South Korean marines participate in a U.S.-South Korea joint drill in Pohang, South Korea, in 2015. REUTERS/Kim Hong-Ji
Business Insider: Trump's North Korea policy has hurt the US military — and lives are at risk if his diplomacy fails
* President Donald Trump's surprise concession to North Korean leader Kim Jong Un was cancelling military drills the US and South Korea used to hold.
* But it has come back to bite the US military, by decreasing the readiness of the 28,000 troops South Korea.
* US Army General Robert Abrams, who is likely to be the next commander of the US forces in South Korea, said US military readiness in the country is down after missing a year of military drills.
* Abrams said he thought he could mitigate the loss, and expressed hope that diplomatic efforts could work.
* But the US hasn't gained much from Trump's concession, and now the troops in South Korea find themselves at increased risk.
President Donald Trump's surprise concession to North Korean leader Kim Jong Un has come back to bite the US military in the form of decreasing readiness of the 28,000 troops in South Korea.
Trump emerged from a day-long meeting with Kim Jong Un in Singapore in June on no sleep, and made the admitted that he had agreed to halt US-South Korean military exercises in a verbal deal with Kim. He got little back in terms of tangible results.
The message appeared to shock both South Korea and the Pentagon, who gave a scrambled response.
Read more ....
WNU Editor: The Pentagon has expressed its concerns, and their concerns are valid .... Suspending Korea exercises caused slight dip in readiness: U.S. general (Reuters). More here .... US-S.Korea military readiness hurt by drill pause (AFP). But diplomacy sometimes must take precedent over military preparedness to kick-start negotiations, and this is one of those cases.
