This was something I was surprised to read about over the weekend. Usually former Defense Secretary Robert Gates is pretty measured with his words, but he had some pretty strong things to say about President Obama:
Former Defense Secretary Robert Gates says he felt President Obama “double-crossed” him during his tenure over budget cuts to the Pentagon.
In a Fox News report Friday that explored the president’s approach to the military, Gates said Obama had promised him that there wouldn’t be any “significant changes” in the defense budget for a while.
When asked by Fox whether Obama kept to his word, Gates replied, “Well I think that began to fray. ‘Fray’ may be too gentle a word.”
According to the report, Gates was told to cut hundreds of billions of dollars from the defense budget after already having slashed it.
“I guess I’d have to say I felt double-crossed,” Gates said. “After all those years in Washington, I was naïve.”
The former defense secretary added that he advised Obama to slow the cuts to the military because it would endanger U.S. troops.
“I think he acknowledged that what I was pitching at a minimum was, ‘The world doesn’t seem to be getting better. Before you head down a path of deep cuts in defense, why don’t you take it kind of slow,’ ” he said. “You know it was one of those things where I lost the argument.” [The Hill]
I have always said that Trump’s claims that South Korea is getting a free ride is inaccurate and Ambassador Lippert is calling him out on it as well. Trump should specify what he thinks South Korea should pay if he wants to criticize like this because South Korea pays a lot more than many other nations getting a free ride off of the US defense umbrella. With that said Trump probably fully knows that South Korea pays a lot already and is just repeating the claim that resonates with low information voters:
Amb. Mark Lippert speaks to members of the American Chamber of Commerce in Korea at a Seoul hotel on March 28, 2016. (Yonhap)
U.S. Ambassador to Seoul Mark Lippert on Monday dismissed accusations by Republican presidential front-runner Donald Trump that South Korea is paying little to keep American troops on its soil.
Without naming Trump, Lippert cited various reasons why the allegations aren’t true, including the fact that South Korea shoulders 55 percent of all non-personnel costs and increases its defense spending by 3 to 5 percent annually.
“We feel very good about the resource sharing that we and the Republic of Korea do together as an alliance,” the ambassador said during a meeting with members of the American Chamber of Commerce in Korea. “It is remarkable.”
Lippert was responding to a request for comments on a “U.S. political candidate’s” contentions that the country receives little from South Korea in exchange for its support.
Trump has made repeated claims that South Korea is getting a free ride on defense, saying recently that the U.S. is “constantly sending our ships, sending our planes, doing our war games” but being “reimbursed a fraction of what this is all costing.” He also told The New York Times he would withdraw American troops from South Korea and Japan unless they boost their financial contributions to the upkeep of the U.S. military presence. [Yonhap]
Over at One Free Korea, there is a great update on the current actions going on in Washington, DC in response to the latest North Korean nuclear test. It appears the one thing Democrats and Republicans can agree on is that the “strategic patience” strategy with North Korea has not worked. So Congress is moving forward with their own sanctions package which is forcing the executive branch to preempt this by trying to implement their own new sanctions on North Korea. Whatever the sanctions are it seems to me if it does not include threatening to cut off banks’ access to the US financial system for conducting business with North Korea it will not work to curb their nuclear program:
The leaders of the House Foreign Affairs Committee: Chairman Ed Royce (R, CA) and Ranking Member Elliot Engel (D, NY)]
So far, so good, but then, Nakamura’s sources criticize the President for not trying hard enough to get a deal, which isn’t quite fair. As The Wall Street Journaltold us yesterday, “U.S. officials say they have repeatedly tried to engage North Korea in dialogue about its nuclear program in recent months, but Pyongyang hasn’t responded to their advances.” It sounds self-serving, but the recordsupports that contention. Besides which, the harder American presidents try to “engage” North Korea, the worse their results tend to be.
