Current Affairs Donald Trump POS: Judgement cometh and that right soon

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toffy said:
Winning
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I asked you earlier in the thread how you would define a good outcome vs a “meh” outome from the meeting
LinekersLegs said:
And I thought I was hard to please, convincing Kim to give up all his weapons after just one meeting seems a hell of an ask to me! What do you think should be on the table in trade - sanctions relief, withdrawl of US troops from S Korea??

Personally I'd believe Trump would have done an excellent job if all he got an agreement to freeze further development (confirmed by inspections) in exchange for some food shipments.


I think where we differ is I believe that NK would have come to the negotiation table with any president who had offered to meet personally as it is something they have long desired and I don't believe that a temporary halt in test flights is anywhere close to an equal trade in exchange whereas if I understand you correctly you think it is. In Trump parlance it isn't that I didn't want a deal, I just think this initial one is a poor one.

Pete and I have stated what we think would be successful outcomes, perhaps you could be a bit more explicit in what "something positive will happen" means? I think we all agree that if things go back to where they were a week ago the meeting can be counted as a failure but just trying to figure out ahead of time what is a "meh, not bad but not great" outcome and what is a "good" result.
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I see no indication that there are any defintions of what R&D has been frozen and certainly no inspections have been suggested so I’d say by my pre meeting criteria it is a “meh” outcome - largely just a photo op that gave Kim what he had long desired which was the appearance of equal footing with the US president and as @abelard said some tangible benefits for the regime with only aspirational and vague goals in return. On the plus side it didn’t all dissolve in acrimony like the G7.

However by your pre meeting criteria “the NK regimes desire for nuclear weapons may dissolve” it doesn’t much look like winning, at least so far.

toffy said:
Well I think the NK regimes desire for nuclear weapons may dissolve following talks dependent on what they receive in exchange. That could be a relief in sanction, removal of US troops as mentioned or something else related to China and their involvement in sanctions particularly regarding oil, coal or imports and financial restrictions via Chinese banks.

Collectively the last 12-18months I believe is having the desired effect on NK by isolating them from the rest of the world, and more importantly from their close allies. However minor the actions of China seem overall. At the end of the day the vast majority of NK exports are with China therefore the longer China are on board the tougher it gets for NK.

Furthermore NK may view the opportunity to trade with a wider group of nation's other than China and Russia as worthwhile in exchange for halting their nuclear exchanges.

As with much going on at the moment though it's speculation until the meeting happens I guess. Nevertheless you've got to start somewhere
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abelard said:
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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It's so good to have you back, bro!
 
There was also something frankly weird about an American president savaging Canada’s prime minister one day and then embracing the leader of the most totalitarian country in the world.

“He’s a very talented man,” Trump said of Kim. “I also learned that he loves his country very much.”

In an interview with Voice of America, Trump said “I like him” and added: “He’s smart, loves his people, he loves his country.”

Trump praised Kim in the news conference and, astonishingly, even adopted North Korean positions as his own, saying that the United States military exercises in the region are “provocative.” That’s a standard North Korean propaganda line. Likewise, Trump acknowledged that human rights in North Korea constituted a “rough situation,” but quickly added that “it’s rough in a lot of places, by the way.” (Note that a 2014 United Nations report stated that North Korean human rights violations do “not have any parallel in the contemporary world.”)

Incredibly, Trump told Voice of America that he had this message for the North Korean people: “I think you have somebody that has a great feeling for them. He wants to do right by them and we got along really well.”


+++++++
The above quote is from below, which is worth a read (and echoes what some here have already been saying):

Trump Was Outfoxed in Singapore

It sure looks as if President Trump was hoodwinked in Singapore.

Trump made a huge concession — the suspension of military exercises with South Korea. That’s on top of the broader concession of the summit meeting itself, security guarantees he gave North Korea and the legitimacy that the summit provides his counterpart, Kim Jong-un.

Within North Korea, the “very special bond” that Trump claimed to have formed with Kim will be portrayed this way: Kim forced the American president, through his nuclear and missile tests, to accept North Korea as a nuclear equal, to provide security guarantees to North Korea, and to cancel war games with South Korea that the North has protested for decades.

