Think of the okra! And the probable okra tariff hike to 350%! This will ruin our trade war!
Kim’s eyes didn’t need to be opened by an Olympics, it’s not as if he was secluded away in isolation his entire life in North Korea… he attended a Swiss boarding school for fuck’s sake. He’s been at the tip-top of the elites from day one, he’s always been aware of the real status of his country relative to others, it just doesn’t concern him as long as he stays king of shit mountain. That’s what victory is for him, it’s not nuking the USA or South Korea or Japan, bellicose rhetoric to that end is purely a means to an end… his regime remaining firmly in power. He’s achieved more in the past year to cement his status among his people, especially the military elites, than he could possibly have hoped… all because Trump played into his hands. He’s being met with as an equal, the US caved on its long standing policy of not rewarding bad behavior with splashy diplomatic initiatives and he has tons of footage of himself being treated with respect by other world leaders. He’s going to keep his nukes. He might agree to some arbitrary but pointless limit (like 50, or whatever… ), signing some formal peace treaty and re-positioning his conventional forces slightly further from the DMZ. For those returns I don’t consider what we’ve already given him worth it.
I think both sides will declare the summit to be an unprecedented success, but there will be absolutely no consensus as to what, if anything, was accomplished. There will be absolutely no agreement as to what was agreed upon.
And you know that this will be covered by North Korean state TV. And when it is, it will be about how the US President came to bow down and grovel before their Mighty Great Glorious Leader.
And this will leak back to the media and Trump will throw a tantrum and start threatening Kim again
You’re throwing around insults about other people, but the sentence in the middle of your insult sandwich contains an error that would not be made by someone who knows something about the JCPOA (“the deal” as you may know it).
In 2015, Iran had over 20,000 centrifuges. “The deal” limited them to 1,000 for various scientific activities, with the restriction that they cannot be used for highly enriched uranium.
Independent inspectors have verified that Iran is holding to both those commitments, including putting the prohibited centrifuges in a verifiable state of non-use. IAEA and Iran: Chronology of Key Events | IAEA
If you’re so busy calling others so ignorant, how are you so unaware of a fact like this?
A minor point, perhaps, but apparently President Trump kept his ‘pull-em-in-towards me’ handshake in his pocket and made what looked to be fairly normal handshakes with Kim. I was worried (and while it sounds odd, with this President you worry about things like this) is that he would Yank Kim off balance so he fell, Kim’s security guards would rush in, our Secret Service would rush in, and…
Fortunately that didn’t happen…but there are more handshakes to go.
I think Trump waddled more assertively that Kim did.
What the hell did they just sign?
Trump just cemented his 2nd term. No way he loses now.
He signed an unspecified “comprehensive” document. Trump says it’s merely a document saying they will continue negotiating, meaning it did basically nothing. It’s a PR stunt, not anything of substance.
But even if he does eventually sign something, there’s no reason to jump to defeat that quickly. We all knew going in that Trump may be tricked into signing something. That’s one of the things we were worried about–what would doofus Trump sign us up for?
And, even if it somehow is a good deal, it’s not like that means much of anything. The Iran deal was a very good deal for everyone, that people had been trying to get for decades, but there was no problem making it seem like a really bad deal.
Being defeatist is never a good thing. Sure, acknowledge the PR-stunt’s effectiveness, but don’t worry that all is lost. Evil only wins when good has lost all hope.
Which is still more than Obama or any other democrat has done.
Who got more out of this stunt, America or North Korea?
North Korea got some real concessions, but realistically, that was going to have to happen at some point as we moved from nonproliferation to deterrence (a change much of the foreign policy establishment has resisted making at all), and if doing a big shiny TV summit distracts Trump for a while and gets him to stop listening to the John Boltons, this is probably the least worst path possible.
This is pretty much my view on this whole charade:
I agree, anything that ties Bolton’s hands is good, but we should be under no illusion that Kim’s production of nuclear weapons and technology has abated in the slightest. We are certainly no safer than we were at the end of the Obama administration.
Quite right - neither Obama nor the Democrats, nor indeed either Bush nor Clinton, have done anything quite this stupid with regard to the Koreas. Kim gets the legitimization and the seat at the table he and his family have always wanted, South Korea gets the rug pulled out from under them, and America gets…well, nothing so far apart from empty promises. Art of the Deal, baby!
The TL:DR version: Kim saw the Dotard coming a mile away and cleaned him out.
Realistically, I don’t think either side expected anything concrete from this single meeting. Think of it like dating: This was more like the first coffee date at Starbucks - where it leads, whether it leads to something else…who knows?
It might be stupid, or it might also be brilliant, or it might be something in between. It’s entirely possible that Trump, the president himself, can live with Kim retaining some of the weapons he already has for self-defense purposes. Maybe Trump personally doesn’t care about keeping troops in the Pacific. He does strike me as being a genuine isolationist. Now how John Bolton and how his military feel about that is another matter. But it’s the president’s word that counts most. He just doesn’t want to look stupid. So if Trump agrees to end sanctions in exchange for a freeze of his weapons program and inspections, then he doesn’t want Kim playing games.
I guess my point is, we already know that Trump’s presidency is going to turn American foreign policy - and the foreign policy of everyone else - on its head. Conventional assumptions about how countries approach foreign policy are no longer operative. Whether that works to our benefit - and I tend to think it will not, for the record - is a different question.
Didn’t you also say this after Trump brushed his own teeth for the first time last week?