Kim/Trump Summit Disaster

[Dill]

(03-01-2019, 10:18 AM)Sociopathicsteelerfan Wrote: Business as usual with North Korea has brought us, finally, to a nuclear armed regime headed by a petty dictatorship and the closest thing to 1984 the world has ever seen outside the book.  Continued business as usual would not produce different results as the past 60 years should have adequately demonstrated.

Part I: “Business as usual.” This history is the baseline from which Trump’s diplomacy should be judged, his promises to end military exercises and bring home all U.S. troops etc. His decision to lead with his ace. Twice.

1         1953 the Korean war stopped North Korea from taking over South. The war is not over, and reunification of the peninsula under the DPRK is still policy goal #2 of the North (#1 being survival).

2         After 1958, when NK first began exploring the possibility of nuclear development under the USSR’s wing, a direct invasion to topple the regime was largely off the table, given the tremendous costs—including a likely WW 3—involving the new nuclear USSR plus China.

3         “Business as usual” since ’58 has included a KORUS agreement and 28-30,000 US troops in SK, plus additional forces in Japan and naval contingents rotating in and out of the area.

4         From 1958-2006, NK became a pariah nation, a problem for its former socialist block friends, while SK, protected along with Japan, became an Asian “tiger” with liberal democracy and a strong economy, another US military ally and strong trading partner. This is a good result.  (In 2002, Saddam Hussein had been contained In Iraq for a billion dollars a year. Thinking that was a bad result produced the Iraq War, a much worse result.)

5         The one realistic chance of preventing a nuclear NK, was the Agreed Framework of Clinton, for whose abandonment Clinton and Bush bear as much responsibility, if not more, than NK. Once abandoned, there was little the world, let alone a US president, could do to stop nuclear production beyond sanctions leading to regime change. 

6         Post NK’s development of nukes, “business as usual” under Bush and Obama, included the strongest sanctions regime in history, the prime motivator for the recent North-South talks led by Moon (wherein Trump saw his opportunity for a “historic first”). This involved not only the US and the UN, but also additional unilateral sanctions by countries like Japan and South Korea. This was/is the most promising diplomatic track available.

There is therefore no real ground to assume 1-4 and 6 have produced no results or bad results, or been “ineffectual,” or an “abject failure,” or to assume that “different results” will be better results—especially if Trump’s efforts to “shake things up” weaken sanctions and alliances, encourage NK to continue, and/or provoke war.