So, again, this is good. The US and North Korea have never signed a peace treaty to end the Korean war, and they should. It is unclear what, exactly, hawkish critics are scared Trump is going to “give away” to Kim.
China has tightened sanctions (not sure I like this, but if it lead to the talks, fine). North Korea has suspended its tests and released prisoners.
As for all the hand-wringers whining about human rights, what can be said about North Korea is that it is not aiding a multimillion person genocide in Yemen, and the US is. Shut up, you flaming hypocrites.
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Hugh
Trump gave away the military exercises with South Korea without apparently letting the South Koreans know in advance. This was a substantive concession and he got nothing substantive in return, just some vague promises.
My bottom line is does any of this eliminate a nuclear threat to the US. It doesn’t. This looks like a reprise of the last 20 years. The North Koreans lie to us about giving up their nuclear program and we lie to them about giving them aid. It’s actually worse than that because this approach will actually increase the nuclear threat to the US. What Kim needs is time to upgrade his nuclear devices to H-bombs and marry them to his ballistic missiles, and this process gives him that time.
Having inflicted upon myself Trump’s exchange with reporters before his flight to Singapore and then in the news conference after his meeting with Kim, I have to say that listening to Trump speak for more than 30 seconds let alone for an extended period of time is like being hit by a fire hose of stupid. So I am not optimistic.
Ché Pasa
Whether it’s “good” or not I’ll leave for the future to decide. These things have a way of leading to unanticipated consequences. Cf: Nixon in China. Good in some ways for some people, not so much in other ways for other people.
I will say I didn’t expect the meeting/summit to happen simply because of Trump’s chaotic instability and the corps of war-mongering freaks he keeps around him. The genocide in Yemen and the many tens of thousands of civilian deaths in the ongoing Middle East catastrophe and the other US war theaters are taking place on Trump’s watch, and he and his war-mongering freaks have made abundantly clear they intend to ramp up the killing and destruction — with their eyes laser set on Iran. Don’t fool yourself into thinking that somehow this man is making peace. Any more than Nixon was making peace beyond the Forbidden City.
Skepticism is always warranted, but my doubts that the meeting would happen at all were ultimately proved wrong.
So. We’ll see.
All signs point to a possible reconciliation between the two Koreas, which is the underlying premise of the whole thing, and which Moon and Kim have been working on independently of the US.
Meanwhile, can we doubt that the US/Saudi/Israeli annihilation of Iran is now all but a certainty?
Jeff Wegerson
Denuclearization is an excuse for talks. The resumption of trade and the removal of U.S. troops are important. Reunification of Korea and the capture of the North’s economy by neoliberal economics is the real prize.
RobotPliers
This is definitely a good thing, but I worry about the larger picture and where this puts China and the US in the near future. If DPRK comes in from the cold, China will have demonstrated that it can create and then rehabilitate a nuclear client state. It is a counter to the US’s current policy of invading weak non-nuclear states. Being able to protect countries from US invasion is good, but giving them nukes and/or tying them into China’s orbit is bad.
In short, I’m concerned that this is a positive development that keeps a long chain of very negative developments moving along into the future. Maybe I’m too cynical :).
Webstir
I’m lining up with Moon of Alabama’s opinion on the matter: http://www.moonofalabama.org/2018/06/the-west-is-over.html#more
Russia and China are strategically aligning and the west is fracturing. Kim knows this. Short of world war, he’ll keep his weapons and it will just one more opportunity to smear egg on the face of the west. Another opportunity to show what the emperor looks like without clothes — a big fat blustering pustule filled pox upon the world.
Bill H
@Hugh: “Giving away” the military exercises with South Korea is “a substantive concession” is it? My goodness.
NR
There’s also this from Trump, which I’ll post without comment:
“I may be wrong,” Trump said during a news conference after the meeting. “I may stand before you in six months and say, ‘Hey, I was wrong.’ ”
“I don’t know that I’ll ever admit that, but I’ll find some kind of an excuse,” Trump added with a smile.
Source: http://thehill.com/homenews/administration/391774-trump-if-i-was-wrong-about-kim-ill-find-some-kind-of-an-excuse
Heliopause
“It is unclear what, exactly, hawkish critics are scared Trump is going to ‘give away’ to Kim.”
