IIRC back in the 1990’s Kim Jong Il made a similar series of “peaceful” overtures and wound up being seen as a positive light in the international community, to the point in South Korea he had a higher approval rating than their own President or Bill Clinton who they saw as warmongers.
Imagine, a world where Bill Clinton was the evil one in the eyes of the international community.
There is huge progress in this direction. They are going to the Olympics together, beginning to talk. Un is telling the south that if they cooperate he won’t blow them to smithereens. South Korea is shot through with the North’s operatives, their weak and corrupt government would sell out on Un-ification to save themselves and line their pockets without hestitation. Un made Trump his bitch, he’ll have no problem with the weaklings in the South Korea.
Definitely. They will force Kim and the North Koreans to keep testing nuclear weapons and intercontinental missile systems to get what they want! They will make China continue to butt heads with India over border disputes and, well, everyone else over their South and East China seas expansions…which China doesn’t even want! They will hog tie Putin to make him push at NATO and support ‘rebels’ in Ukraine!
I’m telling you, these guys are evil geniuses, and they have all the power! I’m glad we have you though to keep us focused on the real issue…
Depends how you interpret his words. If whatever works best means anything to support the arms industry then your criticism is apt. But I would say that the military industrial complex will influence decisions.
I took it as a similar vein to the OP. Perhaps that’s not how the poster intended it if so then my apologies.
There is a difference between appearing to be crazy and actually being crazy. Trump, I believe is employing the Madman theory of diplomacy with NK.
Note that South Korea’s 2nd worse nightmare is a North Korean coup followed by an immediate appeal for unification a la East Germany.
N. Korea is an economic and humanitarian mess. It would be incredibly costly and difficult for the ROK to deal with all this.
Their best case scenario on re-unification is that the North does a China-style reform, gets its economy moving again, starts feeding its people, opens up to the world so the people learn what’s really going on. Then after that re-unification might happen without a big mess.
Informed US politicians understand this and don’t desire anything fast. But of course there are always those immune to facts and logic.
If the worst case scenario happens, there’s a war and the ROK and allies prevail by conquest, then the North is going to be in even worse shape and the South could have quite severe problems of its own.
Yes - that’s why the world is worried about Trump.
Before, NK (General) played this game with US and rest of world:
As Long as all agreed that step 2 was to get more concession in step 4, or to impress his own People, People were not afraid of NK starting an actual attack on the South, or a nuclear attack on the US. (Partly, yes, they were not technologically ready: but there was the General Consensus that the Generals in NK knew they couldn’t win anyway).
So everybody hoped talks and sanctions and counter-threats would Keep things in check, and maybe some day things might improve, but they wouldn’t get worse by turning into war.
With Trump, this whole Thing is thrown out of whack, because he is crazy enough to believe the US can win by bombing NK into the ground; and we’ve seen that the US Army follows order of conventional attack by POTUS Trump, regardless of official declarations or similar. So it’s quite possible that Trump starts a war just to distract from his own Problems at home; or because he wants to impress the right-wingers who think “bombing foreign countries” solves all Problems; or because he wants to get a trophy for “greatest General” or whatever.
So Kim’s threats were no longer part of a predictable game, they were part of crazy toddlers Holding nukes.
Any sign that Kim at least has returned to a pattern with established rules is therefore an improvement, even if it’s a return to what was before. One step back from the cliff is still too Close, but better than right on the edge.
The fact that NK can now directly threaten the US mainland is a potentially big difference. And any General Consensus that it wouldn’t practically matter is not necessarily right just because it’s ‘General’.
This article in Atlantic, hardly a pro-Trump rag, is interesting I think.
It could be that any ‘consensus’ NK can be deterred from using its nukes to blackmail the US into withdrawing support for the ROK is based on the relevant experts simply not wanting to accept the highly disturbing possibility they are wrong. The article draws the potential parallel of similar rosy consensus’ of the past, for example that WWI as it played out wasn’t possible because of pan-European integration of the elites, etc. Although actually nobody knows the future, then or now.
But the idea that the big change is the NK situation lately is Trump, rather than maturation of the NK ballistic missile program, is questionable.
The whole threat from Korea is based on Un being an insane madman who would launch an attack that could not possibly stop a counter-attack that would kill him and destroy his own private country. I think we have more to fear from our own glorious leader.
While Trump is the latest escalation, this does go back earlier - to the attack of the US on Iran. Saddam Hussein followed the demands of the US (and UN) to disarm: but Bush wanted a cheap win, so the US still attacked.
That sent an obvious Signal to the rest of the world: It doesn’t matter if you were an ally to the US in the past; it doesn’t matter if you comply with their demands; if it’s useful to them (or their leader) you will be attacked.
So of course NK drew the Logical conclusion - not out of unpredictable craziness, but from a cool, rational consideration of Facts - that the only way to protect themselves from being bombed into glass was to have Nukes strong enough to hit US/ Japan.
I doubt if they would have accelerated their nuclear program so much without that precedent.
