Military readiness of the South Korea-U.S. alliance weakened “counterintuitively” during former President Donald Trump’s personal diplomacy with North Korean leader Kim Jong-un, a former top U.S. envoy to Seoul said Tuesday.

Retired Adm. Harry Harris, who served as the U.S. ambassador to South Korea from 2018-2021, made the remarks, citing the suspension of major South Korea-U.S. military drills, which was aimed at facilitating diplomacy with Pyongyang during Trump’s time in office.

Harris’ remarks came amid speculation that the Republican presidential candidate might revive his leader-to-leader engagement with Kim should he return to the White House. In his recent stump speech, Trump said “getting along” with Kim is a “good thing.”

“The outcome of (Trump’s diplomacy with Kim) was the summits in Singapore, Hanoi and along the DMZ … the snap summit if you will,” Harris said via a video link during a forum hosted by the Korea Development Institute School of Public Policy and Management, the Johns Hopkins
University School of Advanced International Studies and other institutes.

“Counterintuitively again during this time, I think our military readiness actually decreased because of the prohibition against military exercises — significant military exercises, large-scale military exercises on the peninsula,” he added.

Shortly after the first-ever summit between the U.S. and North Korea in Singapore in 2018, Trump unveiled a plan to stop “provocative” and “expensive” war games with the South, which Pyongyang has decried as an invasion rehearsal. Later, the allies suspended major combined exercises to back diplomacy to encourage North Korea’s denuclearization.

Harris also recalled the former Obama administration’s approach toward Pyongyang, which has been dubbed a policy of “strategic patience” — a term that refers to the U.S. waiting patiently until the North shifts towards denuclearization while heaping pressure on it through sanctions, diplomatic isolation and other measures.

“I will note that the Obama ad
ministration’s policy was one that we have now since termed as strategic patience, and it was characterized by nonviolent coercion against North Korea, which is to say sanctions, and dramatically increased the sanctions regime against North Korea in the face of North Koreans’ missile testing and the like,” he said.

“Counterintuitively, perhaps, I think our miliary readiness actually increased during this time as we increased our training and exercising with the South Korean military, as well as our planning against any provocation from North Korea.”

The former ambassador also said that the North Korean leader is unlikely to renounce his regime’s nuclear weapons, while claiming that Kim has been sticking to four goals — getting sanctions relief, keeping his nuclear arsenal, splitting the Seoul-Washington alliance and “dominating” the Korean Peninsula.

“I think it’s naive to think he’s ever going to give up his nuclear weapons,” he said. “I think we have to adjust our thinking to this new reality.”

Harris
also touched on a period of tension between Seoul and Washington over defense cost-sharing negotiations during Trump’s presidency.

“In this case, Washington was seeking a 500 percent increase in … financial support from South Korea,” he recounted.

He also voiced concerns about what he termed an “alliance of convenience” between North Korea, China, Russia and Iran.

“I am worried about that. I think it’s real and I think it’s something that South Korea and the U.S. must face,” he said.

Source: Yonhap News Agency