Trump, Kim sign "comprehensive" document

[Dill]

(06-12-2018, 09:00 PM)Bengalzona Wrote: Okay... Wall of Words time:

The "Korea Question" should have been settled back in 1953. We just had no willpower to facedown the Chinese. Of course, it never would have gotten that far if an overhyped general hadn't pushed the attacks all the way to the Yalu River. Truman was not a great POTUS, but he was correct about this. The NK army was defeated and in the hills and we were sitting in Pyongyang and the flatlands. That was the time to make a peace on the best terms. Ah... Monday Morning QBing, I suppose.

Ike, JFK, and Johnson all put it in the background to focus on the anti-commie shitstorm they created in Vietnam, all of them hoping that NK would just quietly and peacefully implode upon itself. Like Cuba, it did not. We were so wrapped up in winning the unwinnable war in Vietnam, we hardly took notice as a nation when NK nabbed one of our ships and crew (see USS Pueblo, 1968).

Nixon had an opportunity when he opened diplomacy with China (still a great diplomatic coup, IMO). Unfortunately, his admin was crooked and would not be around long enough to develop that opportunity.

The Middle East and gas crisis forced Ford, Carter, Reagan and Bush Sr. to focus primarily on the Middle East ("Clean up in Aisle 5: Middle East. Thank you!"). Efforts from our side during those years were as half-hearted as the NK efforts. Once again, we hardly took notice when NK soldiers killed two of our officers with axes in 1976 (see Korean Axe Murder Incident).

Now, being a child of most of those generations, I would be remiss if I did not point out the elephant in the room during those time periods: the Cold War. North Korea shares a land border with three countries: South Korea, China and....Russia (formerly USSR). Visions of CCCP tanks flooding the thin corridor through NK to meet our troops always raised a cloud over this whole thing and was probably more influential than our fear of Chinese troops flooding over the Yalu.

(You'll notice that I tend to mention this land border thing quite a bit when referring to politics, diplomacy and other countries. It is something many Americans don't get right away because we only have two neighbors and we have pretty much kept them under our thumb for over 100+ years. We are pretty unique in that respect: 'Murican Privilege, if you will. Other countries see their borders a bit differently.)

That brings us to Clinton. With the fall of the USSR and our seeming "victory over the whole Middle East!" in the Gulf War, we felt we were in a prime position to do diplomatic stuff throughout the world. And the Clinton admin tried to. In fact, they may have tried too much. They had diplomatic pokers in the coals all over the globe: North Korea, Somalia (a nasty gift left to them by Bush Sr.), Bosnia, the former USSR states, ongoing stuff with Iraq, Israel/Palestine, etc. They had a lot of energy at the time and the cloud of the Cold War was lifted. They really thought they could do it all. Unfortunately, they ultimately fell short in almost every case. They came as close as any admin had come to creating the "Two State Solution" in Israel/Palestine. They made the biggest inroads into reaching deals with North Korea. But, ultimately, it was all for naught. Close only counts in horseshoes and hand grenades (and large-yield nuclear weapons).

Yes, there were frameworks there which could have been built upon. Bush Jr. came along and they were not. Conservatives were very critical of the Clinton admins effort to become "the World Policeman". Obviously, I think there is some basis to that criticism. Unfortunately, like a lot of things in modern politics, that criticism was taken to extreme positions by many on the Right. The "stick-our-heads-in-the-sand" crowd re-emerged after 50 years of silence. This was ramped up to a new level after the 9/11 attacks and morphed into the "I don't see why we can't just go whup up on the Arabs, come back home and just leave the rest of the world alone!" ideology along with the "Second Coming is at Hand!!!!!... Let's help it along!" crowd and the "Finally!! Bad guys to point the finger at and create fear!!!" crowd.

Lost in the hype of the "Sole Super Power 90's" and all of the emotions after 9/11 was any sort of moderate, thoughtful approach to foreign affairs. Things such as just focusing on one diplomatic effort at a time until it is seen to fruition or verifying intelligence information before invading other countries. Considering the dramatic swings, is it any wonder that a bad agent such as NK would choose a policy of "Let's just sit this admin out and see what we can get from the next one."? For all of our failures in foreign policy in the 50's, 60's, 70's and 80's (and there were many), at least you could say they were consistent and pragmatic. In foreign policy, those are good things. Inconsistent and fanciful always end up biting you in the ass eventually (as we will soon relearn).

