Current Affairs Donald Trump POS: Judgement cometh and that right soon
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abelard
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lol
that's like England completing the opening pass against Tunisia, then immediately declaring themselves World Cup Champions.
this is only the first step as a long and so far incredibly vaguely defined process.
to be sure, as I've stated in excessive detail in the North Korea thread, this is a good thing.
but there is a long road to go before it amounts to anything concrete, and no shortage of risks ahead, not least the erratic cognition of the Great Men themselves - to say nothing of establishment Democrats trying to sabotage the whole thing in the vain hopes that Trump supporters have any coherent sense of “patriotism” that can be appealed to (see, for example, the performative virtue-signalling anguish on twitter over the North Korean flag, as if Ronald Reagan is awarding cosmic troop-supportin’ Brownie points beyond the grave)
thinking about this in terms of "winning" is such a stupid, reflexive American media habit.
the most important question is not which cartoon despot gets the better of his counterpart, or whether or not this proves that the libs or the chuds have actually been right about everything all along, but rather, whether or not the risk to all of us of a nuclear confrontation is increasing or decreasing.
despite promising signals, there’s nothing to guarantee that it’s the latter, especially given the misfiring synapses of those in charge.
but if you do insist on keeping score, so far Kim Jong Un has secured the unilateral annulment of US-South Korean defence exercises, an invitation to the White House, and the tentative suspension of Chinese sanctions (representing 90% of North Korea’s overseas trade), without even lifting a finger in return.
I agree totally.
However negotiation is about giving and taking. One side very rarely takes all so it was unlikely either side wasn't going to give up anything.
It's s start. A very good start considering all that's happened.
It's a fairly obvious trade with very little leeway on the surface - get rid of nuclear weapons in exchange for receiving help in becoming a modern country and we'll help you avoid being Gaddafi'd.
So there's only two measures of success - no nukes and DPRK economic and social progression year on year.
I think Trump is a ludicrous person and I'm loathe to give him credit, but I think his approach with Korea has been perfect right from the off. People need to give credit where it's due.
abelard
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"Reaffirming the April 27, 2018 Panmunjom Declaration, the DPRK commits to work towards complete denuclearisation of the Korean Peninsula."
This is diplomatic speak for "when the unicorns frolic and dogs and cats live together and Everton wins the treble". It means nothing. It is not even close to what the Americans were claiming, prior to the summit, that they would at a minimum come away with.
It is not a North Korean offer to disarm.
North Korea is not going to give up their nukes. And that was even before Obama showed the world what happens to leaders who abandon them (Libya), and Trump fell over himself making clear to everyone that any deal signed by an American President (Iran) is totally worthless.
There was a time when a nuclear free North Korea was plausible, maybe 15-20 years ago, but not now, now that they already have them in hand.
North Korea is doing just fine economically without the Americans' good graces. Even under the sanctions regime, they were growing at about 5%/year. People who read a handful of Western newspaper headlines on North Korea a few times a year know absolutely nothing about it.
China quietly pledging to lift sanctions is the most consequential outcome of the summit, and this alone makes everything worth Kim's while (not that China has ever shown any real interest in enforcement to being with, but now Pyongyang can carry on doing what it has always done, more openly).
More than anyone else, Moon Jae In then. Trump is a reality TV sideshow in what has primarily been a Korean drama.
Virtually all of the commentary so far is speculation, and we may never know (on either side, now that American Presidents basically ignore archiving laws) what actually went on; less still what has been intended.
But there's no reason to think Trump's imperial dick-wiggling on twitter had anything to do with it. North Korea lost millions of people and had literally every town destroyed and its rice fields flooded in an existential war with America, within living memory. They lost hundreds of thousands more to famine in the 1990s, and the regime withstood it all. They are in a better position now than they have been in some time, and the idea of wavering now, after all that, just because some senile wannabe strongman can't control his emotions on the internet is laughable.
Had Kim showed even a hint of weakness in his dealings with the US, then he'd have been shot to bits in a coup before the hour. He is instead operating against Trump from a position of strength, and all serious observers know it.
But yes, Trump does deserve credit for agreeing to the photo-op, which although mostly symbolic, and for domestic consumption, still represents more courage than any Democratic President would likely have shown in hundred years of holding the office.