I saw a series of shows on North Korea last night on Nation Geographic and they made similar claims. Basically, this is Bush II’s fault, that he backed them into a corner and then the evidence of Libya convinced them their only means of regime survival was to acquire not just nuclear weapons but a delivery system that could threaten the US directly, that the NK regime is being completely rational in their development of the things, yadda yadda yadda.
I think that this comes from a series of cherry-picked data and assumptions about the North Korean thought process based on what they have told those few western reporters that are allowed into the country and which is being taken at face value. To the Libya point, I have to ask…what sort of magical anti-US device protected them from the fall of the Soviet Union until 2006 when they first successfully tested an atom bomb? Also, if it was Bush who pushed them over the edge into thinking they HAVE to have a nuke, are they saying that they were able to develop a bomb from scratch in just 5 years? Even with Chinese help that seems pretty rapid (supposedly they had shut down their old program with the agreement with the Clinton Administration). :dubious: Along the same line, what magical protections keep the US from invading Cuba? Or Venezuela? Or Iran? Or any of the other countries out there who don’t get along with the US? As for rational, I am not seeing it. By building and testing the capability, especially how they have done it, they have alienated most of the non-US countries in the region and throughout the world, and have gone a long way to souring their relationship with their one good ally, an ally who has shielded them up to now from many of the more odious measures the UN could impose. That doesn’t seem ‘rational’ to me, no matter what the definition is.
The major flaw in this common line of argument is that NK had the ability for 50 yrs prior to the Iraq (I assume you mean) war to make a conventional US attack not worth the trouble, and one never happened. It’s not as if North Korea was some random country with little relationship to the US (as ally or enemy) like Iraq or Libya*. The US had fought a war there which stalemated under a set of conditions which have basically continued to the present without NK nukes. That is to say a regime change war by a US coalition wasn’t and wouldn’t be acceptable to China, and the US coalition decided it wasn’t worth it to overcome that Chinese opposition militarily. In meantime NK came to stand more on its own militarily (Chinese forces long gone from inside NK) and there came to be much more to lose on the US/Allied side from a war spilling to SK (one of the world’s poorest countries in 1953, a rich country now). But there was no basic reason to think the US would find a war to change the NK regime more attractive in 2003 than in 1953 or any time in between. Less so once the Iraq war didn’t work out well, which is pretty far back now.
The NK insistence of attaining not only nukes, but BM capability to reach the US mainland with them could be purely defensive. Nobody can prove anything about the NK regime’s exact motives, assuming it even fully understands them itself. However it’s also quite plausible that the drive to attain this capability is out of a belief that in the long run the regime doesn’t just need nuclear ICBM’s to prevent a US invasion (again like it has successfully done for 60 yrs without that capability). It may feel needs them to complete unification of the peninsula under its dominance, or else sooner or later it will fall (and the Kims face justice) due to economic rot. Which is btw, justified by the argument of the pollyanna’s (and/or those blinded by TDS) on this issue: ‘don’t pay attention to the NK nuke/BM program, because the regime will collapse soon enough anyway with that capability or not’.
Again I’d recommend the article in link above, and suggest you find a direct refutation of its argument if you can, rather than the rather hackneyed argument you just gave. And kind of irrelevant one also. What did the Iraq War prove about the US from a NK view that the Korean War didn’t already? The question would be how the Iraq War demonstrated a US ability or willingness to try to crack the far harder nut of North Korea. Not much, to any rational view (and if the NK leaders aren’t rational, that’s not a good argument for ignoring them). In fact again one of the big criticisms of the Bush Doctrine at the time, as being hypocritical or ‘just after the oil’, was ‘why then don’t you do anything about North Korea?’. Where all rational people knew the answer was that forcing regime change is NK with conventional military force was basically impractical. And the Iraq War said nothing about a US willingness to make preemptive nuclear attacks either.
*despite the cottage industry in playing up the ‘big US reversal, from ally to enemy!’ of either of these countries the reality was not a huge amount of historical US relationship with either compared to NK.
Why is it OK for our leader to play the madman, but not theirs?
I don’t know why you’re asking.
Are you trying to say Trump playing a madman is part of an effective strategy?
Your analysis fails to consider the fact that they view the sanctions against them - in place in one form or another for 15-20 years - as a clear and present danger to their regime’s survival. Whether everything that has happened to Kim’s regime and North Korea is our fault is not really material. What matters is, Kim sees our behavior, whether through sanctions, political isolation, and possible use of military power, as a threat to his regime’s existence (I don’t think anyone would seriously debate that it isn’t a threat). He’s calculating that he can build a nuclear arsenal that would make the US think twice about an assault. It’s what he does once he believes he has that capability and once he thinks he has convinced the Pentagon that he has it. Does he then stop firing missiles over Japan and making threats? Maybe, if the sanctions and US pressure stops. If it doesn’t, then maybe he doubles and triples down and dares the US to attack him, with both sides knowing what could happen to cities like Washington, New York, Chicago or Los Angeles.
