For whatever reason, there is huge progress in uniting the two Koreas in the recent few weeks, the emergency line has been reinstated, North will even send several hundred sportists to the winter olympics and they will go on the field together with the South Koreans under a united flag.
How does USA react to this wonderful news? It says that it won’t delay the military exercises it had planned, it calls for denuclearization and it’s media are talking about a potential pre emptive strike on North Korea, and all this in the same time when North Korea finally started cooperating with everyone. So what’s wrong with the American government, does it want to provoke North Koreans to go back to the previous state or what? At the very least, it should just shut up and leave it to Koreans themselves, but no, they have to organize military exercises and provoke NK for no reason.
Your premise is flawed. There is no new discussion between the North and the South around unification. The fact that they are again talking to each other and even marching together at the Olympics doesn’t change the political situation. The US (and the world) would benefit from a peaceful non-nuclear Korean peninsula, whether unification ever happens or not. North Korea has no intention to destroy their nuclear bombs/missiles… these nukes have become critical bargaining chips for the North.
The U.S. and South Korea have been conducting joint military exercises for decades. It’s not some kind of brand new provocation.
As for the evil USer news media, I’m unaware that they’re promoting a pre-emptive strike on Kim’s little hermit kingdom. The Washington Post (a warlike bunch) even reported that Trump agreed to postponing joint military exercises until after the Winter Olympics.
Where did you get those ideas?
N. Korea decided to temporarily cool things down-for their own reasons. Reunification on anything but their own terms is not one of their reasons.
The only thing that matters to the US is the reduction/elimination of N. Korea’s nuclear arms and long-range missiles. The only thing that matters to S. Korea is no war. N.K.'s recent moves made no change to what the US cares about and no change (ie there was and will continue to be no war) to what S. Korea cares about.
The current US position has been a losing one from the start. It is just going to take a while before N.K. is where they want to be and the US declares victory and goes home. N.K. remains in control of events and that clearly that isn’t going to change any time soon.
Eventually N.K. will have a usable nuclear arsenal and will do what every other nuclear power in history (the US being an exception-but lets attribute that to special circumstances) has done-line up the bombs in some secure bunker and admire them.
It’s hardly ‘huge progress’, it’s part of a pattern seen several times in the past, NK ratchets up the tension and then offers to start talks again and some modest degree of inter-Korean economic co-operation in the joint enterprise zone.
I think North Korea is actually scared, as opposed to faking being scared, of what the US might do to them for the first time in a long time. This is causing them to open up relations with South Korea since we won’t attack them without South Korea’s approval.
Perhaps under a previous US administration. The volatile and scatter-brained current administration could just as easily start something if he so chooses just because he can. Ego and all that.
Perhaps under a previous US administration. The volatile and scatter-brained current administration could just as easily start something if he so chooses just because he can. Ego and all that.
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If I was Belgian, I’d have trouble sleeping at night.
I think they just want to get into the Olympics. Plus, Kim is a crazy person, or at least he plays one on TV, so any marginally normal thing he does is going to make everybody over-react.
Plus Kim is trying to sow dissension in his inimical fashion, by seeing if anyone is silly enough to believe he wants re-unification on any terms other than conquest.
Neither. What the US would like is basically a maintenance of the status quo. Either unification or attack would be…messy. And expensive. If lil’ Kimmy 3.0 and his merry band basically did nothing and just quietly starved to death or whatever the US would be happy just continuing our slow withdrawal from the region (assuming China would equally stop screwing around and trying to claim large swaths of disputed or international waters or screwing with their neighbors).
As others have pointed out, you have a very flawed idea of what has been happening recently and what effect it has towards unification. You should really learn more about the region…even a thumbnail understanding of the history would be better than what you apparently have.
Starting from a flawed premise you move into a series of flawed assumptions. It would be laughable if it wasn’t so sad that you seem to know so little about what’s going on, even though it’s been in the news recently quite a bit, and just about every news source has run multiple stories on both current and historical events that you could have read to at least as a reasonable question.