In exchange for these concessions, Trump seems to have won astonishingly little. In a joint statement, Kim merely “reaffirmed” the same commitment to denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula that North Korea has repeatedly made since 1992.

MORE HERE:
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/06/12/...-left-region&WT.nav=opinion-c-col-left-region
 
Huh?

Reporters were shown a video ahead of Donald Trump's press conference in Singapore, which the US president said he had played it to Kim Jong-un and his aides toward the end of their talks. It was made by Destiny Productions and was presented in Korean and English in the style of an action movie trailer


 
verreauxi said:
Huh?

Reporters were shown a video ahead of Donald Trump's press conference in Singapore, which the US president said he had played it to Kim Jong-un and his aides toward the end of their talks. It was made by Destiny Productions and was presented in Korean and English in the style of an action movie trailer


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ha :)
Give up your nukes and you too could have bumper cars!
 
Compare and contrast:

Here is what the Chinese gave up: 1) They consented to traffic with representatives of the government of the United States even though the United States still recognizes the government of Taiwan. 2) They performed routine rhetorical exercises on the themes of world peace and national sovereignty, thereby disappointing a few Berkeley sophomores and African fundamentalists who believed that Maoism would never equivocate on the primacy of its international revolutionary mission. When the New York Times’ reporter asked Kissinger: What has the United States accomplished that wasn’t already accomplished by Ping-Pong? Mr. Kissinger, nettled, recited Chinese obeisances to the good international life. He might as well have cited the Soviet Union’s guarantee of civil liberties as listed in its constitution.

Here is what the United States gave up.

1. With all the world poised to consider one point above all, namely the integrity of the United States’ commitment to Taiwan, we issued a communiqué in which the Red Chinese asserted and re-asserted their absolute right to conquer Taiwan, which is what it comes down to; while we uttered not one word on the subject of our defense treaty, not one word on the applicability of our principles of self-government and independence to the people of Taiwan. That staggering capitulation, for all that Kissinger sought to distract from it by citing President Nixon’s World Report which last January reaffirmed our defense treaty with Taiwan, was the salient datum in the week that changed the world.

https://www.nationalreview.com/2018/02/william-f-buckley-jr-nixon-trip-to-china/
 
mezzrow said:
Compare and contrast:

Here is what the Chinese gave up: 1) They consented to traffic with representatives of the government of the United States even though the United States still recognizes the government of Taiwan. 2) They performed routine rhetorical exercises on the themes of world peace and national sovereignty, thereby disappointing a few Berkeley sophomores and African fundamentalists who believed that Maoism would never equivocate on the primacy of its international revolutionary mission. When the New York Times’ reporter asked Kissinger: What has the United States accomplished that wasn’t already accomplished by Ping-Pong? Mr. Kissinger, nettled, recited Chinese obeisances to the good international life. He might as well have cited the Soviet Union’s guarantee of civil liberties as listed in its constitution.

Here is what the United States gave up.

1. With all the world poised to consider one point above all, namely the integrity of the United States’ commitment to Taiwan, we issued a communiqué in which the Red Chinese asserted and re-asserted their absolute right to conquer Taiwan, which is what it comes down to; while we uttered not one word on the subject of our defense treaty, not one word on the applicability of our principles of self-government and independence to the people of Taiwan. That staggering capitulation, for all that Kissinger sought to distract from it by citing President Nixon’s World Report which last January reaffirmed our defense treaty with Taiwan, was the salient datum in the week that changed the world.

https://www.nationalreview.com/2018/02/william-f-buckley-jr-nixon-trip-to-china/
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what is your actual point though?
 
I do grant President Trump some credit for getting KJU to meet, regardless of either leader's motivations; what matters out of all of this is the next year, two years, three years.

President Trump built a reputation on vagaries and bombast that led him to the White House. Since his inauguration, we've just seen more of the same - sanctions, tariffs, walls, deportations, "toughness", "greatness", etc., followed with little or no real follow up.

So, in view of this meeting and document signing, the important thing is: what's next?
 
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