You know what is crazy about the Trump strategy in North Korea is, is that it is working very well at de-escalating tension. This may be because he is basically all talk at this point, and is not even bringing up nuclear weapons bans and the human rights abuses happening, but tensions have de-escalated drastically, and the weapons testing has decreased.
Trump is doing what Trump does best, bullshitting someone to get them on his side. And as a wannabe dictator, Trump probably admires what Kim has done on some level.
I guess if only Nixon could go to China, only Trump could go to North Korea. Because he is a crazy idiot, and they have that in common.
It’s unrelated. They successfully completed their weapons testing. Furthermore, the kind of testing they were doing was costing them tons of money and nuclear material. They’ve moved into higher gear production now. They don’t need to test any more.
The problem with North Korea is that the existence of the regime as it is–dictatorial, hereditary, militarist, paranoid, economically nonviable–is fundamentally incompatible with, well, anything or anyone else in the region. It continues to exist solely because the price of getting rid of it has always been too high. First, in the context of the Cold War, it was the support of the Chinese and the USSR. Later, it has been nuclear weapons, combined with the growth in North Korean conventional capabilities that, while insufficient to “win” a war, are damn sure sufficient to kill hundreds of thousands of South Koreans.
Eventually, either the regime’s ability to cause harm will deteriorate to the point where it becomes cost-effective enough to do something about it directly, or the regime’s tendency to use blackmail and negative incentives to coerce concessions will backfire spectacularly and kick off a war no one wants. The only way I see to avoid that is precisely what was suggested up thread: give Kim and Co. a bajillion bucks, fancy dachas, and lots of hookers and blow somewhere far, far away, and buy them off.
The problem with having an idiot like trump involved is he may give Kim all that stuff, yet leave him in control with all his nukes plus some billions of extra dollars.
The problem with the current “de-escalation” is that it solves nothing. NK still has nukes and is still developing weapons - it’s just that the US doesn’t care. Kim hasn’t had to give up anything he cares about, while getting lots of what he craves (i.e., recognition of his regime).
Pretty much the only thing Trump has achieved so far, is to make the job significantly harder for the next person who has to negotiate with NK and try to get any form of concessions from them.
So basically, we’re recognizing Kim as a legitimate world leader and letting him run his nuclear program however he wants. And in exchange, we get…wait, a sec. Ok, we recognize Kim and leave him alone, and North Korea is giving us…hmmmm. I must be missing something.
