Ending US-South Korea exercises would weaken deterrence, Maxwell argues
David Maxwell, a retired U.S. Army Special Forces colonel who specializes in Northeast Asian security affairs, published an opinion column in UPI on August 29 opposing what he characterized as a proposed “achievable” agreement between President Donald Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un. Maxwell wrote that the proposal would concede several of Kim’s strategic objectives before securing comparable concessions from Pyongyang.
The column responds to a separate article Maxwell described as recommending Trump pursue the agreement. According to Maxwell’s account of the proposal, the deal would accept North Korea’s nuclear weapons status, impose verifiable limits on parts of its nuclear and long-range missile programs, permanently end U.S.-South Korea military exercises, negotiate a peace treaty, improve political and economic relations, and compel Pyongyang to terminate military support for Russia.
“What the author presents as pragmatic diplomacy risks becoming strategic capitulation disguised as realism,” Maxwell wrote.
Maxwell’s central argument is that diplomatic success and strategic success are not the same thing. “The first question should never be whether an agreement is achievable,” he wrote. “The first question should be whether the agreement advances the desired political end state. An agreement can succeed diplomatically and still fail strategically.”
The columnist asserted that the proposal rests on two assumptions he called “dangerous.” First, Maxwell wrote, that Kim Jong Un has abandoned the seven-decade Kim family regime strategy of “subversion through political warfare, coercion and extortion through blackmail diplomacy, and the threat or use of force to achieve domination of the Korean Peninsula.” Second, Maxwell wrote, that Kim has abandoned his longstanding objective of splitting the U.S.-South Korea alliance and removing U.S. forces from the peninsula.
“Kim’s strategy remains divide to conquer,” Maxwell wrote. “Divide the alliance. Weaken extended deterrence. Undermine combined military readiness. Reduce U.S. political commitment. Then increase pressure against the South.”
On military exercises specifically, Maxwell argued that combined training is not a bargaining chip but the mechanism that converts military inventory into credible deterrent capability. “Why would Washington voluntarily weaken the military instrument that gives diplomacy leverage?” he wrote.
On a potential peace treaty, Maxwell argued that formal agreements cannot manufacture political conditions that do not exist. “Peace does not emerge because governments sign a document containing the word ‘peace,’” he wrote. “Paper does not trump steel.”
Maxwell further wrote that accepting North Korea as a permanent nuclear weapons state would have consequences beyond the peninsula. He argued South Korea and Japan would reassess their own security calculations and that confidence in U.S. extended deterrence could weaken precisely when stronger alliance cohesion is needed.
As an alternative objective, Maxwell wrote that Washington should pursue “a secure and stable Korean Peninsula that protects U.S. interests, strengthens the ROK-U.S. alliance and ROK-U.S.-Japan cooperation, deters aggression, and ultimately creates the conditions to resolve the Korea question through a free and unified Korea.”
Maxwell is identified by UPI as executive director of the Korea Regional Review, vice president of the Center for Asia Pacific Strategy, and a senior fellow at the Global Peace Foundation. According to his UPI biography, Maxwell is a retired U.S. Army Special Forces colonel who has spent more than 30 years in the Asia-Indo-Pacific region, was associate director of Georgetown University’s Security Studies Program after retiring from the military, serves on the board of directors of the Committee for Human Rights in North Korea and the OSS Society, and serves as editor at large for the Small Wars Journal.