We can only go by what they say and their #1 complaint seems to be that this meeting elevates Kim on the world stage. But since it is precisely the same hawks who have already done this by screaming about the North Korean threat on the front pages of our newspapers for decades we can dismiss this absurd complaint out of hand. What their stance guarantees is endless cold war with North Korea, rather than a resolution by either peaceful or violent means, so we must assume that is what they truly want.
Hugh
“They have great beaches. You see that whenever they are exploding the cannons in the ocean. I said look at that view. That would make a great condo.”
That’s really all you need to know about this or anything else this Administration does, and how likely it is to succeed.
sglover
Considering that only a few weeks ago I worried that Trump would stumble into an idiotic war in a meeting like this, it’s not a bad outcome at all! Ending the maneuvers seems to me a *very* small price to pay under the circumstances. In fact, if the doofus stumbled into a way to rachet back US military activity *anywhere* — hey, what’s not to like?
Peter
After all these years I keep hoping some people will realize that the only peace treaty possible is between NK and SK who were officially at War. Any relationship the US and NK have is seperate from that fact and would be something other than a war ending treaty.
Hugh
Just wondering, but does anyone here have a realistic plan to eliminate the threat of Kim targeting US cities with nuclear weapons or is everyone cool with that? As the vacuous summit demonstrated, Trump doesn’t have one. If anything, it showed to Kim that targeting US cities is the way to go.
Bill H
Just wondering, but does everyone here know that there is a realistic threat of Kim targeting US cities with nuclear weapons or is everyone taking the media’s word on that?
bob mcmanus
Just wondering, but does anyone here have a realistic plan to eliminate the threat of Kim targeting US cities with nuclear weapons or is everyone cool with that?
“Realistic” does its usual work there, but I vote for unconditional surrender.
Willy
Jung-un would do better by targeting cities with Trump Towers.
Heliopause
“Just wondering, but does anyone here have a realistic plan to eliminate the threat of Kim targeting US cities with nuclear weapons”
Sure, the weapons are destroyed under inspection and a verification regime remains in place. The other option is an invasion and long-term occupation undertaken before they can improve their ICBM capabilities, but obviously this would be at a hideous human cost and extremely destabilizing. Glad I could help.
“or is everyone taking the media’s word on that?”
Look, elite media have a difficult job and have to walk a fine line between portraying a credible threat and complaining about the normalization of a tinpot dictator. It’s not easy keeping a pointless cold war going for decade after decade.
sglover
Just wondering, but does anyone here have a realistic plan to eliminate the threat of Kim targeting US cities with nuclear weapons or is everyone cool with that?
I’m pretty sure the “plan” is exactly what it’s been for decades: The North Koreans are at perfect liberty to launch all their missiles right now, as long as they’re content to be, well, erased a couple of hours later.
The “threat” of North Korea is only the latest in a series of “threats” that “serious people” have been using to bamboozle and divide Americans for decades. In practical terms it’s right up there with the Iranian “threat” and, a few years ago, the Saddam Hussein “threat”. It’s all bullshit, puffed up by the worst among us.
V
As for all the hand-wringers whining about human rights, what can be said about North Korea is that it is not aiding a multi million person genocide in Yemen, and the US is. Shut up you flaming hypocrites.
That needed to be said, thanks.
V
Just wondering, but does anyone here have a realistic plan to eliminate the threat of Kim targeting US cities with nuclear weapons or is everyone cool with that?
Sorry, but that’s just ludicrous.
Korea is the very least of the U.S.’s problems…
Tom W Harris
NR’s Trump quote above shows that
1) Trump is just trolling us for fun and profit;
2) Anything outta his mouth is just a buncha BM; and
3) Ahy attempt to make sense of what’s going on is an exercise in self-delusion.
Some more quotes, from the music world:
V
It does occur to me that we have been bombarded with a huge, and very negative, propaganda campaign against NK for almost 70 years.
I have, for some time, had serious doubts we were getting any facts.
I no longer believe anything coming from anyone who has not been there on the ground.
Russ
@Hugh
“Just wondering, but does anyone here have a realistic plan to eliminate the threat of Kim targeting US cities with nuclear weapons or is everyone cool with that? ”
I do indeed: Get your imperial presence out of Korea (and Asia).
(Same exact answer for “terrorism” and the US presence in the Mideast. Same exact answer for “Russia”. The US is the pure aggressor everywhere on Earth and has zero legitimate basis for a presence anywhere outside North America. Only imperial globalization ideology claims otherwise.)