Sanctions and political isolation in and of themselves could be perceived as an assault and a dire threat by the North Korean regime. The Iraq war (and the Arab spring) convinced some leaders that the United States is not merely a passive advocate of democracy, but rather an activist force that uses not just military power but economic and political influence to destabilize regimes and overthrow them. Why do you think Russia meddled in our elections? It’s the same reason that North Korea wants nuclear weapons. Iran agreed to suspend its nuclear weapons program because it wanted to end economic and political pressure from the US but also because they thought they had a credible framework and a possible neutral (if not willing) partner in Obama going forward.
Kind of circular logic then. Your ‘He’s calculating that he can build a nuclear arsenal that would make the US think twice about an assault’ is an assertion I’ve seen a lot, but unless one is crazy AND stupid it makes no logical sense. We haven’t assaulted them in over 60 years, much of that time they didn’t have nuclear weapons. As to sanctions, the main reason they have been imposed is that he has continued to test both weapons and missiles and does so in basically the most provocative way. The sanctions have been lightened many times during this time period, so saying ‘in place in one form or another for 15-20 years’ is only a partial truth, especially when you look at WHY they are lightened then harshened. Unless Kim is a drooling idiot he knows perfectly well why the current very harsh sanctions have been imposed, and in fact, there are plenty of indications that they prepared for this round of them by stockpiling things like oil before they started this round of antagonization. I think they underestimated the severity as well as who would be on board and also how the international community has come together to search out and find and stop NKs more covert means of getting around the sanctions, but the fact they prepared for them indicates they know perfectly well how this all works.
So, I remain unconvinced by the ‘it’s all America’s fault because of Bush II and Trump’. Not saying I like either of those presidents or think they were flawless in how they handled NK (Trump especially is an idiot IMHO), but this is all on the Kim family and the North Korean’s. They don’t want nukes to be safe from a US invasion or attack, they want them to blackmail and, probably, because they see them as a potential tool to reunite Korea under their banner.
Again this argument ignores the history of the US already having been in a stalemated war with North Korea which never even officially ended. That stable stalemate lasted for decades based on Chinese support for NK and its own conventional military capability. The US itself always had sanctions against contact with North Korea as did South Korea and others. It pushed to extend those to the world in general after the NK nuclear program got going, which was long before the (second) Iraq War. This is really a pretty inconvenient set of facts to explain the NK nuclear/BM program as a response to US actions in other parts of the world in more recent times.
And the last sentence is singularly unconvincing except to a very tunnel vision view. How you do know exactly why the Russians ‘meddled’ to a perhaps greater extent in a recent US election than previous ones? It’s not like it started in 2016 or has been limited to the US, nor even clear how significant it was in the US in 2016. What a complete non-sequitur to the undisputed reality of a NK nuke/ICBM program.
The only thing they have in common is a lack of absolute clarity for the reason for either one. Again I recommend the linked article. It would be a comforting thought that the NK program was simple a function of US actions and that the US stopping doing some bad thing would make NK nuclear ICBM’s not a threat, or even reverse them. The less comforting but equally plausible explanation is that the NK regime knows its own economic and ideological rot will bring it down eventually no matter what the US does (which again is exactly what the ‘don’t worry’/TDS POV says: ‘don’t do anything, this problem will solve itself’), and it needs a way to leverage the US off the peninsula then use the nuke threat to reunify on its terms before it eventually implodes along the current path.
Again, unfortunately, nobody can state as fact ‘exactly’ what the motive is.
This is largely true, but bear in mind the fact that North Korea’s economic situation has steadily worsened since the end of the Cold War. China has tried to walk a balance between being a trading partner to the US and maintaining stability on the Korean peninsula and placing limits on American influence in East Asia. China’s growth is due in no small part to its relationship with the US, Japan, and South Korea, so it cannot just ignore us when we express concerns about North Korea’s behavior. At the same time, the sanctions have increased the pressure on the Kim regime. And again, sanctions themselves have the capacity to cause regimes to collapse, which is why the Kims have invested in the development of a nuclear program.
What Kim Jung Un could do with a nuclear program is to use it as leverage. One nuclear bomb isn’t leverage. Even 100 bombs aren’t leverage. Having the ability to launch 25 to 50 nuclear-tipped missiles at American cities? That’s leverage. That’s something the US has to reckon with. If the economic pressure on Kim’s regime gets to the point of being unbearable, we will see an escalation of the brinkmanship. He will become more desperate, and inevitably more provocative. Right now, if he becomes too provocative, the United States can do something about it without sustaining destruction to its homeland. In a year or two, maybe that’s not the case. True, at present, America still has a lot to lose in a war with North Korea, but a conflict a few years from now would be much costlier. We already know from recent history that preventative war is a strategy that the Pentagon is willing to consider - that’s not speculation, that’s historical fact.
I think that there’s actually a diplomatic solution but it’s going to require the US recognizing North Korea as an established, sovereign state with an intercontinental nuclear arsenal. The question at the present time is whether or not the US can accept that. What’s not clear is the toll of sanctions on Kim’s regime, the mood within North Korea, and just how desperate they are at the moment. I don’t pretend to have a crystal ball. I’m not saying with absolute certainty that there’s going to be a war or that either the North Koreans or US wouldn’t relent and find some way to the negotiating table at some point. But I will say that the possibility of a major war is considerably higher than any time in recent memory and probably much greater than people realize.