SEOUL, Aug. 29 -- Three weeks after Donald Trump shortened the main bilateral US-South Korea military exercise by half and three days after the US Marine Corps confirmed it was cancelling the biennial Ssangyong landing drill entirely, US Pacific Command announced Friday that the trilateral Freedom Edge exercise with South Korea and Japan would proceed as scheduled - September 7 through 11, in international waters off Jeju Island.

The announcement lands with the weight of its context. Trump's gestures toward North Korea over the past six weeks - cutting Ulchi Freedom Shield from eleven days to five, absorbing the Ssangyong cancellation without public comment - were presented in Washington as diplomatic signals: evidence of goodwill toward...