Bush Jr. did something in in 2002 that many initially criticized a lot. In his "Axis of Evil" speech, he targeted North Korea among with Iran and Iraq. There was a lot of speculation that this led NK to build nuclear weapons in 2006. That speculation was incorrect. NK was well on their way to developing the bomb long before that speech. What Bush and National Security knew at that time and most of the rest of us didn't was that NK was actively exporting technology such as centrifuges to create weapons-grade nuclear material. This was how Pakistan developed their bomb in 1998. We got Libya to admit to this and to turn over their arsenal. We also learned that NK had shipped stuff to Iran. The Bush admin called out NK on this and later revealed some of what they had discovered.

Overall, I'm not a fan of the Bush Admin. IMO, instead of invading Iraq we should have been invading NK. Hit the source. But the Bush admin did us a service by revealing the information and calling out NK. The unfortunate after effect was that any attempts to reach NK diplomatically during the Bush admin would be cutoff and NK pressed forward on their nuclear program and their missile program.

That brings us to the Obama admin. Their approach was a cautious diplomatic outreach. This gets a lot of criticism from the Right because 1) it was the Obama admin attempting to do anything, and 2) they didn't feel the Obama admin was trying to do anything (see Schrödinger School of Obama Criticism). The reality of the situation is that there was very little Obama could do at that time. Because the previous admin had called NK out, there was a lot of bad blood. In a situation like that, you have two options: 1) outright war, or 2) patient, cautious approach. Option 2 was the better option at that time. The time for war was 1953 or 2002, not now or anywhere in between. But the Obama admin was not entirely inactive. The continued to try and keep a dialogue going with NK and, perhaps more important, they kept Bush-era restrictions in place.

This has actually been a great set-up for the current admin. As much as they would deny it, there is as much (if not more) enthusiasm for getting to the table from the North Korean side at this point as from our side. They want restrictions eased.

I see this as a basketball play which took 18 years to develop. Bush Jr. passed the ball half court to Obama. Obama dribbled it to the three-point line, but instead of shooting passed the ball to Trump, who now has the opportunity for an easy lay-up.

Well done B! Excellent overview. You are right about the importance of borders (I remember your post about Chinese borders last year, and the number of personnel required to watch it). Just want to pick out a few points of agreement, with a bit of my own coloring in places.

1. Exactly right about '53. NK defeated in '50. US in Pyongyang. But the failure to imagine why the Chicoms would be upset with a US satellite on their border and the arrogance regarding capabilities of "Asian" troops led to the fiasco. Frozen Chosin and divided Korea. At the very most the remaining NK sate would have held only a quarter of the peninsula and less than 10% of the population, if we'd signed a peace treaty with them.

2. Right about the Cold War too. Once the Armistice was signed there was no good reason to expend more blood and treasure in Korea when blocking the USSR everywhere else rightly took priority. Even if there had been no Vietnam I don't see a justification for going back to Korea.

3. End of the Cold War requires a structural shift in US foreign policy, a reordering of priorities--especially concern for stabilizing Russia, the Balkans and the Middle East. But hampered by the return of Pre-ww2 isolationism. When NK begins pursuing nuclear technology, Clinton rightly tried to do something about that. Sharing technology with Pakistan, by the way, is one example of the dangers posed by NK at the time--creating yet ANOTHER major nuclear flashpoint with another paranoid nation. 

4. 9/11 creates another structural shift in foreign policy. Bush's choices greatly constrained what Obama could do. Trump's efforts to undo Obama accomplishments have left US FP in chaos.  NK getting the bomb under Bush and a potentially delivery system makes it now a focus diplomacy.

Where we may disagree is over the easy lay up. Are those people around the basket on Trump's team or not? Hard to tell. Is Russia going to block China so Trump can make the shot or is Russia going to block the shot?  My thinking is Trump would take wild shot and blame teammates for the miss. NK never had the bomb when Clinton dealt with him. Now they are in a position of power--equal partners. The easy lay up, if it was ever there, is surely gone now.  Call time out and re pick the teams?