Cutting Drills, Cutting Credibility

A prince who shortens a military exercise in the middle of a tense frontier tells you two things at once: where he thinks the real battle lies, and how he prices risk. Here the order to scale back the Ulchi Freedom Shield drills is said to serve a trade design, pressuring South Korea to hurry a vast investment into the United States in exchange for tariff relief. So the field where soldiers practice for war becomes a bargaining chip in a commercial negotiation. This is not new. In my time, princes sold fortresses for dowries. But when a fortress is in pawn, everyone studies who holds the keys and who pays the interest.

North Korea answers this theatre with its own spectacle: a barrage of short-range ballistic missiles before and after the drills, and a public statement that the reduction is “unworthy of comment” and does not alter the “provocative and offensive” nature of the exercises. This is the effectual truth: the unilateral concession wins no restraint from Pyongyang, only contempt. When the sister of the northern prince proclaims that relations with the American president remain “still excellent” while dismissing the move as nothing, she separates the man from the policy. She flatters the friendship and scorns the gesture. It costs her nothing and raises her brother’s price.

As I argued in The Prince, especially in the chapter where W. K. Marriott translates me on virtù and fortune, a wise ruler assumes that others will follow their interest, not his hopes. The American president’s incentive is plain: maintain his own authority and the power of his state, using whatever levers—tariffs, investments, drills—will bend allies and charm adversaries. There is no shame in that; the shame lies in mismeasuring the instruments. To make a core deterrent posture serve as pressure on Seoul, while also presenting it as a friendly signal to Pyongyang, is to ask the same coin to buy two opposite goods. Money so overcommitted is usually counterfeit.

No reform survives without arms of its own. When I wrote that princes who rely on mercenaries or auxiliaries lose their states, I meant that power borrowed is power owed, and the creditor chooses the hour of payment. Here, the “arms” that uphold the current order on the peninsula are not merely the soldiers but the visible regularity and seriousness of their exercises. To halve or hasten these drills without a compensating show of other strength—clear conditions, enforcement mechanisms, unified messaging with Seoul—is to disarm the reform before it is born. North Korea, far from being bound into a new order, answers with more missiles; South Korea, watching, sees its security currency spent to service a trade demand.

Appearances, in such matters, are not ornaments but fortifications. In The Discourses, as Ninian Hill Thomson renders me, I praise the Roman tumults because they produced institutions that let the people see the Republic defending itself. These annual exercises play a similar role: they reassure South Korea that the alliance is real and remind the North that any aggression meets a prepared response. To cut them short on Washington’s word, for reasons tied to investment schedules, teaches Seoul that this reassurance is negotiable. Allies begin to ask, as some already do in your reports, whether American credibility and reliability can be counted on beyond the mood of a single administration. Once that question takes root, every future promise of protection is discounted.

North Korea, by contrast, displays a rough kind of virtù. Before the drills begin, it warns of “a new level of a deterrent.” Then it lights off missiles in sequence, before and after, to prove that the threat was not idle. It publicly derides the reduction of exercises while still hinting at “excellent” personal ties with the American leader, thus increasing leverage on both Washington and Seoul. This is how a smaller power exploits fortuna: when the greater prince seeks a “bromance,” as you call it, the lesser tests boundaries, raises his demands, and works to drive a wedge between the great power and its ally. The Romans faced this twice with their Italian confederates; they learned, belatedly, that caresses to a rival city, if not balanced by honors and arms for one’s friends, breed only suspicion.

Some will answer that the status quo was dangerous anyway, that creative risk is needed, that a shorter drill is a small price for even a chance at reducing tensions or securing economic gains. I do not dismiss this. New modes and orders always seem reckless, and sometimes fortune rewards the gambler. But prudence requires that when you unsettle an old balance, you erect new dykes and barriers at once: bind Seoul more tightly through transparent consultation, specify the conditions under which drills will be restored or expanded, demand concrete reciprocal steps from Pyongyang beyond compliments about “excellent” relations. None of this appears in the thin reports we have. What we see instead is a gesture extended into the void, and a void that answers with rockets.

So I judge the strategy as follows: it relies too heavily on fortune and too little on virtù. It spends visible arms—drills, reputation, alliance solidarity—without securing new instruments to maintain the state’s position; it treats the people and leaders of South Korea as a complicating factor rather than a foundation; it allows an enemy to test and mock a concession without cost. A prince may use theatre, but he must never let others direct the play. When your maneuvers become another’s backdrop, you are no longer shaping events, only decorating them.