Trump’s Korean gambit exposes a shifting East Asian order

Founding director of the China Institute and Mactaggart Research Chair Emeritus at the University of Alberta.

When President Donald Trump ordered the Pentagon to cut the annual United States-South Korea Ulchi Freedom Shield (UFS) military exercise planned for mid-August from 11 days to five, he laid bare the transactional logic of his approach to East Asia. The move blindsided Seoul and drew a calculated rebuff from Pyongyang, underscoring how growing doubts about the US defence umbrella are reshaping strategic calculations across the region.

Trump framed the reduction as a goodwill gesture towards Kim Jong Un, whom he described as a leader he “knows very well” and with whom he has a “very good relationship”. He claimed the drills sent a “totally inappropriate and hostile” signal to Pyongyang and linked the decision directly to Seoul’s refusal to join the US war effort in Iran, declaring that America “can’t go around and protect all of these countries, especially when they’re not there to help us”.

Pyongyang’s response to Trump’s overture was carefully calibrated. Kim Yo Jong, Kim Jong Un’s sister, stated she was “unaware” of any communication between the two leaders, contradicting Trump’s claim of a “very positive” exchange. Yet she reaffirmed her brother’s “personally good memories and feelings” towards the US president, signalling that Pyongyang remains open to engagement, but on very different terms: Washington would have to accept North Korea as a nuclear-armed state and abandon what Pyongyang calls its “hostile” policy. Those demands remain fundamentally at odds with Washington’s insistence on complete denuclearisation, raising the prospect that any November meeting could amount to little more than political theatre unless one side changes its position.

China’s response to the renewed prospect of US-North Korea engagement was more restrained, but no less revealing. Beijing was more circumspect about the prospect. Foreign Ministry Spokesperson Lin Jian declined to comment on a possible Trump-Kim meeting. China’s broader position, however, emerged more clearly when Foreign Minister Wang Yi visited Seoul. He urged South Korea to pursue“genuine strategic autonomy” and avoid “bloc confrontation or taking sides”, while calling for accelerated negotiations on the second phase of the China-South Korea Free Trade Agreement and expanded cooperation in AI, the green transition and the digital economy. More significantly, Wang made no reference to denuclearisation and did not endorse Seoul’s multiparty peace initiative, instead speaking of “peaceful coexistence” on the peninsula. The formulation appears to move Beijing closer to accepting the reality of two separate Korean states, rather than continuing to centre denuclearisation as the organising principle of peninsula diplomacy. Notably, Washington appears to be moving in parallel: in the August 25 readout of the Cho Hyun–Marco Rubio call, the US State Department conspicuously omitted any reference to denuclearisation — a term that had appeared routinely in previous trilateral statements as recently as July 22.

Wang also warned against “Japanese right-wing forces’ attempts to reverse the course of history”, urging that “Japanese militarism never be allowed to rise again”. His warning points directly to the speed and scale of Tokyo’s military transformation. Japan under Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi is moving rapidly to entrench that process. Trump’s latest move did not start this, but it reinforces the logic behind greater Japanese strategic autonomy. On July 31, Tokyo inaugurated its National Intelligence Bureau, strengthening the prime minister’s control over intelligence coordination across government. Japan’s core defence budget has reached a record 9.04 trillion yen ($56.7bn), while Japan says broader defence-related spending has reached its benchmark of 2 percent of gross domestic product ahead of schedule. The buildup is also being embedded in fiscal policy through new defence-related taxes. The pace of this shift has drawn Pyongyang’s wrath: Kim Yo-jong warned Japan that any “wrong choice” would bring “an immediate and unsurvivable, annihilating strike”.

For Beijing, however, the deeper concern is the autonomy of Tokyo’s drive. Japan is seizing the uncertainty surrounding Washington’s commitments to institutionalise military normalisation. Relaxed weapons export rules and deepening symbiosis with defence contractors Mitsubishi Heavy Industries, Kawasaki Heavy Industries and IHI, whose combined defence order backlogs reach 6.25 trillion yen ($39.2bn), signal a Japan building the institutional scaffolding for greater independent action. For Beijing, this is the nightmare scenario: A rapidly remilitarised Japan operating not merely as a US proxy, but as an independent great power asserting its own sphere of influence as US credibility frays.

Seoul, too, is recalibrating. On August 18, after Trump ordered the UFS cut, President Lee Jae Myung renewed his push to regain wartime operational control of South Korean forces and accelerate plans for nuclear-powered submarines, arguing that stronger independent defence capabilities should complement the US alliance.