treated for six stabbing injuries following a scuffle early on Thursday with an intruder at his home in the financial capital of Mumbai, media said.
Khan lives in an apartment in the city’s western suburb of Bandra, home to many in the film industry, along with his wife Kareena Kapoor, who is also an actor, and their two children, Jeh and Taimur.
He was taken to a nearby hospital at around 3:30 a.m. on Thursday with six injuries, two deeper than the others, the Hindustan Times newspaper said, citing Niraj Uttamani, the hospital’s chief operating officer.
“One of the injuries is closer to his spine ... We will be able to tell the extent of the damage only after surgery,” it quoted the official as saying.
Police said the assailant fled after the incident and an investigation had been launched, with teams searching for him, media said.
The son of cricketer and former India captain Mansur Ali Khan Pataudi and actress Sharmila Tagore, Khan is among the country’s most bankable stars, having featured in more than 70 films and television series, in some also as producer.
US imposes fresh round of sanctions against Russia ahead of Trump return to White House
- Sanctions target Russia’s military industrial base and evasion schemes
- Congressional approval required to lift some sanctions on critical Russian entities
- China-based entities, Kyrgyzstan financial institution among targets
WASHINGTON: The United States on Wednesday imposed hundreds of sanctions targeting Russia, seeking to increase pressure on Moscow in the Biden administration’s final days and protect some sanctions previously imposed.
The US State and Treasury departments imposed sanctions on over 250 targets, including some based in China, taking aim at Russia’s evasion of US sanctions and its military industrial base.
As part of the action, the Treasury imposed new curbs on almost 100 entities that were already under sanctions, potentially complicating any future efforts to remove the measures.
Russia’s embassy in Washington did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
The Treasury in a statement said Washington was imposing fresh sanctions on almost 100 critical Russian entities — including Russian banks and companies operating in Russia’s energy sector — that were previously sanctioned by the United States. It said the move increases secondary sanctions risk for them.
The new sanctions are issued under an executive order that a senior Treasury official said requires Congress to be notified before any of the actions can be reversed.
Jeremy Paner, a partner at the law firm Hughes Hubbard & Reed, said the actions are “Trump-proofed,” preventing reversal of the additional sanctions without congressional approval.
“You can’t just with the stroke of a pen remove what’s being done,” he said.
Edward Fishman, a former US official who is now a research scholar at Columbia University, called it a “very significant action.”
“It protects these sanctions against sort of any frivolous decision to lift them,” he said. “It gives the new Trump administration more leverage with Russia.”
Trump’s transition team did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
It was unclear how Donald Trump, who succeeds President Joe Biden on Monday, will approach the issue of sanctions on Russia. Trump has been friendly toward Russian President Vladimir Putin in the past and said on Monday that he would aim to meet quickly with him to discuss Ukraine.
When asked about his strategy to end the war, Trump told Newsmax: “Well, there’s only one strategy and it’s up to Putin and I can’t imagine he’s too thrilled about the way it’s gone because it hasn’t gone exactly well for him either.”
Sanctions evasion scheme
Washington also took action against a sanctions evasion scheme established between actors in Russia and China, targeting regional clearing platforms in the two countries that it said have been working to allow cross-border payments for sensitive goods. The Treasury said several Russian banks under US sanctions were participants.
“China firmly opposes any illegal unilateral sanctions and ‘long-arm jurisdiction’,” Liu Pengyu, spokesperson for the Chinese embassy in Washington, said in a statement.
“The normal economic and trade exchanges between China and Russia should not be interfered with or disrupted, and should not be used as a tool to smear and contain China.”
Also hit with sanctions on Wednesday was Keremet Bank, a Kyrgyzstan-based financial institution the Treasury accused of coordinating with Russian officials and a bank identified by the United States as circumventing sanctions.
Keremet Bank did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The US State Department also imposed sanctions on Russian-held Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant, the largest in Europe.
The plant, located in Ukraine’s south east, was captured by Russia shortly after it launched the invasion in 2022. It is shut down but needs external power to keep its nuclear material cool and prevent a meltdown.
The sanctions will not affect its operations, Russian news agencies reported on Wednesday, citing the plant’s spokeswoman.
The Biden administration has imposed rafts of punitive measures targeting Russia over its February 2022 invasion of Ukraine that has killed or wounded thousands and reduced cities to rubble. Washington has repeatedly sought to counter the evasion of its measures.