One of the reasons could be that previously, Kim and Trump looked both irrationally and therefore, armed with nuclear weapons, dangerous.
Now Kim Looks like a good guy, because he’s willing to talk, while Trump Looks even more like a crazy Person ready to ratchett up Tension unnecessarily.
It only looks that way to anyone who hasn’t been paying attention. Not to say that Trump ever looks rational, but anyone who thinks that, based on the most recent events Kim looks ‘like a good guy’ or even take this as him opening up and being willing to talk REALLY hasn’t been following along even the last few years, let alone the decades that lead up to where we are today.
This new and improved congenial-Kim is a play right out of the Putin international relations playbook: Act normal, Appear reasonable, Pretend you just want to get along.
Hell, it’s right out of the NK playbook for that matter. They have done this dance literally for decades. That’s why it’s so sad that some people apparently haven’t been bothered enough to pay attention enough to see even that. Basically, the sanctions and international censure has gotten to the point where it actually has an effect, especially the fact that China (and Russia to an extent) have gotten on board and are actually at least making the effort to appear to be imposing them. Currently, NK is under an international microscope, which makes covert shipments of the various materials they need at least more difficult than usual to get. Probably be nice to get some additional food aid as well, though doesn’t look like Kim himself has been missing too many meals, or that he really cares that much about the common man. But it’s telling that the recently defecting soldiers seem to be in pretty bad shape…normally, the military gets the pick of the basket (after the party elites of course), since they are the ones keeping the boot on the necks of everyone else.
The question is not the Abstract “Is Kim a good guy? Is NK a horrible dictatorship?” Because most People do know These answers.
The current question, since Trump came into Office, is “Will either of These two toddlers press the red button or otherwise start a war because they are throwing a tantrum?”
The Soviets during the Cold war were belligerent, too, and there were Hawks in US govt. But both sides expected the other side to act rational - to expect a win outcome, or to believe they needed to defend themselves, if starting a war. This expectation was the Basis for the behaviour that followed.
With Kim and Trump, there is the expectation that they might start war because they are upset over what was said on Twitter.
So Kim suddenly appearing rational again calms the world right now, regardless of previous history. Because the world wants to last until Trump is out of Office and somebody sensible again takes the reign, upon which Kim will be mostly ignored again.
Breathtakingly naive, maybe mixed in with some autopilot anti-Americanism. Forgive me if the post was sarcastic. It’s hard to tell on the internet.
The idea that NK has changed its position significantly because it’s making slightly nice to the ROK is absurd. There’s been a repeated cycle of this for decades now. It’s done to buy time, as prelude to asking the ROK for handouts, trying to drive a wedge between the US and ROK or all three.
OTOH an argument can be made that the safest practical way to denuclearize the DPRK is a truly massive bribe by the ROK. To include a credible promise that the Kim’s can remain free and keep their money. That’s more plausible at least than somehow forcing the DPRK to denuclearize through sanctions alone, which is almost certainly not going to happen. It would have to be a combination of those two though, not going to happen either if the North manages to open back up the trade and aid spigots with a little friendly noise about the Olympics.
The only other alternative is if, a huge ‘if’, the ROK and US (and the ROK would probably be a key player in that if it ever happened) could really get the quality/quantity of intelligence to launch a successful decapitating military strike on the DPRK leadership. The Big Bribe is less risky of total catastrophe than the military option. But US politics would never allow a US leader to do it. The Small Bribes offered by Bush, Clinton and Obama did not solve the problem, besides making them each look bad on the issue in retrospect. It would have to be the ROK, but again along with real pressure on the DPRK by sanctions, though sanctions alone won’t do it.
The current ROK govt doesn’t have its head…in the clouds, to the degree OP does. But it is possible Moon doesn’t fully realize how distancing the ROK from US could eventually end up with the ROK facing DPRK nuclear blackmail by itself. At least political critics in ROK think he might not. I’ve no strong opinion myself how much he really thinks just talking to the DPRK will yield anything.
