Camp Humphreys is the largest US overseas military base in the world. More than five square miles, it contains a huge runway and is home to a garrison of more than half of the 28,000 US army personnel located in South Korea. Its construction was intended to place most US soldiers in South Korea a safer distance from North Korean artillery as it lies nearly 100km south of Seoul, the capital of South Korea, which is only an uncomfortable 38km from the border with Kim Jong-un’s despotic workers’ paradise.
The base was described by the US army in 2017 as its “largest power projection platform in the Pacific”. The cost of its expansion, about $11 billion, was largely paid for by the South Koreans. Back in 2019, when construction finished, Trump extracted massive payments from South Korea under a “cost plus 50 per cent” policy in which allies were required to pay not merely for the US presence but an extra 50 per cent as a kind of Trumpian protection racket.
Not content with that mobster-like squeeze, Trump then demanded that Camp Humphreys be made into US sovereign territory, a demand that South Korea refused, relying on its constitution.
At that time Trump was engaged in his failed war of threats and bombast against the North Korean tyrant, Kim. Demanding that Kim abandon its nuclear weapons, Trump threatened North Korea with “fire and fury”. He called Kim “little rocket man”.
As with Iran today, Trump’s threats didn’t work. Trump then resorted to meetings with Kim and signed an agreement that contained a ludicrous promise by Kim to “work towards” de-nuclearising the entire Korean peninsula. Kim has no intention of doing so. But Trump claimed a diplomatic success. The result is that North Korea is now a nuclear power and is assisted in its weapons development by Putin’s Russia.
North Korea is actively assisting Putin’s murderous war of invasion in Ukraine, sending thousands of soldiers and huge volumes of weapons to bolster the flagging Russian attempts to subjugate Ukraine.
In January of this year, Trump increased tariffs on South Korea from 15 per cent to 25 per cent complaining that the South Koreans were slow in implementing a “deal” under which Trump has extorted a promise that South Korea will invest $350 billion in American industry.
This week, Trump, the idiot king, decided to severely scale back US involvement in annual joint military exercises with the South Koreans. Announcing this volte-face in US policy and practice, Trump wrote on his Truth Social platform: “Based on my very good relationship with Kim Jong-un, of North Korea, I am not happy with the fact that the United States has, long ago, agreed to participate in Joint Military Exercises with South Korea.
[ Trump’s move to cut South Korea drills raises concerns among US allies in AsiaOpens in new window ]
“These exercises are not only costly, with much of these costs paid for by the United States of America (as usual!) but send a signal that is totally inappropriate and hostile to a Country that, as long as Donald J Trump has been President has been unthreatening and respectful.”
He added bizarrely: “While somewhat unrelated (?) I recently asked the President of South Korea if they would like to join us in the Denuclearization of Islamic Republic of Iran and they said, “No thanks!”.”
So, there you have it. Trump claims to be on the best of terms with Kim, and President Xi of China, and President Putin of Russia, each of whom is threatening his erstwhile allies, and with Prime Minister Netanyahu of Israel, who suckered him into his ludicrous, losing war with Iran, which will cost the US more than $100 billion in the long run – not to mention the loss of international standing and respect on an unprecedented scale.
What a shameful, disreputable clown is Trump. He stabs his South Korean ally in the back because a nuclearised North Korea – a participant in Putin’s war on Ukraine – is showing him respect, and because North Korea’s programme of missile and submarine-based nuclear technology is not threatening the US. Just whom does it threaten?
And Trump wants to visit Ireland next month on the important business of presenting a trophy at the Irish Open in Doonbeg and the equally important turning of the sod for the new US embassy in what journalists describe as “leafy” Dublin 4.
[ Why Maga sees Europe as an ideological battlegroundOpens in new window ]
How he will get from the Phoenix Park to Ballsbridge is a closely guarded secret. Perhaps DAA could lend him a food container for maximum secrecy and security far from the madding crowd of protesters.
He won’t be much welcomed by the well-to-do residents of the former Pembroke estate who will be clutching their pearls at the prospect of mass demonstrations and disorder.
Trump’s second term in office is not yet half over. He is plumbing unexplored depths of unpopularity. It would all be comic if it hadn’t the huge potential to be tragic for us all.