That probably requires also ridding ourselves domestically of neocons like anyone who sees North Korea as a “threat” simply because the North’s policy is based on self-defense. Same for Russia, Iran, Islamists, etc.
Hugh
I have often said that the formulation of serious foreign policy uses the same framework for any adult decision, that is it must answer in order the following 3 questions:
What do you want?
What can you do?
What can you live with?
Unfortunately, most people whatever their political persuasion stop after the first question. The second question concerns physical limits. You may want to jump tall buildings at a single bound, but you can’t. The third question is in many ways the most interesting because it deals not only with your priorities but also the consequences of your choice, the pluses and the negatives. This is probably pretty clear in your private lives but, although often less clear, it operates the same way in foreign/public policy. I think if progressives want to have credibility on foreign policy they need to present their case in this way. Flip statements convince nobody but true believers, and this is a bad habit on the left as much as on the right.
bob mcmanus
Well, I am glad I am not important, because I confess I do not have a coherent plausible plan to end US imperialism or the part of that occupies Korea, Japan and the Philippines. Are we still in the Philippines? Not do I even have predictions that come more easily to others about what might happen if Trump ordered withdrawals tomorrow (expensive!) or NK accepted disarmament.
I do have serious doubts about any nation attacking another in that region under almost any circumstances. I even have doubts about deterrence, in that if NK nuked Sapporo I am not certain what the response might be. An adequate nuclear or conventional response I doubt would do Seoul or Kyushu any good at all.
Is the US still amassing troops and material in Poland and the Baltics? Am I supposed to say I think that’s a bad idea?
I feel ridiculous discussing any government policy at all, and bored with arguing the policies I am in agreement with institutions like Democrats, as if there were a path to or part of power accessible to my dreams. “The Fed shouldn’t raise rates.” frankly feels insane as any part of my identity, like “Let’s go to Alpha-Centauri.”
We don’t make policy.
Personnel is policy.
We do politics.
I have lived 60 years with this rage and grief at the world, so apparently I can live with a lot. Not so desperate to make it more than 5 or 10 more, when I think the climate and failures to address it will make everyday life unbearable, if only at the injustice of consequences.
Tom
If nothing else, Kim isn’t cartoonishly evil like Assad and as long as he doesn’t do stupid provactive shit, Trump will seal a peace deal and so will South Korea and that chapter will close.
But one thing that never ceases to amaze me though:
1. Mexican Drug Lords behead more Americans each month than ISIS has in its entire existence.
2. Mexican Drug Lords kill more Americans in 3 months than ISIS has in its entire existence.
3. Mexican Drug Lords occupy and terrorize many cities in the US
Yet ISIS gets billions of dollars in bombs, drones, and US troops dropped on them, despite not being a major threat and even then if the US would leave the Middle East, they would stop bothering us.
Skewed priorities.
Tom R
Please don’t use the slaughter in Yemen to justify being an apologist for an American oligarch in the White House.
Trump has no foreign policy. He loves dictators and pageantry and scorns democracy and the rule of law. His admiration for the Saudis assures more horror in Yemen. And his climate denial just melted another glacier while you were reading this.
Ché Pasa
And don’t forget the slaughter in Yemen and elsewhere our valiant troops, mercenaries and so-called allies are operating is being conducted/overseen by the Trump regime.
different clue
@Tom,
The Mexican Drug Lords launder kilo-billions of dollars through all the Great Money Center Banks of the world. Can ISIS do that? No wonder the Mexican Drug Lords don’t get bombed.
Priorities indeed.
Synoia
The Mexican Drug Lords launder kilo-billions of dollars through all the Great Money Center Banks of the world.
And are where the masses buy their mana.
Heliopause
“What do you want?”
You stated it yourself, elimination of the North Korean threat (tiny as it may be at present). So, that’s what we’re debating.
“What can you do?”
As I already stated, there are two options (OK, three; we could ignore it since it’s tiny at present. I assumed you wouldn’t accept that so I didn’t discuss it): invade and occupy North Korea, or disarm them peacefully through a verification regime.
“What can you live with?”
Me personally? I am forced to live with whatever happens.
V
I thought it was pretty clear the whole NK thing is a manufactured crisis. The U.S. has vast experience in this, however; due to increased awareness the deep state no longer gets away with this charade, at least not completely.
We are cursed with short memories and almost zero critical thinking skills.