About those missiles: There is evidence that the motors are actually old Soviet RD-250’s scavenged from the Ukraine, and not any technology developed by North Korea. How many of those do you think NK has? Kim has a finite supply of a critical technology, so why waste them? He’s already got the American President bending over.
We’re dealing with an ICBM-armed nuclear state one way or the other so you are right, the upgrades probably aren’t a game changer. This is still a bad sign. Upgrading the nuclear facility shows that North Korea intends to invest more in their nuclear arsenal to increase their danger. North Korea is a poor country with limited resources. If they believed that they were going to have to dismantle their nuclear program, they would invest their military resources in other things that would survive the “denuclearization” pledge. They aren’t doing that because what dealing with Trump has taught them is that the more nuclear power they have, the more that Trump will give them while getting nothing in return.
I’m a conservative gun owner. I’ve probably got enough ammo to build Trump’s wall out of ammo cans.
Because that’s what you do after you successfully build and test a nuclear deterrent. You are negotiating from a position of strength. After that, you maintain your deterrent while extracting concessions. NK is maintaining (or upgrading) their deterrent. NK have extracted concessions.
Have they given Trump any concessions? None that I can see. Trump is too cowardly to tell the public the terms of his “deal”, so there’s no way to know what he asked for. All signs point to nothing more than “please don’t hurt me”.
Trump did have his eye on beachfront property, maybe he did get a little something out of it. For himself.
Perhaps we should check to see if he is buying land east of the San Andreas faultline. Me, I would like to live in Otisville. Seems like a nice place.
“Otisville? OTISVILLE??”
“Miss Tesmacher has her own place.”
I don’t necessarily see upgrades as ominous in and of themselves. My feeling all along has been that we have no choice but to accept North Korea as a nuclear power. My concern all along has been that Trump might insist on his not having that capability. Insisting that Kim give up his nuclear weapons program entirely before giving him something in return will go nowhere, and it could lead to a complete breakdown in the process. There’s a lot to criticize about Trump’s foreign policy, but having a meeting and talking with Kim isn’t giving him something for nothing in return. It’s a move toward deescalation, which is the responsible thing to do. It’s the opposite of pounding a podium and using epithets like Little Rocket Man, and threatening fire and fury. It’s potentially more productive than the policy of insisting on crippling sanctions while refusing to talk until he spreads himself prostrate, which is only asking for trouble. It makes the threat to his regime’s survival real and the perceived danger more inevitable.
The phrasing of this response runs too close to a personal attack.
Dial it back.
[ /Moderating ]
It’ll be interesting to see what happens with NK-US relations now that the trade war is fully on. Diplomatically, we are increasingly isolating ourselves, reducing our leverage in the process. I’m not saying we don’t have a lot of pull - we do. But it’s more complicated now. How do you coordinate a NK response when you’ve just launched a trade war with the one power that keeps North Korea’s regime alive, and threatened trad war with other allies in the region?
Moreover, Iran sanctions are becoming a thing, putting stress on petroleum prices. Iran has also tossed out its most direct threat of retaliation yet, saying that they could block the Hormuz Strait.
Such a provocative move could by itself start a war, which could conceivably start a global recession within a flash.
Trump’s foreign policy is beginning to fight multiple diplomatic wars on multiple diplomatic fronts. Had he approached some of his battles one at a time, perhaps his approach might seem more coherent. But everything he’s done so far has lacked strategy, has been premised on mostly his own impulses. The kinds of crises he’s tasked with managing - and he’s juggling several big ones now - are situations that can go way, way south, and fast.
That would not go the way they think it will. It would be Praying Mantis 2.0
Trump negotiates from strength. Maybe this will work out, perhaps it won’t, but at least we are not giving North Korea 400+ Million in cash and freeing up accesses in the billions for them to use.
Donald tends to be bombastic in the early rounds of negotiation. He can tone it down or make concessions, but only if the other side is serious. It’s up to one man to take the deal.
Is that how Trump “negotiates”? Take it or leave it?
Trump negotiates from strength, all right. He also negotiates into weakness. You look at any negotiation Trump has ever undertaken, and he’s always started off in a strong position.
I love it. In other words, it literally does not matter to you if Trump succeeds or fails because Obama.
Since you’re on a first name basis, do you mind passing along a message for me? It’s very brief.
No, Trump just gave them legitimacy, pageantry, a propaganda victory, and an end to joint US SK training exercises in exchange for nothing. Kind of like pulling out of the JCPOA, strengthening the hard liners in Iran and giving them an easier path towards nuclear weapons, in exchange for no benefit to the US.
So far Trump is big on giving authoritarian regimes a bunch of gifts while getting nothing in return.
What kind of bet would you be willing to make on this? What could possibly convince you that this bargain isn’t going to end with Trump looking good?
What Trump is demanding is and remains the thing that North Korea is not willing to give him. What he demands may as well amount to saying, “All right, we’ll give you X, Y, and Z if you give us Kim Jong Un’s severed head on a silver platter.” At least, this is how North Korea sees it - attaining nuclear weapons and maintaining a nuclear arsenal has been the lynchpin of their defense strategy for several decades now, precisely because they know that as long as they have a deterrent like that, nobody is going to be ballsy enough to try to take out the Kim family, whereas rulers like Gaddafi and Hussein had a much rougher time of it after ending their nuclear programs. Trump cannot get what he wants. Not via negotiation. It’s like trying to get a person’s liver out of a discussion about tariffs.