U.S. President Donald Trump’s latest moves on the Korean Peninsula should alarm Seoul — not because Washington is considering renewed dialogue with Pyongyang, but because the president appears increasingly willing to subordinate a longstanding alliance to short-term political calculations.

On the eve of the annual South Korea-U.S. military exercise, Trump ordered the Pentagon to “substantially” scale back the drills, citing their cost and allegedly provocative nature. More revealingly, he invoked his “very good relationship” with North Korean leader Kim Jong-un. He also complained that President Lee Jae Myung had declined his request for South Korean support for U.S.' military campaign against Iran. A day later, Trump said Kim had responded to his latest outreach for dialogue.

The timing is difficult to dismiss as coincidence.

Trump appears to be reviving the playbook of his first term: reduce military pressure on North Korea, emphasize his personal rapport with Kim and seek a dramatic leader-to-leader bargain. But the circumstances have changed profoundly. North Korea is more heavily armed, its nuclear and missile capabilities have advanced, and its military ties with Russia have deepened. Meanwhile, Washington is bogged down in a prolonged Iran war that is consuming military resources and exposing the limits of U.S. power to compel Tehran to capitulate.

Against this backdrop, weakening a central component of deterrence on the Korean Peninsula looks less like carefully calibrated strategy than a unilateral political gesture.

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Trump has long viewed alliances through a transactional lens. His latest remarks make that approach particularly........

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