If North Korea actually denuclearizes, then Trump would be deserving of recognition… although it would be amusing to give a nobel peace prize to someone for overtly antagonistic actions. If it works, it will essentially be that Trump scared NK into playing nice by threatening them with nuclear war.
The reality though is that there is essentially zero chance of this happening. North Korea is not going to denuclearize. They aren’t going to give up their nuclear weapons.
They are just doing what they’ve done multiple times in the past. They ramp up aggressive actions, then they agree to tone them down in order to get money and food and stuff from other countries. That’s what’s going on here. We’ve all heard this song before.
In this case, Trump is going to go and meet with Kim Jong Un. That in itself is a huge victory for North Korea. It totally legitimizes him on the international stage, putting him on equal footing with the most powerful nation in the world. That’s, literally, his goal right now. Just to have the direct conversation. I doubt that anything will come from it.
Trump is a super savvy negotiator. I can’t wait to hear how we’re pulling out troops out of South Korea because Kim told Donnie what magnificently large hands he has.
Turns out the actual translation is that Moon was saying: “Trump can have the Nobel Prize, who gives a shit as long as we get peace.”
So… not so much that Trump should get it, more of a, whatever who cares?
Also:
We made it all the way to 13 years ago, folks! WOOOHOOO!!!
Except that NK already the has nukes. So… yeah.
Also there is no way they’re lie to us TWICE.
My personal conspiracy theory version goes like this:
Kim realizes that his nuclear program is fucked, either for technological reasons, or because his testing facility collapsed, or whatever. He also knows that NK in general is unsustainable. So, he’s basically been thinking about how to finagle a way out for a while.
Trump comes along, and, Kim thinks: “Look at this moron. What can I do to maximally destabilize the US while getting what I want? I’ll give this orange idiot credit! That will burnish otherwise objectively disastrous foreign policy credentials, and let him continue fucking up the rest of the Western world, and leave us alone, and also help our old friends China emerge are a world leader in international relations.”
There’s lots of reasons I don’t think this is actually true. But, if it came out 30 years from now that this was the case, I wouldn’t be surprised.
He’s offering an empty box. He already has nukes and his testing facility is trashed. So he promises to stop developing the thing he already has and couldn’t work on anyway. With it he buys credibility and time. Not to mention it makes China happy and probably gets some sanctions lifted.
All for the low, low price of a handshake.
He can always change his mind and start it up later anyway. He did it once and he didn’t have nukes then. Now he does, so who is gonna stop him?
At this point, NK essentially already knows how to make nukes… and they have that knowledge no matter what. So even if they give up their nukes (I can’t imagine they actually have many anyway), it’s essentially like a cobbler giving up his shoes. He can just make more whenever he wants.
Now, if he actually gives up all of his nukes, as well as a complete dismantling of the entire nuclear program? Enrichment, nuclear sites, etc. Then that’s something… much less than it was prior to him knowing how to make nukes, because it would at least take some time to replace… but still, it’d be something.
I am supremely skeptical that he’s gonna do it though.
Here’s the major sticking point that is gonna prevent a happy ending to this story:
Kim Jong Un’s regime is an authoritarian dictatorship. In the most complete and total sense of the term. His power is largely based upon keeping his society isolated and oppressed. We’ve seen what happens when some cracks in that wall form, and some light starts getting in… You get the USSR in the late 80’s and early 90’s.
Kim Jong Un isn’t going to suddenly have a normal, peaceful relationship with South Korea… or really, anyone. Because you can’t have a “normal” relationship with the world, while simultaneously promoting the idea that your leader is a fucking god king. It just doesn’t work. If anything, NK’s situation is far more precarious than the Soviet Union’s was. In their case, they were facing the collapse of a hollowed out economy… but they at least weren’t using the idea that their leaders were literally divine beings as a crutch to hold up their country.
If North Korea were to normalize relationships with other nations, then Kim Jong Un is going to lose power… and he ain’t going for that.
I do think the new US sanctions is hurting NK a lot though - despite official protests to the contrary there is a pretty big capitalist class in NK that has cropped up over the past decade or so that the new round of sanctions is now targeting.
I suspect Obama and other previous US presidents were wary of any sanctions hitting this area since it was a way to stealth capitalist and democratic ideas to the NK populace but the new US sanctions basically hits NK in the part of their economy that they want to rely on more going forward, so I think they’re more eager to try to get back onto the bargaining table.
There is only a single reason I could allow for this to be more than just another round of Kim smoke and mirrors: his visit to China last March. Before that visit there was missile launching and twitter sabre rattling. After that visit… nothing… followed by the joint Olympics, the meeting with South Korea and now the Trump talk.
It could still be a big nothing-burger of course, but the timing strikes me as auspicious.
Oh absolutely. I’ve felt China was pulling the strings here all along. They want the US off the peninsula. Once that happens, they conveniently look the other way at whatever Kim does in the process of reuniting the country.
This IS all because of Trump. See @KevinC’s remark above.
Is it reasonable to expect that not having troops in S Korea would mean that we’d let N Korea invade? Those 40k troops aren’t an effective resistance anyway, it’d always have taken additional forces to repel a full-on invasion.
How long do you think it takes to mount a response? What rationale could they use to do so? By the time they did anything, it would all be over. And China simply backs Korea as a sovereign nation and pledges to respond to any invasion of foreign troops on the peninsula.
They’re an effective resistance because it would mean directly attacking US armed forces in any invasion, which would guarantee a response from the US. And 40,000 better trained and equipped troops is nothing to sneeze at.
I really don’t expect China to back N.Korea in a S.Korea invasion - China probably has better relations with S. Korea than N. Korea right now and S. Korean culture is crazy popular in Chinese mainstream.
This is more about China reasserting their power in the region and getting US out of Asia. I do think there is a reasonable solution for the US to scale down troops in Korea and be more Japan centric (which has its own set of issues right now)
I think they will - I can guarantee you that no one in Korea seriously thinks that this is a risk if the US scales back their presence in Korea and this sentiment is shared in Japan as well.
This is partially driven by the fact that the US military presence is already small enough that it won’t be a strong deterrence to begin with. Any high level war will probably wipe out the region before the US can get the right level of arms in place - this is partially what’s driving discussions in Japan to re-arm themselves for “self-defensive reasons”.
