The joint US-South Korea Foal Eagle and Key Resolve military exercises began on Sunday with nearly 300,000 South Korean military personnel and 11,500 US troops involved in a series of field drills and computer-based tabletop exercises. In previous years, the commencement of Foal Eagle would have provoked a barrage of propaganda from Pyongyang decrying the drills as a prelude to an invasion of the North and the forerunner of a nuclear exchange. However, North Korea has suspended its rhetoric this year, warning of a conflict engulfing the Korean Peninsula. The US is also taking a different approach this year: isn’t deploying Rockwell B-1 Lancer bombers based in Guam, and is scaling back the presence of the aircraft carrier strike groups formed around the USS Ronald Reagan and the USS Carl Vinson. Read more: US and South Korea to resume joint military exercises Kim Jong Un pledges ‘denuclearization’ in talks with Chinese President Xi Jinping “The exercises are much smaller this year, only about half the size of last year, because the leaders of North and South Korea are planning to hold a summit before the end of the month and there has been good progress on the question of a detente in the…