The North Korea Thread

I read something yesterday about how Trump was going to try to change the narrative from NK giving up all nukes to them just giving up ICBMs, thus protecting the US, but leaving SK and Japan at risk.

Why stop there? I think his plan is to make them give up anti-gravity saucers, BattleMechs, OGREs, and hyperspace drives, too!

Yeah, basically the Trump/Bolton plan was going to be: “Keep your nukes, just not any nukes that can threaten the US!” Which is revolting in and of itself. (Sorry Korea! Sorry Japan! Sorry Southeast Asia and Oceana and Australia!) Unclear, but apparently that’s not acceptable either.

Wow, NK really doesn’t seem to like Bolton. It’s almost like NK wants Trump to blame Bolton when the Nobel Peace Prize slips out of grasp.

But what’s the end game? Surely NK must know that Trump will always stand by his staff.

LOLOLOLOLOL

FTFY.

I hope the Nobel nominations happened before all this unexpected craziness. I know he would never say it, but clearly he deserves it!

Why the HELL were we doing military drills off their coast when wee were in the middle of negotiating with them. Who’s running out state department and military? How can they be so incompetent? This is diplomacy 101, you don’t threaten someone you are negotiating with.

That’s been Trump’s business plan for decades.

The Art of the Deal Indeed. What a boob.

Please, let’s not disgrace the beauty and mystery of a boob by associating it with this asshat.

Drat, you’re right. That also implies boobs are bad somehow, which after my most recent viewing of the cake scene in Under Siege, I can state they are NOT.

The military drills are a red herring. They occur every year, NK has known all along that they were coming up, and they didn’t raise a peep until after the fact.

Respectfully I disagree. We didn’t need to give them any excuses and they weren’t at the negotiating table last year. It’s a perfect excuse to waffle and we gave it to them. Big mistake on our part.

Bolton wasn’t SoS last year.

If you think that Trump’s posturing “worked” and that’s why NK made such a dramatic about-face, then I suppose your argument is valid. But I don’t think NK ever actually intended to make any concessions, and that this was all planned to make Trump look bad - correction, feel bad - so that he would once again lash out at his staff.

Yeah, mostly what @magnet said. Conducting the exercises is foolish if you believe the NK regime was going to act in good faith. However their past history, and predictions by many here, indicated they would instead posture to reduce sanctions or get other benefits, while never intending to hold good faith negotiations.

In this case they did exactly that. They got legitimacy for the regime by even getting Trump to agree to talks, decreases pressure for a bit, and gave up nothing. Then, with this known in advance, they were able to play the aggrieved and cancel. This was a calculated move. They get internal stabilization and prestige while giving nothing.

Kim played Trump like a fiddle.

I love how you take Kim Jong Un so seriously, despite the fact there is no chance whatsoever that he will give up his nukes or his capability to hit the US (real or illusory).

The only thing he wanted out of this is to have the propaganda coup of a US president wanting to speak to him face to face. Turning down the meeting just makes him look even stronger and more important.

Yeah, being able to tell the NK people (and the world) that the President of the United States wanted to talk and I told him to go fuck himself is a pretty sweet win.

Need a better simile. 🙃

This appears to be more and more the case. “We turned down a historic meeting with the US because they refuse to treat the DPRK as the international power it is”

This is just straight flexing.

Or this could just be the DPRK shifting the narrative back to their side. The narrative a week ago was they would consider denuclearization. They own the narrative now.