love letter bor.. they had love letters

This is what NK has done for decades - pretend to engage in diplomacy every few years to earn some global PR so that they can continue to work towards nuclear capabilities and earn themselves a seat at the adult table - much like Pakistan and other shitholes.

I don't fault Trump for arranging the meeting - in fact, his aggressive rhetoric likely earned the meeting. He deserves credit for this.

At the end of the day, China is ultimately the entity we need to address when it comes to NK. We need to remove NK off of China's teet and stop the gravy train pipeline of food and resources to the country. Starve 'em out.

In the past, concentration camps and the moral atrocities that China is currently committing were the line in the sand that the rest of the world drew before militarisitc intervention. I think we have reached that point with China, and I am personally willing to go over there and die in where-ever-the-fuck Shenyang to stop the nonsense. Fuck em.

So was Trump wrong to criticize his predecessors for not getting this done?

It's true that there's a bunch of problems that are extremely difficult to make progress on. But Trump and his supporters always use these problems as an indictment of previous presidents and politicians. You can't wield that attack line and then fall back on a different one when Trump fails at addressing the same problems.

Furthermore, Trump does deserve criticism for the way he has given legitimacy to KJU with basically nothing in return. His endless praise of the dictator has been embarrassing. Not to mention he's incapable of staying focused on one issue, sacrificing our relationship with South Korea over trade and military costs.

That's the nature of nuclear weapons: once a state or organization has them, there's almost nothing you can do about it. NK has been pursuing the bomb for decades - decades during which an intervention was possible without risking a nuclear retaliation.

It was the failure of the presidents who came before Trump to not have stopped NK while it was still possible. When he took over, the race against the clock had already been lost. Hence, on this particular issue, he is right to blame his predecessors.

This post was edited by Black XistenZ on Jun 12 2020 04:12pm

So Reagan or Bush 1? They are one of the countries we refused to acknowledge had nuclear capability or were nuclear armed. Israel is the other one.

A counter example to your claim that going nuclear is one-way is South Africa. They were nuclear and now they're not.

North Korea's first test was in 2006 so that would mean Obama doesn't deserve criticism for not solving the problem, by your logic.

I'm fine with criticizing presidents for not finding a diplomatic solution to the problem before they tested the first bomb. I'm not into the Bush/Bolton/TrumpOnIran policy of harsh rhetoric and maximum pressure without a real diplomatic solution in mind.

Are you suggesting that presidents before 2006 should've started a war on the Korean Peninsula to stop North Korea from acquiring a nuclear weapon? Obviously that war would've been insanely costly in lives and treasure, not to mention it could've started WW3 with China.

Finally, there's intermediate steps between "nothing getting done" and "North Korea handing over all their nukes". Trump hasn't seemed to go down that road very far. Obama didn't make much progress either. They both deserve criticism, even while recognizing the difficulty of the problem.

This post was edited by IceMage on Jun 12 2020 04:26pm

Has "delegitimization" ever been a successful US foreign policy against any adversarial nation? How did it work out for China, Iran, Cuba, the DPRK, Crimea, Syria, etc?
Time and time again all it does is make us look silly as nations that are clearly defined and structured stay intact for decades while the US pretends they don't exist. Worse we usually forfeit our influence and ability to negotiate, until eventually some politician has to make a dramatic 180 degree turn because our policy was untenable. Then someone writes a minimalist opera about it. Its particularly egregious in the case of North Korea where the worst thing that could happen is if Kim lost his authority and a nuclear state became chaotic.

Trumps decision on OK rally location.
Coincidence or racial dog whistle?

I don't know, sometimes it might be the least bad option. Trump's administration managed to get a sanctions regime going based on the shared belief that North Korea cannot be accepted as a legitimate nuclear state. Giving credibility to KJU's regime I think inevitably causes the world to begin to accept that they will always be a nuclear power.

I'm not hip to all the strategic thinking on North Korea but it seems to me that Trump went out on a limb for almost nothing in return. Maybe that outreach could've paid off under a competent administration.

I don't know if Trump's approach is necessarily any better but it doesn't appear worse than previous administrations locked in a stalemate of denial and predictable aggression and relief cycles. Trump is proposing a dramatic flip and bringing the DPRK into global society but he's hinging it on the non-starter impossibility of giving up nukes, which just amounts to more indefinite stalemating. North Korea is always going to be a nuclear power, at least for all our lifetimes, and accepting that is just accepting reality. So I don't think that recognition really comes at any cost. Nothing in return for nothing. At least the saber rattling peaked and withdrew to a state much more comfortable than anything in modern history, so maybe the "nothing" is the accomplishment.