In this climate, all the administration can really do is shift the focus to its push for tougher sanctions at the U.N. It needs a win in New York to make up for what looks like a general rout of its North Korea (non-) policy in Washington. The administration will probably announce new bilateral sanctions under existing executive orders to preempt some of the momentum in Congress, but I doubt that will appease Congress now. The administration can forget about any new diplomatic initiatives. Its goal now is to avoid a greater crisis, and to keep North Korea from sapping its credibility on other foreign policy issues. [One Free Korea]
Finally someone confronted Donald Trump on the false claims he has been making that the South Koreans pay the US nothing for assisting with their defense. Unfortunately Trump was allowed to now claim the South Koreans pay peanuts which is not true. The ROK has historically been paying anywhere between 43% – 47% of the cost of the US-ROK alliance. This year the ROK is paying $861 million which is not peanuts. Like I have always said, if someone wants to have an argument that the ROK should be paying more, that is a valid argument, but to claim they pay nothing or now pay peanuts is not accurate. However, Mr. Trump likely knows this, but is just making a political argument that sounds good to uninformed voters:
I figured it was only a matter of time before the South Korean media picked up on some of the inaccurate comments about Korea that Donald Trump has been repeating. I figure by now he has to know his comments are untrue, but just repeats them because they resonate with uninformed voters. It is pretty sad that we have gotten to the point that politicians have to craft messages that appeal to the uninformed:
Trump’s rise in popularity also garnered attention in South Korea after his remarks on the security of the two Koreas and the American military involvement.
Initially, South Korean media covered Trump’s remarks against women and immigrants as noteworthy international headlines, speculating that Trump’s popularity was American conservatives’ reaction against Obama’s more liberal policies, such as the Affordable Care Act and marriage equality.
However, Korean interest in Trump increased after he suggested that South Korea gives nothing back in exchange for U.S. military protection.
“(Whenever) they’re in trouble, our military takes care. You know what we get? Nothing,” he said during a South Carolina rally last month.
His comments made in 2011 before the 2012 presidential election also resurfaced in hindsight, when he also said that the U.S. military protected South Korea, but “they don’t pay us.”
Trump made similar remarks on Korea again last Sunday, saying that South Korea makes “a fortune” from their exports. “Between Samsung, and LG, and Sharp, they all come from South Korea,” he said, misidentifying Japanese company Sharp as Korean.
“Why are we defending everybody? And these are rich nations. South Korea makes billions and billions. We get nothing. We are like the stupid people that go and defend everybody,” he added.
His remarks drew some ire from the public, and South Korean news outlets described Trump’s remarks as “misinformed” or “misguided,” citing that South Korea has long shared the cost of having a U.S. military presence in the country.
Korea currently has about 28,500 U.S. troops stationed in the country to help defend against North Korea. Additionally, it is also seen as being in America’s interests to be within geographic proximity to China.
Last year, Korea renewed its agreement with the United States to pay 920 billion won ($770 million) toward the upkeep of U.S. troops here, a 5.8 percent increase from the previous year. [Korea Herald]
Should someone who willing goes into North Korea and does something stupid be considered a hostage?
A U.S. House lawmaker has introduced a bill that appoints a federal officer charged with overseeing efforts to win the release of American citizens held by hostile groups and rogue states like North Korea.
The Hostage Recovery Improvement Act (H.R.1498), introduced by Rep. Duncan Hunter (R-CA) late last month with support from 11 co-sponsors, calls for the president to designate “an existing federal officer to coordinate efforts to secure the release of U.S. citizens who are hostages of hostile groups or state sponsors of terrorism.”
The “Interagency Hostage Recovery Coordinator” should be named within 60 days after the bill’s enactment.
While defining the term “state sponsors of terrorism,” the bill singled out North Korea as a country that should be considered a terrorism sponsor nation under the act, even though the communist nation is no longer on the State Department’s list of states sponsoring terrorism.
U.S. citizens have often been detained in North Korea. [Yonhap]
