North Korean leader Kim Jong Un needs the ROK/U.S. Combined Forces Command to conduct military exercises. For Kim, it is a strategic necessity.
Not because it improves his military capabilities, obviously, but because these exercises demonstrate the indispensable enemy crucial to his narrative of political warfare.
The very existence of joint South Korea-U.S. training exercises gives Kim the perfect foil, allowing him to manufacture a crisis to justify his oppression at home, his confrontation abroad, and his influence campaigns against the Seoul-Washington alliance.
Externalizing Internal Crisis
When Kim is under stress – and he often is – he finds a way to shift blame outward. His regime faces persistent structural pressures: a broken economy, elite instability, growing information penetration from the outside world, and cracks in the regime’s ideological control. As any totalitarian dictator does, Kim reaches for his most reliable coping mechanism: He deflects from internal failures by focusing on external threats.
That’s where South Korea-U.S. exercises come in.
Every time the South Korean and U.S. militaries conduct combined training, Kim responds with vitriol, threats, and provocations. He accuses the alliance of preparing for invasion and war. This is a lie. These are defensive exercises, conducted transparently to ensure readiness against possible North Korean aggression. The mission of the ROK/U.S. Combined Forces Command is clear: Deter war, and, if necessary, defeat a North Korean attack.
But to Kim, these exercises are valuable as political fodder.
He uses them to rally domestic support, justify his weapons programs, and portray the U.S. and South Korea as imperial aggressors. This is classic guerilla diplomacy, a term George Kennan, the father of political warfare, might recognize.
The target is not just the battlefield, but the political will of your adversaries.
The Wedge Strategy: Halt the Exercises, Break the Alliance
Kim’s political-warfare strategy is built on a long-term objective: to force U.S. troops off the Korean Peninsula. He knows he cannot achieve that by direct military action. He will lose a war against the combined might of South Korea and the U.S. His strategy, therefore, is to win without fighting by undermining the cohesion of the enemy alliance.
K2 Black Panther Tank Like In Poland. Image Credit: ROK Government.
K2 Black Panther Tank. Image Credit: Polish Ministry of Defense.
K2 Black Panther Tank from South Korea. Image Credit: Creative Commons.
A key intermediate objective in this campaign is the cancellation of combined exercises.
Kim plays the long game. He makes escalatory threats before and during each training event: missile launches, nuclear rhetoric, threats of “unimaginable consequences.” His goal isn’t just to provoke fear. It’s to give political cover to sympathetic or appeasement-minded elements in Seoul and Washington who seek to reduce tensions by offering concessions.
There’s a persistent belief among some South Korean and U.S. administrations that canceling exercises will “create the conditions for dialogue.” That’s the trap. The very act of suspending training, intended as a diplomatic olive branch, becomes a strategic win for Kim.
When exercises are halted:
-Readiness atrophies. The ROK/U.S. Combined Forces Command loses its edge, making deterrence less credible.
-Alliance trust erodes. U.S. and ROK forces operate with increasing uncertainty.
-Narrative legitimacy shifts. Kim can claim victory, both domestically and globally.
Once training stops, it becomes easier to question the need for a robust U.S. troop presence in South Korea. And when troops cannot train, political calls for their removal gain momentum. Kim understands this. That’s why every time we cancel or reduce exercises, he seizes the narrative, claiming that the alliance is weakening, that peace is possible without U.S. forces on the peninsula, and that this would be a victory for Korean self-determination.
Except it’s all a ruse. And if the U.S. and South Korea fall for it, they play directly into his hands.
Political Warfare with Juche Characteristics
Kim’s approach is grounded in what I have called “political warfare with Juche characteristics.” It does not stop at propaganda. He has a coherent strategy designed to manipulate perceptions, shape the information environment, and erode enemy will.
ROK/U.S. exercises are an obstacle to that strategy. They signal unity, resolve, and deterrent capability. They are tangible evidence that the alliance remains vigilant, trained, and prepared. That’s why Kim needs them to stop, not because they threaten his regime militarily, but because they threaten his narrative politically.
His information operations revolve around exercises. He sends statements to the United Nations, mobilizes friendly media, activates front organizations in the South, and amplifies disinformation through global networks. The target is not the battlefield; it’s public opinion in Seoul and Washington.
And it works – when his opponents let it.
Why We Must Continue to Train
Seoul and Washington must not let tactical decisions sabotage strategic objectives. Every ROK/U.S. exercise is a demonstration of alliance resolve, operational readiness, and deterrence. It also creates and protects a counter-narrative.
Kim wants to portray the U.S. as a destabilizing outsider, and South Korea as a client state. But when South Korean and U.S. forces train together, as an integrated command with shared leadership and combined planning, they show what true partnership looks like. They show the people of South Korea, and people throughout the region, that they are not preparing for war, but preventing it.
To cancel exercises in hopes of dialogue is to misunderstand Kim’s intent. He does not want peaceful coexistence. He wants to dominate the peninsula under the rule of the Guerrilla Dynasty and impose a gulag state.
