The White House officially ended the speculation of “will-they-or-won’t-they” Thursday morning with a letter to Kim Jong Un regretfully declining to take part in a nuclear and peace summit with North Korea due to the “tremendous anger and open hostility displayed in [Kim’s] most recent statement.”This cancellation of the planned summit puts to rest — at least temporarily — the question of whether or the not the U.S. could bring the mercurial North Korea leader to the table to discuss his country’s nuclear ambitions and an appeasement agreement between North Korea and South Korea/U.S.
North Korea Foreign Ministry official Choe Son Hui was particularly irritated by US Vice President Mike Pence's comments to Martha McCallum on FNC's The Story, in which he said that Bolton's employing of the Libya model was indeed the US position.
Choe called Pence a "political dummy" for comparing Libya to North Korea. She noted that Libya's nuclear program was in its early stages when it came to the negotiating table, while North Korea has spent years developing its nuclear weapons.
"As a person involved in the US affairs, I cannot suppress my surprise at such ignorant and stupid remarks gushing out from the mouth of the US vice president," she said.Well, yeah. The ostensible position of the US, even through all the years of patty-cake measures like the Agreed Framework and the Six-Way Talks, has been that North Korea will not have a nuclear weapons program or arsenal. Period. Pence was basically saying that the US position doesn't change just because that arsenal is now a done deal. We were going to go to that summit and say, "Get rid of 'em."
And well we should. There is no other sane policy to have.
Dang, so now we have to wait for Trump to display how different he is from all the other flunkies toying with this issue in the past? That's scary. Oh well, perhaps he'll get nominated for the Rainbows & Unicorns Prize for his outstanding moves towards peace in the Middle East.
ReplyDeleteI don’t care about any accolades Trump may or may not get, but we do finally have correct policies regarding North Korea and Iran.
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ReplyDeleteSince Ike it's always been about avoiding World War III. Simple as that.
ReplyDeleteA key part of seeing to that is making sure evil monster regimes don't have nuclear weapons.
ReplyDeleteWhen we proliferate so does the rest of the world. Simple as that.
ReplyDeleteWith an internal fight over goals, strategy and tactics fully joined, it would have been next to impossible for Kim to believe that any deal struck would stick. Trump also tried to short-circuit the normal diplomatic process, giving Kim a potential public relations victory without very many concessions or conditions. And, with his criticism of his predecessors' deal-making abilities, Trump had set a bar for himself that would have been very difficult to clear.
ReplyDeletehttp://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/what-went-wrong-for-trump-in-north-korea-everything/ar-AAxLnDE?li=BBnb7Kz&ocid=SL5JDHP
So it's not so easy, bloggie, in war (as Ike concluded, based on anything but cluelessness) or in rainbows and unicorns. How is your Republican president going to get out of this mess now? Your hero Johnny B played a part in screwing it up, or did he? We could be hearing the bombs of August again, or at least the fallout from them, which burns burns burns, that ring of fire, glad it's them and not us, huh?
ReplyDelete"The 'bark orders, impose punishments, and bully friends and enemies into surrender to the mighty, imperial me' approach to foreign policy is unlikely enough to work even when applied to relatively weak states like North Korea and Iran. When simultaneously applied to the entire planet, allies and adversaries alike, it produces only rapidly accelerating failure."
ReplyDelete"In the end, Trumpism and Boltonism have produced an outcome that’s worse than either on its own. The summit is or maybe isn’t off, and the U.S. is back to threatening war but confusingly somehow seeking talks. None of this enhances Trump’s credibility as a negotiating partner. Meanwhile, North Korea still has its nuclear weapons, and could resume testing them. By confronting Beijing on trade, the U.S. has squandered some of the leverage it needs to convince China to keep imposing tough sanctions on Pyongyang. And with his initial letter cancelling the summit, Trump surprised and humiliated South Korean leader Moon Jae In, who may still pursue détente with the North whether or not Trump rescinds his cancellation, thus undermining Trump and Bolton’s maximum-pressure campaign. South Korea may also draw closer to China, which would leave the U.S. more isolated in Northeast Asia than it has been in decades."
https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2018/05/trumps-and-boltons-instincts-form-a-toxic-combination/561275/?utm_source=polfb