The US Marine Corps has cancelled Ssangyong, its division-level amphibious landing exercise with South Korea, and gave Seoul the reason in writing: the war in Iran has taken the forces. The drill would have run next month. Xi Jinping arrives at the White House on September 24.
The Marines did not decide this last week. They warned their South Korean counterparts in June that they could not spare the troops, and then made it final. Seoul has known for two months that the Americans could not field the landing force.
Ssangyong is not a parade. In it, American and South Korean marines practice putting troops ashore under fire — the rehearsal for the only kind of operation that matters if the peninsula goes hot. Trump has now removed it from the calendar in the same season he removed the carrier.
He had already come for the larger exercise. Trump ordered Ulchi Freedom Shield scaled back, citing its cost and Seoul's refusal to join him against Iran, and wrote on Truth Social that the drills sent "a signal that was totally inappropriate and hostile." That exercise ended Friday, shrunken. The allies say they are still consulting on when any of it resumes.
