What’s your opinion? An incredibly obvious ploy to make Trump stop stink-eyeing North Korea? Does Kim Jong Un expressing a modicum of cunning scare you as much as it does me? I liked him better before this little message carried from South Korea. He didn’t strike me as being capable of expressing humility, fake or otherwise.
(I waited a while to see if a thread would pop up on this subject, and one hasn’t. I am referring to the humbled message couriered from South Korea that was just now covered on national television.)
My first instinct is that he’s setting Trump up. He’s gonna provoke Trump into storming out or something, and then escalate their nuke program. And Trump is deep-down hoping this happens too. Both get to face each other, make some headlines, and still ratchet up the crazy while blaming the other guy for their ratcheting.
Using the nuclear program as a way to get a US president to confer legitimacy on the regime is one of North Korea’s main foreign policy goals (maybe THE goal). And now it looks like they might get it. I’m not sure that’s even wrong at this point (North Korea exists and has nukes regardless of what other countries want), but it’s a clear North Korean victory IMO.
This doesn’t surprise me so I am not more scared. He’s not exactly breaking new ground for the Kim regime. His Dad played pursuit of nuclear weapons as a bargaining chip. The held talks and even agreed several times to give up nuclear weapons …and then resumed the pursuit. Jong Un ramped up in that one area but this is not the first time he’s personally taken a position that de-escalates tensions. He’s done it after periods of conventional escalation; 2015 is a prime example with the North and South exchanging limited artillery fire across the DMZ before de-escalating.
He’s always been cunning and willing to play the situation to his own advantage.
I’d say it’s the other way around. Kim has seen how Xi won Loser Donald over with some mild praise and he’s betting he can do the same thing, because Loser Donald is easily flattered, deeply uninformed, and has no fixed opinions of his own.
My feeling is that Kim Jong Un knows Trump is desperate for a win and could use a, “Only Nixon could go to China” type win going into the midterm elections. Of course, China was a country with close to a billion people that was shut out of international diplomacy in the 1970s whereas North Korea is a joke, propped up by China to to prevent a refugee crisis should the regime fail.
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Yeah that could be it too. Regardless, it’s remarkable that the guy who was once the most reckless and stupid and immature leader in the world is now gaming the POTUS, and is winning.
And congrats to Donald Trump for being newly crowned with the title of Most Reckless and Stupid and Immature Leader in the World.
Xi Jinping practically got him singing Without the Communist Party, There Would Be No New China by praising a slice of chocolate cake, so it’s going to be great when Kim pours a bunch of nonsense into Trump’s ear at dinner and he spends the next month asking his advisors how to implement the revolutionary Juche Idea with the speed of the Chollima.
There is no way in hell this is going to happen. Trump and Kim are both douchebags and both very untrustworthy, but they are going to make a public spectacle of friendship and diplomacy.
This is pretty much how I feel. I’m not as informed as I probably should be, but when I heard it I instantly said “riiiiiiiiiiiiiiiight”. I haven’t thought it through as to what will play out but I definitely smell a rat.
There is no accounting for the news media. It feeds us what our handlers want us to think, sprinkled with just barely enough facts to give the media a plausible defense if challenged – which they never are.
This is SOP for North Korea under the Kim regimes. They typically:
Go rogue militarily, as far as they think they can push the envelope (complete with constant saber rattling).
Democratic countries, particularly the US, impose economic sanctions (that other communist countries “secretly” bypass) and return sabre rattling
Only when the sanctions start to hurt does NK pause, play nice and ask for talks
Sanctioning countries eventually come to the table, resulting in lessening of sanctions in return for NK ceasing rogue activities
Go to step 1
Why anyone is surprised at this baffles me. The real danger is that the rogue activities go farther afield each cycle. Eventually something has to give.
That’s the point of sanctions, isn’t it? Make the other side behave in a certain way in exchange for a lessening of the stink eye?
I wonder how much input the State Department had in this, given that only hours earlier the party line was no way, no how are we even close to discussing discussions, and given Tillerson’s travel away from DC this week.
While I expect that the Koreans will flatter Trump into giving away the farm despite objections from the professionals I’m willing to let this be Trump’s Nixon in China moment if it moves the doomsday clock back.
For some time now, I’ve suspected that Kim Jong Un knows North Korea can’t produce a workable nuclear arsenal, i.e. reliable nuclear warheads together with reliable delivery systems. Their economy has been so devastated by sanctions and corruption that the wealth simply doesn’t exist to create and support the necessary level of technology. Un’s recent overtures to the United States reinforce my suspicions. Quite likely Un has been running a nuclear bluff for some time, but he knows that sooner or later someone will call him on it – and he knows that someone just might be Trump. Un needs to wind down his nuclear program, but he needs to make it look like the Americans blinked first. Thus, the upcoming conference.
As I commented in another thread, both are masters of the Give me what I want now and I’ll give you what you want later but ‘later’ never seems to arrive school of negotiating. It will be interesting* to see who prevails.
I don’t think either the Donald or the Young-Un really wants to do any nuclear warfare. They both have gotten by on bluff, bluster, and cheating those who did business with them. Kim has the power to have his underlings and family members killed, and get away with it. Trump has left a trail of unpaid employees and broken contracts, and has gotten away with it. So far in the Trump presidency, his “legendary” deal-making skill has fallen flat. Every government he promised to get tough with has played him for a chump. I don’t expect him to win in N. Korea, but the two will come out of it smiling and vowing to be nicer to each other.
I don’t understand why we don’t accept NK as a real country, worthy of ordinary trade and diplomacy. We are cordial with a passel of other ruthless dictators; what makes the Kims any worse? Face it, the war was a long, long time ago.
In The Lost Peace, Truman is quoted as calling the North Koreans all sorts of names, but basically lying and untrustworthy. I imagine that attitude (or those facts) had a serious effect on US policy towards North Korea, perhaps to the present day.
It’s a win for Kim to get to the table with a sitting US president. But there’s no real choice IMO but for the US to agree to talks. And there are slight NK concessions, no tests during the talks and no objection to scheduled US-ROK military exercises.
Win-win so far. Not very far, but there’s really nothing to criticize IMO unless you’re looking to criticize whatever the current admin does, which many people are (as many people were the last one too).
It’s not plausible to say it’s allowing NK to ‘buy time’ unless one was in favor of a preemptive attack on NK between now and May before these talks, which almost nobody was. Without the talks there would almost certainly in fact have been no US attack by May and sanctions remaining as is. Now there will be no US attack by May and sanctions remaining as is.
The risk is when the talks start the US follows same past pattern of concessions on sanctions v NK promises of future behavior that it never fulfills. Maybe particularly with Trump if one speculates he’s really especially subject to flattery in a substantive way, and Kim would be any good at it. But no use speculating about the personal aspect IMO, just wait and see what happens.
And there will be pressure to reduce sanctions by US adversaries sort-of cooperating against NK for now (China, Russia) once NK makes any promises. But in general getting other countries to back even more sanctions or especially to acquiesce to US military action would probably be more difficult if the US turned down the NK request for talks.