Everyone knows this, but ultimately what's the alternative now? Normal diplomacy doesn't work with DPRK - you have to operate with broad strokes.
Or, in short, you either go to war and destroy them or you offer them a viable way out with meaningful actions. Things like stopping the military exercises in the South is a very sensible thing to do to make progress.
And, as Trump has shown by cancelling the meeting when Kim played up, the option is always there to slap them down and be able to say "well, we tried". Because under Bush, Clinton and especially Obama, they didn't seriously try to do anything with the DPRK.
abelard
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Yes, it is the right thing to be doing.
But it's the ridiculous idea that Trump has somehow coerced Pyongyang into making great and meaningful concessions which I object to.
It is beyond obvious that Trump is not going about this intelligently (if even sentiently). He is motivated primarily by scoring a domestic PR victory to distract from his overlapping corruption scandals.
He is stumbling about completely out of his depth, and being utterly manipulated . For starters, he might have bothered to inform Seoul that cancelling the exercises was even on the table, led alone unilaterally declaring it without first consulting them.
The basic outlines of what Trump just added his name to (apart from his added unilateral concession on the defence exercises) was already agreed between Pyongyang and Seoul in April. As I've been saying, this is primarily a process being managed between the two Koreas, with Trump being skillfully dragged along for the ride.
Normal diplomacy works just fine with North Korea; the trouble is that it doesn't work with the United States. Your claim that under Clinton, the United States didn't seriously try to do anything with the DPRK is totally ignorant. There was a much stronger, more comprehensive, and relatively enforceable deal for Pyongyang to give up their nukes on the table in 2000, but of course, just like the Iran deal, it became worthless the moment a Republican was elected President.
If all that was standing in the way of that deal was complete American surrender on every term, like what happened today, then yes, a deal could have been reached, though not in a million years ratified.
Today's meeting essentially affirms that the United States acknowledges North Korea as a nuclear power, while also granting significant additional concessions to Pyongyang, and demanding nothing of substance in return. It is far more a capitulation than a cunning strategem.
If you think that the United States conceeding on just about everything while getting nothing in return is, on balance, a good thing (and to be clear, I think it probably is), fair enough - but lets stop pretending that it amounts to any sort of masterstroke, or competence, or even basic display of awareness about what is actually happening on Trump's part - or that he is somehow "winning".
And of course, should Trump ever come to comprehend what he's actually signed his name to, then as usual when it comes to the Americans, all promises go out the window, and we'll be back to the President thrasing about impotently on twitter while Moon and Kim continue to get on with it.
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I’m at a loss as to how Iran is a terrible deal, yet somehow NK is great.
arminisgod
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SpongeBob brown shoes
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When's the Nobel peace prize getting announced
abelard
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"The most remarkable aspect of the joint statement was what it didn’t contain. There was nothing about North Korea freezing plutonium and uranium programs, nothing about destroying intercontinental ballistic missiles, nothing about allowing inspectors to return to nuclear sites, nothing about North Korea making a full declaration of its nuclear program, nothing about a timetable, nothing about verification, not even any clear pledge to permanently halt testing of nuclear weapons or long-range missiles.
Kim seems to have completely out-negotiated Trump, and it’s scary that Trump doesn’t seem to realize this. For now Trump has much less to show than past negotiators who hammered out deals with North Korea like the 1994 Agreed Framework, which completely froze the country’s plutonium program with a rigorous monitoring system ..."
Kim seems to have completely out-negotiated Trump, and it’s scary that Trump doesn’t seem to realize this. For now Trump has much less to show than past negotiators who hammered out deals with North Korea like the 1994 Agreed Framework, which completely froze the country’s plutonium program with a rigorous monitoring system ..."
I’d suggest when something tangible happens other than a meeting otherwise we’d be celebrating Neville chamberlain as a great peacemaker .
Im no fan of trump but obviously something real would be held up by everybody. I’m unsure what at the minute is being celebrated, North Korea have broken agreements they’ve made with previous US regimes of both parties they just haven’t met the sitting Presidents presumably because they didn’t want to give respectability to a pretty horrendous regime .
I absolutely will give Trump credit if something comes from this but at the minute we seem to be celebrating or being asked to applaud promises or aims the like of which have been broken before.
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