Show us where it says they’ll stop making nuclear missiles
Don’t forget, suspend isn’t necessarily permanent.
Isn’t that about the language used in the Iran deal? The same one Repubs excoriated Obama for?
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This appears to be in English but the words taken together are gibberish.
Kim gave up nothing. Why continue to test bombs that you know work? They aren’t cheap so why reduce your arsenal by one just to prove what you already know?
A real president would not have agreed to meet with Kim until all foreign nationals held by NK have been released. The real danger with this summit is what Dumb Donald will agree to. Will he trade away a cow for a handful of magic beans? Will he say that NK can have all the missiles and bombs it wants as long as none can reach any of his properties? Will the dumb ass let himself get videotaped while having a pee party with the best hookers in North Korea? Negotiations with hostile parties should be undertaken with the best diplomats the country has to offer, not the dullest knife in the drawer.
Setting aside any snark: my suspicion here is that North Korea went on a crash program to test missiles like mad over the last couple years, along with an occasional nuclear test, in order to obtain what could be considered the lowest level of credible nuclear deterrent. Yes, they haven’t tested a full up system under realistic conditions. But it seems they probably have the building blocks for a nuclear deterrent, even if they haven’t all been integrated.
I think it was simply a matter of time before North Korea tried to use this as a bargaining chip in some kind of political maneuver. Contrast this to Iran, which was engaging in a whole lot of enrichment with very little else apparent in terms of weapons development. The North Koreans want the bomb badly, the Iranians have not had that level of commitment (as far as we know).
The issue I keep thinking about is whether North Korea was brought to the table by sanctions. I don’t see anything to make me believe that sanctions are threatening the existence of the North Korean state. But nuclear weapons are intended to be a guarantee of the North Korean state (for different reasons). Again, this is very different than Iran, IMHO.
So to the extent that one might imply that diplomatic pressure brought North Korea to the state… I’m not so sure. Maybe Xi managed to get KJU to commit to something, but I’m inclined to think that North Korea was simply ready to try to cut a deal.
Of course, I cannot see that there’s a basis for a deal here, but that doesn’t mean that we ought not follow up on it. Jaw jaw, war war and all that.
It’s inevitable that Trump will have some successes, but it’s way too early to say if this is one. To get the meeting, I don’t doubt Kim would have agreed to (or at least promised to agree to) a lot of things. A short-term suspension of testing is a cheap, possibly even money-saving way to make the meeting more likely.
We’re not likely to see signs of any lasting impact for several months at least, barring something dramatic happening during the meeting itself, i.e. it takes place not in North Korea and while Kim is out of the country, a faction murders his entire family and declares a coup.
In the sense that even a blind squirrel stumbles upon a nut occasionally.
What really happened. Kim goes to China. China tells Kim to go along with hamster hands, then do whatever you like when he’s not looking. Hamster hands tweets that Kim is a better friend to the US than Putin. Kim no longer has nuclear missiles, but his space exploration program has become very active as he tests his missiles putting rocks into orbit. Of course, his nukes are still in production.
Yes, right now the goal that Trump is seeking (and implausibly claiming he’s already achieved) is to restore the situation that existed during the Clinton administration.
And I think Trump will fail to actually achieve his goal. North Korea isn’t going to give up its nuclear weapons. Trump, however, will invent a new definition for “denuclearization” and claim he won.
The most likely outcome I can see from Trump is that after the summit, he declares that Kim is now his friend, that they’ve come to a mutual understanding and respect, and that’s it, mission accomplished, where’s my Peace Prize? Japan and South Korea will be rather less than impressed. Kim might hold off on weapons tests for a while and will tell the North Koreans about the massive victory he won over America who was forced to send their president to beg and scrape in fear of North Korean power.
Sorry, no comparison. What the Repubs excoriated Obama for was a program that’s much more rigorous than anything Trump’s likely to get out of Kim:
- Iran doesn’t have any nuclear weapons.
- They’ve agreed to not refine uranium beyond a given level of purity that’s well short of the level where it would work in a nuclear warhead.
- They’ve agreed to a rigorous program of inspections of their nuclear facilities.
- Those inspections are already ongoing.
The language you’re referring to is where NK has agreed to:
- Suspend nuclear missile testing.
They still have nukes and aren’t giving them up, they haven’t agreed to cease refining uranium to bomb-grade levels, they haven’t agreed to inspections.
North Korea has built its nuclear weapons program up the point where it no longer needs to run tests.
Trump has done nothing except accept this situation and is now offering North Korea some official recognition.
Trump will declare he has achieved a great victory. His followers will believe everything he tells them. The rest of us will be relieved that Trump did nothing because Trump doing nothing is generally less dangerous than Trump trying to do something.
Trump will whine.
Obama got one for not being George W. Bush. Which, even as a liberal Obama voter, I found absurd.
I could almost get behind a Nobel Prize for a U.S. president being not Trump, though. 
Can you point to some coverage of China’s role in bringing about this change? (I’m not suggesting you’re wrong, just that I haven’t seen anything on it, and would be interested.)
If he could start right away, I’d throw in a Pulitzer, a full EGOT, and a Superbowl ring.
It might be good news if Kim actually stopped developing nuclear bombs and ICBMs but instead, we have only a promise that he will do so. Kim has made these types of promises before. They are meaningless. Kim is less trustworthy than a used car salesman, or, dare I say it, a Trump.
A real accomplishment might be if Kim actually denuclearized. Trump has announced that Kim has denuclearized but that’s not true. I don’t know if Trump is too stupid to understand the difference between Kim’s promise and denuclearization or if Trump is just lying about the promise’s value to a credulous Republican base grasping for any semblance of a justification for their continued support of Trump.
I agree completely.
So did Obama, by all accounts, but what was he going to do? If Margot Robbie publicly declared her undying passion for me, I would be embarrassed, but refuse? Oh, hell, no!
Woof. 
Sharp knees. Would not bang.
According to my news feed, the WH has been unable to provide any evidence that NK has agreed to denuclearization:
White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders on Monday walked back President Donald Trump’s claim the previous day that North Korea had “agreed to denuclearization” ahead of a planned meeting between Trump and North Korean ruler Kim Jong Un.
Not even Trump could be this fucking stupid, right?
Part of these negotiations will depend on the definition of “denuclearization”, what this term means to North Korea and to the United States.
Why would North Korea go through all of the trouble to develop a credible nuclear missile threat just to destroy them all? It doesn’t logically make sense. There’s no conceivable avenue for the actual removal of nuclear weapons. However, having even a handful of nuclear missiles means that North Korea is officially a member of the nuclear club and has to be treated with a certain degree of respect.
But more than that, it also gives North Korea leverage. On one hand, they can agree not to take the threat further and behave in a more stable and cooperative manner in exchange for some concessions, or if the US and allies insist on removing nukes first and keeping sanctions in place, they can continue increasing the level of danger. The choice is Trump’s.
No *peaceful * avenue for their actual removal anyway.