War games are important. Even within one’s own forces, the fog of battle can lead to confusion, friendly fire, missed signals, crossed communications, standardization and language problems, command and control priorities…the list goes on. No amount of training can fully eliminate these problems, but frequent drills and exercises can minimize them by preparing personnel and establishing work-arounds and Plan B’s, and alerting commanders to potential problems and bottlenecks. This is particularly important when working with foreign forces that speak different languages, and use different types of equipment, frequencies, codes and procedures. My last deployment in the Navy was a month of naval maneuvers in the North Atlantic with elements of the UK, Canadian, Dutch and German navies. I was on the bridge and got to see it all go down right in front of me. NATO conducted these exercises frequently, but in spite of that, we had numerous foul-ups–especially when the Russian Navy began uninvited participation in the exercise. Our mission was to attack Norway, the Soviets were doing their best to stop us. I’m sure we both learned a great deal.

It appears Mr Trump has suspended our exercises with S Korean forces as part of his preliminary peace deal with the North. Although skipping these drills just one year will probably not unduly threaten our operational capabilities with ROK forces, it certainly is not going to help. After all, there is a reason the North is so insistent on our abandoning these maneuvers. And its not too clear to me just what we have gotten from the DPRK in return. So far, they have conceded nothing in writing except the dismantling of a rocket engine test facility. (I doubt it is a key component of their WMD development program.)

It will be interesting to compare the final implementation of these haphazard and hastily improvised negotiations with the multi-national, highly documented, intricately detailed and thoroughly negotiated deals Obama did with Iran and Cuba, and which were so summarily dismissed by the GOP as inadequate and hasty. For starters, the Republicans will be forced to back a Trump deal that has not even mentioned human rights abuses or participation in international terrorist acts.

Maybe we could get Benjamin Netanyahu and the Miami exile Cubans to consult for us.