Foreign Policy Advisor Claims Trump Not Serious About US Withdrawal from South Korea

Basically this advisor is stating in the interview that Trump has to say one thing on the campaign trail, but once elected President he will be more flexible on the policies he is campaigning on:

A President Donald Trump will neither abandon South Korea nor let the Asian ally defend itself against threats from North Korea, a top foreign policy adviser to the presumptive Republican presidential nominee said.

Walid Phares, an international relations scholar who serves as Trump’s foreign policy brain, made the remark in an interview with Yonhap News Agency and Yonhap News Television, stressing that Trump’s remarks, such as his call for Seoul to shoulder all costs for U.S. troop presence, should be taken only as an expression of “principles.”  (………..)

“At this point in time he is a candidate. He’s a Republican candidate, practically speaking. So, he will talk about principles, and those principles mean burden-sharing. He wants the South Korean government to share more,” Phares said. “There is a principle … that America alone cannot be defending the world. It does not mean that America wants to withdraw from the world.”

Trump will see “what the South Koreans can offer, or what the Japanese would offer, what our friends in the Middle East could offer. Then he would negotiate. He is good at negotiations,” Phares said of the call for defense burden-sharing.

Such negotiations do not mean Trump will abandon South Korea, Phares said.

“If South Korea is threatened by either North Korea, or other players, a Trump administration would be standing by the South Koreans. There is no idea that we’re going to let South Korea or Japan defend themselves against a threat,” he said.

Referring to Trump’s call for South Korea to shoulder all costs for American troop presence, Phares said that the real estate tycoon “wants to show the maximum” as a negotiator before settling for reality. And such maximum positions could evolve over time, he said.  [Yonhap]

You can read the rest of the interview at the link, but the bottom line is that if Trump is elected the ROK government best be ready to pay more USFK cost sharing than the 50% they are paying now.  Considering Japan is currently paying 75% I would not be surprised if that is the number that Trump may want to settle on.