Less than a week ago, the administration imposed its broadest package of sanctions so far targeting Russia’s oil and gas revenues in an effort to give Kyiv and Trump’s incoming team leverage to reach a deal for peace in Ukraine.
Speaker Johnson removes chair of powerful House Intelligence Committee
WASHINGTON: House Speaker Mike Johnson on Wednesday removed the GOP chairman of the powerful House Intelligence Committee, who was a vocal supporter of assistance for Ukraine and held other views that put him at odds with President-elect Donald Trump.
Johnson told reporters late Wednesday that Rep. Mike Turner, an Ohio Republican, would no longer lead the committee, which oversees the nation’s intelligence agencies and holds tremendous influence over law enforcement and foreign policy. During Trump’s first term, the committee became a hotbed of partisanship as its powers were used to assist the then-president. Johnson last year also gave two Trump allies highly-sought spots on the panel.
Johnson said he made the decision to remove Turner because the “intelligence community and everything related to (the committee) needs a fresh start.”
The Republican speaker, who has aligned himself closely with Trump, said he would soon announce the new chair for the committee.
Johnson went on to praise Turner and say he would play an important role in working with NATO. But Turner’s stances on foreign policy had run afoul of the incoming president, who will take the White House next week with a vision of reshaping the federal government’s intelligence and law enforcement capabilities. Trump has picked fierce loyalists to lead agencies with vast power for surveillance.
In a statement, Turner said: “Under my leadership, we restored the integrity of the Committee and returned its mission to its core focus of national security. The threat from our adversaries is real and requires serious deliberations.”
Turner last year also pushed back on Trump’s false claims that Haitian migrants in his Ohio district were eating pets.
Punchbowl News first reported that Turner had been removed as the chair.
The top Democrat on the committee, Rep. Jim Himes, in a statement called Turner “a serious, security focused lawmaker dedicated at his core to the national security of the United States and to the thoughtful oversight of the Intelligence Community.”
Himes added, “The removal of Chairman Turner makes our nation less secure and is a terrible portent for what’s to come.”
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Associated Press writer Farnoush Amiri contributed.
Biden warns US ‘soul’ at stake with Trump on brink of power
WASHINGTON: US President Joe Biden warned Wednesday that the “soul of America” is still at stake, as he prepared to deliver his farewell address to the nation before the return to power of Donald Trump.
The 82-year-old Democrat will make a primetime speech from the Oval Office of the White House in which he is expected to tout the legacy of his single four-year term.
In a letter previewing his remarks — due to be made at 8:00 p.m. US Eastern time (0100 GMT Thursday) — Biden took an implicit swipe at Republican Trump.
“I ran for president because I believed that the soul of America was at stake. The very nature of who we are was at stake. And, that’s still the case,” Biden said in the letter.
“History is in your hands. The power is in your hands. The idea of America lies in your hands,” he said. “We just have to keep the faith and remember who we are.”
Biden said the United States was stronger than four years ago, when it “stood in a winter of peril” after Trump’s chaotic first term, the Covid pandemic and what he called “the worst attack on our democracy since the Civil War.”
Biden was sworn in just days after the January 6, 2021, attack on the US Capitol by Trump supporters trying to overturn his election loss.
He did not mention Trump by name — but his words clearly echoed previous speeches in which he said he decided to run in the 2020 election because America’s “soul” was at risk from Trump and his supporters, and that Trump was a threat to democracy.
The US president said he had asked the White House to also release a long list of what he termed his administration’s achievements, covering issues ranging from the economy to health care and climate change.
He said the United States had the “strongest economy in the world” and was bringing down inflation — even if public anger over the cost of living was a major factor in the Democrats’ election loss.
“I have given my heart and my soul to our nation,” said Biden, adding that it had been the “privilege of my life to serve this nation for over 50 years.”
The outgoing president has spent much of his final days in power trying to burnish his legacy.
Those efforts got a boost on Wednesday when Israel and Hamas agreed to a ceasefire and hostage release deal, for which Biden says he has been pushing for nearly a year and a half.
“I’m deeply satisfied this day has come, finally come,” Biden said at the White House.
Trump, whose Middle East adviser was involved in the talks, also claimed credit for the “epic” accord.
Biden’s legacy was, however, damaged by his decision to run for a second term despite his age.
The Democrat was forced to drop out of the race last June after a disastrous debate against Trump, 78, who went on to a commanding victory over Biden’s vice president, Kamala Harris.
In a farewell interview in the Washington Post published Wednesday, outgoing First Lady Jill Biden took a dig at the Democratic Party for pressing Biden to drop out.