As I’ve written before, readiness is deterrence. The moment the allies stop training, they invite miscalculation. The day they stop acting like an alliance is the day Kim’s political warfare strategy starts to win.
Conclusion
Kim Jong Un needs ROK/U.S. exercises – so he can attack them. He needs them to justify his oppression, sustain his threats, and advance his strategy to divide the alliance and remove U.S. forces from the peninsula. But if Seoul and Washington allow his narrative to shape their decisions, they surrender the initiative to him.
The best counter to Kim’s political warfare is clarity, unity, and readiness.
And that means we train. Always. No matter the noise.
About the Author: David Maxwell
David Maxwell is a retired U.S. Army Special Forces Colonel who has spent more than 30 years in the Asia Pacific region (primarily Korea, Japan, and the Philippines) as a practitioner, specializing in Northeast Asian Security Affairs and irregular, unconventional, and political warfare. He is the Vice President of the Center for Asia Pacific Strategy and a Senior Fellow at the Global Peace Foundation (where he focuses on a free and unified Korea). He commanded the Joint Special Operations Task Force Philippines during the war on terrorism and is the former J5 and Chief of Staff of the Special Operations Command Korea, and G3 of the US Army Special Operations Command. His final military assignment was teaching national security strategy as a member of the military faculty at the National War College. He was educated at Miami University, the University of Pineland, the School of Advanced Military Studies, and the National War College. Following retirement, he was the Associate Director of the Security Studies Program at Georgetown University. He is a member of the board of directors of the Committee for Human Rights in North Korea, The International Council on Korean Studies, and the OSS Society, and on the board of advisers of Spirit of America, the Special Operations Association of America, and is the editor-at -large at Small Wars Journal. You can follow him on X: @DavidMaxwell161.
Military Affairs
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Kepet
August 21, 2025 at 11:14 pm
Can anyone tell Trump that NATO exercises are exactly as important as ROK/ US. exercises? The same applies to NATO exercises with US participation, which Trump stopped. As long as the US has the leadership also over European NATO forces and that’s the case, SACEUR is always in US hands, it’s an integral component of NATO vigilance, that the US is training with their partners, or Russia can shift blame, like they do now.
Bankotsu
August 22, 2025 at 11:56 am
Like U.S. needs Russia and China to maintain one trillion dollar military budget.
pagar
August 22, 2025 at 12:44 pm
The US along with various NATO entities conducted exercise rapid trident with ukraine from about 2013 to 2021, even though ukraine isn’t a NATO member at all.
Due to those exercises, and very relentless dogbarking by washington and brussels, and well-known CIA participation in the donbass conflict, war finally broke out in feb 2022.
So, the ultimate aim of the ROK-US exercises is none other than to kickstart another fresh war on the korean peninsula, a la ukraine.
After all, the 1950s korea war was and still regarded as a piece of unfinished US business, with washington failing to extinguish the existence of north korea.
Will it succeed this time around. Unlikely.
Swamplaw Yankee
August 24, 2025 at 1:58 am
“The Gulag State”. How about the “Axis of Gulag States”!
Because the USA had a forceful stonewall against helping the Han people with ammo and hardware from 1945 – 1950 the USA was the proud “papa” of the CCP of Mao Tse tong. As Stalin barked out his Redlines, the US State Department brass rushed out to install Stalin’s Commie Puppet ( Mao) and betray their faithful war allies, the ancient independent Han Chinese.
Then, the USA decided to ignore the Korea problem. Like, is this not a history every USMC recruit knows by heart?
Notice how Canada decided to play the “long game” to super fast turn from a first rate world military power in May 1945 to a nothing world military puff in August 2025. With the near zero GNP tax cash devoted to it’s military, Canada can match North Korea in sending the very same number of Canadian troops into Ukraine to battle the North Koreans now inside Ukraine to genocide Ukrainians. Not!
Oh, no! The brave Canadians are so very ( poop their pants) scared of facing off against those muslim North Koreans killing Ukrainians in Ukraine, are they! Yet, the same brave Canucks bravely fake “face off” against the MAGA without any prompting!
Well, then, what about that hugely populated Mexico with all its very rich cartels? The very brave Mexicans want to get inside the Ukraine to face off against the muslim North Koreans killing Catholic Ukrainians in Ukraine! They don’t? Come on. The Mexicans don’t want to place a Mexican nickle into NATO reality, as well.
But these two states want the USA to tax Yankee citizens so as to show the “flag” somewhere far, far away. They want the USA to pick up the NATO + NORAD bills as well.
These two places also want to trade with the USA, pretend neighbour nice, but NOT pay any of the huge bills the USA has to pay with tax returns and ( say in the Pacific) to keep these hundreds of millions of free loaders in the high levels of luxury they have become so accustomed to.
Got it! Or, maybe, not really. -30-
The two countries refuse