August 24, 2026

Good morning! Today is Monday, August 24th 2026, and this is The American Conservative's Morning Brief. Liam Childers argues that Trump's decision to scale back joint military exercises with South Korea reflects sound strategic logic, opening room for diplomacy with a more capable North Korea while acknowledging Seoul's growing independence in defining its own defense interests. Kourosh Ziabari traces the unpopular Iran war, now in its 177th day with just 35 percent approval and a $37.5 billion price tag, to decades of fearmongering by hawkish think tanks and self-styled Iran experts who sold Washington a fantasy of easy regime change. and now for the details. We begin on the Korean Peninsula, where President Trump's decision to substantially reduce joint military exercises with South Korea has stirred debate in both Washington and Seoul. Trump framed the move as a response to Seoul's refusal to aid the U.S. war against Iran, and South Korea's foreign minister appears to share that reading. But the office of South Korean President Lee Jae Myung actually welcomed the possibility of warmer U.S. relations with North Korea as a pathway to stability on the peninsula. Writing for The American Conservative, Liam Childers argues Trump has good reason to scale back. Childers notes that North Korea today is more capable than during Trump's first term, having expanded its nuclear and missile arsenal and deepened ties with Moscow and Beijing. Under these conditions, exercises long viewed by Pyongyang as invasion rehearsals may cost more diplomatically than they deliver militarily. Childers points to the collapse of the Hanoi summit as a lesson: Washington's insistence on complete denuclearization, after watching what befell Iraq, Libya, and now Iran, gives Kim Jong Un no rational incentive to disarm. Meanwhile, Childers observes, Washington itself has been quietly redeploying THAAD assets and even the USS George Washington away from Asia toward the Middle East, leaving the Pacific without a single American aircraft carrier. President Lee, rather than treating this as a crisis, has emphasized greater South Korean control over its own defense and pursued a friendlier posture toward Beijing. Childers concludes that securing peace in Asia may require America to do less, not more. Now to the ongoing war with Iran, which entered its 177th day this weekend. According to a Reuters/Ipsos poll of more than 4,500 American adults in early August, just 35 percent approve of the war, up only slightly from 27 percent when it began five months ago. American taxpayers have so far spent at least 37.5 billion dollars on the campaign. Writing for The American Conservative, Kourosh Ziabari examines what he calls the absence of honest advisors in Trump's second term, and traces the war back to decades of fearmongering by a network of hawkish think tanks, media conglomerates, and self-styled Iran experts. Ziabari points to groups like the Foundation for Defense of Democracies and United Against Nuclear Iran, along with figures such as Joshua Muravchik and the late Michael Ledeen, who argued for years that Iran was uniquely immune to diplomacy and could only be dealt with through force. Ziabari argues these voices sold the White House a fantasy: that bombing would swiftly bring regime change and that Iranian leaders would flee to Moscow the moment ordnance began to fall. Instead, he writes, Iran has proven neither a monolith nor a fragile client state. Its borders were not drawn by post-war convention, its institutions are multi-layered, and its people carry a deep antipathy to foreign intervention that predates the 1953 coup. Ziabari cites former National Counterterrorism Center director Joe Kent, who observed that the war is failing because of a fundamental lack of understanding of the country and the region. The stalemate today, Ziabari concludes, belongs on the ledger of the lobbyists and experts who fed Washington misinformation for a generation. Those are today's highlights. For the full stories and more, visit theamericanconservative.com. Thank you for starting your morning with us.