“Let’s just say I was disappointed with how it unfolded,” she said.
Emotions ran high at the White House.
Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre — part of a team that brought back regular media briefings after Trump ended them during his first term — fought back tears on her last appearance at the famous podium as she described the “honor of a lifetime.”
Gaza truce bittersweet for Biden as Trump takes credit
- Trump had warned Hamas of “hell to pay” if it did not agree to a deal
WASHINGTON: The Gaza ceasefire clinched Wednesday was a bittersweet victory for US President Joe Biden days before he hands over the White House to Donald Trump, who claimed credit — and, most experts say, deserves some.
Biden first proposed the outlines of the deal between Israel and Hamas on May 31 but diplomatic efforts repeatedly came up short, even when Secretary of State Antony Blinken warned in Tel Aviv in August that it may have been the last chance for a deal.
Trump’s Middle East envoy Steve Witkoff marched into Netanyahu’s office on Saturday, forcing the Israeli leader to break the sabbath, and pushed to seal the ceasefire.
The timing has echoes of a 1981 deal on US hostages in Iran, freed from 444 days of captivity moments after Republican Ronald Reagan succeeded Democrat Jimmy Carter, although this time the outgoing and incoming administrations worked together.
In scenes unprecedented in recent US history, Witkoff and Biden’s Middle East adviser Brett McGurk met jointly with the emir of Qatar — a key intermediary between Israel and Hamas — when sealing the deal.
Trump quickly boasted that the “epic” deal “could only have happened” due to his election as US president in November.
Asked if Trump deserved credit, Biden quipped: “Is that a joke?“
Speaking hours before a previously scheduled farewell address to the nation, the outgoing president said he included the Trump team in negotiations so that the United States was “speaking with one voice.”
White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said it was not unexpected for all sides to seek credit for positive news.
“What I can say is, the president got it done,” she said, referring to Biden.
State Department spokesman Matthew Miller said the Trump team’s presence was about demonstrating “continuity” rather than the Republican exerting new pressure.
Biden faced heated criticism from the left of his Democratic Party during its unsuccessful election year over his staunch support of Israel since Palestinian group Hamas’s October 7, 2023, attack.
Biden authorized billions of dollars in weapons for Israel’s relentless retaliatory campaign on Gaza, despite criticizing the strategic US ally for the civilian death toll — which authorities in Gaza say is in the tens of thousands.
“The Biden administration was terrified of the political cost of being seen to be pressing Israel in any way,” said Sarah Leah Whitson, executive director of the rights group Democracy for the Arab World Now.
Trump, while vowing to be even more pro-Israel, was able to make clear to Netanyahu that “I do not want to inherit this,” Whitson said.
“It made me think that all of this would have been possible months ago and we could have saved thousands of Palestinian lives,” she said.
Trump had warned Hamas of “hell to pay” if it did not agree to a deal, which includes in its first phase the release of 33 hostages seized on October 7.
David Khalfa, an expert on Israel at the Jean Jaures Foundation in Paris, said that Trump’s unpredictability likely impacted Hamas.
He also pointed to Netanyahu’s political position heading a hard-right but shaky coalition government.
“There is today an ideological alignment between the American populist right and the Israeli prime minister. So he has very weak room to maneuver against a Trump who doesn’t face the pressures of reelection,” said Khalfa.
Brian Katulis, a senior fellow at the Washington-based Middle East Institute, said a desire by Israel and others for the right optics as Trump takes over could have played a role in sealing the deal.
But a larger factor than Trump was the changing dynamics in the region — the major blows inflicted both on Hamas and its patron Iran, he said.
Israel has devastated Iranian ally Hezbollah in Lebanon and Iran’s own air defenses, with Tehran’s main ally in the Arab world, Syria’s Bashar Assad, ousted last month by rebel forces.
“I don’t think any of the threats and bluster that we saw from Trump were a huge factor on either side. I think it’s mostly a baby that’s fathered by Biden and his team,” Katulis said.
“But I think the sense that there were big question marks on what was coming might have motivated those who were stonewalling,” he said.
Jon Alterman, director of the Middle East program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, agreed that the uncertainty following Trump’s victory contributed to the deal.
Israel and Hamas were negotiating “under the terms that each side had become familiar with” and knew there was a high risk “that the parameters were about to change.”
And if the deal falls apart?
“Then it doesn’t matter who implemented it; there will be plenty of blame to go around,” Alterman said.
