Making The World A Safer Place...?
"China's objectives on the Korean Peninsula have been to maintain stability, encourage North Korea's denuclearization, and reduce U.S influence."
"Today, Beijing got everything that they wanted."
Abraham Denmark, director, Asia program, Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars
"It's very comprehensive [the mostly verbal agreement between the U.S. and North Korea; Trump and Kim]."
"It's going to happen."
"From the time I've dealt with him, which is really starting like 90 days ago, it's been very strong. I think he wants to get it done. [Kim has] got a total plan."
"We're going to have to check it, and we will check [the agreement to seek 'complete denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula'."
"I'll do whatever it takes to make the world a safer place. If I have to say I'm sitting on a stage with Chairman Kim and that's going to get us to save 30 million lives, could be more than that, I'm willing to sit on the stage."
"Because there's no time [to lock down specific promises from Pyongyang]. I'm here one day ... But the process is now going to take place."
U.S. President Donald J. Trump
"It greatly reduces the likelihood of armed conflict in the near future."
"But the document lacks substance. It says less than previous agreements the U.S. has reached with the DPRK and leaves open key questions that would normally have been resolved prior to such a summit."
Thomas Countryman, former assistant Secretary of State for international security
"[The U.S. military command in South Korea] has received no updated guidance on execution or cessation of training exercises."
"We will continue with our current military posture until further notice."
Jennifer Lovett, U.S. military command spokeswoman
It's happened before. The Kim dynasty started out with grandfather Kim promising that North Korea would be no threat to any other country and Kim Jong Un's father did the same with much pomp and ceremony and certainty that the North Korean tiger had been tamed, its nuclear program shuttered and nothing to be concerned about any longer. But then the concern returned when it was revealed that the nuclear program had, in fact, been kept operational.
And then it was left to the third generation to perfect the nuclear file, to produce nuclear devices that clearly were atomic bombs whose sophistication and energy improved relentlessly, in lock-step with a delivery system -- and ballistic missiles were sent over the Sea of Japan as a wake-up call to a never slumbering Japan unsettled by living in close ballistic range to a megalomaniac murderer who preferred to starve his population rather than surrender its costly nuclear engineering program.
Kim Jong Un has stated his amiable lack of resistance to calls for denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula, and that he was prepared to denuclearize, as long as everyone else did the same. South Korea has no nuclear plans, under the protective umbrella of the United States which has a vast armoury of nuclear bombs. Since China with its own large store of nuclear explosives and Russia as well has no intention of laying them aside, who will Kim wait for to void their store before he does?
The big show of destroying the nuclear installation under the secret hideaway in a mountain base had already destroyed the integrity of the mountain as it began to collapse from the geologically disturbing atomic explosive tests. So this was a demonstration of genuine intention to disarm, then, meant for the totally gullible. But Donald Trump is so certain that he is an astute judge of character that he feels Kim is to be trusted. They have a great deal in common actually, both volatile, unpredictale and juvenile and dedicated to their triumphant power as world shakers-and-movers.
A match made in some obscure corner of hell on Earth. Kim enjoying the fearful reputation of unstable threat he has created for himself, and Trump aware of the uncertainty in which he is held as a reliable partner to America's traditional allies, as he snubs and criticizes them all, and expresses wild admiration for the world's dictators, from Vladimir Putin to Kim Jong Un as fearless and admirable personalities imposing their will on lesser men, traits that appeal hugely to Donald Trump who 'trusts' those who act as he does.
It is of no concern to him that the North's regime has 100,000 North Koreans languishing in hard labour gulags, or that Kim arranged to have his half-brother murdered, his uncle charged with treason and horribly murdered, for to Trump this is what strong-willed men do; and he lavishes praise upon them for their enduring capability to impress on lesser beings who is in control. A situation that appeals because this is what Trump too engages in to the extent possible in a North American context.
And Trump is happy enough to award such monsters the requests they make of him in recognition that he is more powerful than they are. Their acknowledgement of his premier position on the world stage as the elite dictator with the power to support his positions, endears them to him. And so, Kim's need to have the war games regularly conducted between the U.S. and South Korea be suspended, and the 28,000 American servicemen withdrawn from the Peninsula, and of course, any vestiges of nuclear power absented from the geography.
In return, Kim pledges that he will behave himself, stop threatening his neighbours and cease any further nuclear tests, much less improve on the intercontinental ballistic missiles capable of penetrating as far as the U.S. Pacific coast. Much as his grandfather and father before him did when it suited them in exchange for financial aid for their otherwise-impoverished kingdom. All these assurances that the U.S. has no interest in deposing the Kim dynasty and is prepared to accede to its concerns, much celebrated by North Korea, by China, by Russia.
And Donald Trump pleased to please them. Nothing wrong with that, should the plans by mice and men not somehow go awry....
Labels: Diplomacy, North Korea, Nuclear Technology, United States
posted by Pieface @ Friday, June 15, 2018
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