We're not at the brink of war, no warmongers are strategizing their invasion plans, South Korea isn't regularly facing off against attacks and harassment, North Korea wasn't even being publicly bellicose anymore.
The temperature has very palpably been reduced. That's the metric. What was previously an unstable tinderbox is now quiet. The only time they even make the news is when they test their weapons, and it wasn't until Joe Biden started poking them with sanctions last week that the relationship turned overtly hostile again. So by that metric, Trump brought the temperature down, Biden is bringing it back up and reversing what little Trump accomplished. I think we're going to see it get hot again after the winter olympics end and Bejing gives them more slack in the leash.

We were never at the brink of war with north korea. Did trump successfully negotiate a cessation of nuclear development? An Arms treaty? UN inspector access? What meaningful, long-term change did trump get from NK beyond a photo op and the opportunity to say he set foot on NK soil?

Its weird to me that it used to be the French who were so infamous for denouncing America's habit of declaring moral superiority and using it to justify a jingoistic military interventionalist policy. We red blooded Americans had to bring freedom to the world! A bunch of brown people in some shithole country are living in squalor under the oppressive yoke of a strongman dictator who rules by force instead of democracy, we must spread out democratic ideals to every corner of the globe by dropping it out of B52s and ramming 50 caliber freedom into villagers in hajjistan and former democratic republic of kenjibakalaka and some yellow country filled with not-quite-chinese. Its completely unthinkable that anyone could support keeping those dictators in power and consecrate and validate and justify and normalize and rationalize and synonymize their bloody atrocities! Who could dare support the likes of Saddam Hussein, Bashar Al-Assad, Muammar Gaddafi, or any other brown guy in a funny hat with repeated consonants in his name. The world is so much better off when we blow them up and leave a power vacuum, or when we stay at indefinite hostility and try to persecute them and their people. No need to fill those power vacuums or have an exit strategy, I'm sure it will all sort itself out.

How about we start treating international diplomacy like adults. The world isn't made better by America trying to kill anyone it can't impose its own values upon. It should be guided by our rational self interests and the common benefit of the planet, not some demented sense of moral righteousness

This post was edited by Goomshill on Jan 21 2022 12:58am

This is a lot of words to say "There's literally no concrete policy outcome I can point to that Trump achieved in North Korea beyond a few feel good fox news headlines"

This has nothing to do with "America" or "French", this is geopolitical basics: Trump validated, normalized, Kim Jong political regime.

But go on, get Trump elected for 4 more years and get your country humiliated at unbelievable levels once again.

I already said it multiple times, he brought down the temperature. That is an accomplishment. Moving the dial away from warfare and towards diplomacy is in and of itself a good thing, even if it doesn't produce an immediate end to a conflict. The failure to recognize the value of peace and stability itself, looking only for an idealized all-or-nothing solution, is at the heart of how America's foreign policy has been so disastrous for decades. Bush stumbled around like a bull in a china shop. Obama promised to measure twice, cut once, then closed his eyes and got on one foot and started juggling chainsaws with predictable results. Getting more normalized and peaceful relations with Gaddafi or Hussein or Assad would have been far smarter and better for both America's interests and the worlds, than what we actually did. But there was no shortage of jingoist interventionalists screaming that talking wasn't bringing results and giving them any recognition would just legitimize their atrocities and let it stay a status quo that we must put to an end.

Now look at the role reversal as our local frog embraces his inner Bush

This post was edited by Goomshill on Jan 21 2022 01:20am

Biden's weakness has emboldened Russia to get aggressive with Ukraine and brazenly threaten an invasion to begin with.

And for the record: I don't give a single fuck about the run-down, corrupt to the brim shithole that is Ukraine. What I do care about, however, is the economic burden my country (Germany) would have to shoulder in case of a Russian invasion of Ukraine. The U.S. do a lot less trade with Russia than we do, they are much less reliant on their gas and oil than we are and they might even benefit economically if cheap Russian gas for Europe has to be replaced with shitty, expensive LNG from America. Funny how that works, isn't it?




Wasn't the temperature bound to go down anyway once NK had the bomb? At that point, they had achieved their strategic long-term goal and become "uninvadable".


This post was edited by Black XistenZ on Jan 21 2022 01:21am

He brought down the temperature based on what? The media reports from the mainstream media that you love?

Look at the tangible outcomes from north korea. They further developed their ICBM capabilities under trump, including showing off their shiny new toys weeks before the 2020 election. They called off talks with south korea citing Trumps talks as empty rhetoric to achieve a political win without actually doing anything.

But you saw fewer MSM headlines on it so the temperature was lower and trumps a winner. Come to me with concrete facts to back yourself up instead of emotion. Conservatives are so illogical and emotional with their thinking.

Well that's the heart of the matter isn't it? Merkel abandoned Ukraine to Russian interests because as long as Russia had a stranglehold on the lifeblood of gas and American LNG couldn't compete, Nord Stream 2 was a political inevitability, which means Ukraine loses its one bargaining chip saving it from Russian domination, all while Biden and Obama showed they were too weak to oppose it. At least Trump tried to oppose the energy domination and arm the border defensively but it was a futile effort because Merkel was motivated by necessity. Biden just straight up capitulated the moment he got in office. Which is really twisting that knife of betrayal since Biden himself was the architect of the coup to overthrow Yanukovych in the first place.

I've said before that this really originated with the green movement in Germany and abandoning of domestic energy only to replace it with imports. It was the self-destructive strain of economic liberalism. Trump had been screaming about how economic independence is an issue of national security for decades before he became President, back when he was a lifelong democrat, even when it was a matter of competing with Japan. He had the right idea, modern conflicts are economic not militaristic. We aren't going to stave off Russia with a few more mortar teams or sappers at the trenches. The Taliban waltzed into Kabul by just bribing all the local warlords to stand down.

As a reminder (or info lol) : Russia and Ukraine is a long shot, out of subject:
- Putin himself is slowly weakening, must show his claws to his own kind
- Putin's regime does not want Ukraine to appears as a successful integration into the West Block

Trump's circus could not change anything in this. (or worse; he can legitimize dictatorship, AGAIN)

This post was edited by Saucisson6000 on Jan 21 2022 01:32am