On the eve of Donald Trump’s acclaimed visit to Singapore to meet with Kim Jong-un, some clarity. Are these my opinions? Yes they are. I state that to assure the reader that no one is impersonating me right now and writing opinions that are not mine. They are mine.
- This is the most important thing to understand: North Korea is a pipsqueak of a country with no serious possible intention of attacking the United States, ever. It has 25 million people. It’s entire GDP is about $12 billion (U.S.). (South Korea’s is about $14 trillion). It would be completely and totally crushed if it dared to attack the U.S. or it’s ally, South Korea or Japan. Kim Jong-un is not insane. It is not going to happen. It was not about to happen. Trump is trying to take credit for stopping something that was never going to start.
- In spite of the massive, relentless media coverage, during which North Korea is regularly characterized as the greatest threat to the United States in the world today, it’s not, and this story is not nearly as important a story as: Yemen, Iraq, the Ukraine, Afghanistan, Putin, Italy, global warming, fracking, the death of the cod fishery, and Anthony Wiener’s laptop.
- North Korea has no intention of disarming. I don’t know what they have planned for the summit but I am very sure that Kim Jong-un is not going to give up the only thing he has that prevents the United States from toppling his government: the threat of nuclear retaliation. Well, it is possible, like Iceland winning the World Cup, or Congress enacting rational gun control or single-payer health care. Just ridiculously unlikely.
- North Korea is a horrible, totalitarian state. Kim Jong-un can only remain in power by exercising ruthless control over his population. He purportedly has over 80,000 people in prison camps. He has executed over 800 people he considered a threat to his regime. The instant he begins to open up his society with any kind of tolerance of dissent, opposition, free speech, or even access to information, his government will face an imminent threat of rebellion. He is not going to do it. What exactly does he think the U.S. expects? Does Trump expect to demand any kind of reform or accountability? Seriously? Is the U.S. simply going to ask for the nuclear missiles to be removed, and then allow Kim Jong-un to continue to rule North Korea with an iron fist? Is he going to allow any kind of flow of information, persons, or goods to and from South Korea, as part of the “peace plan”?
- Lindsey Graham and John Bolton and others incessantly demand military action against North Korea, especially– but not exclusively– if they refuse to give up their nuclear weapons. Exactly what scenario do they have in mind that does not involve either nuclear retaliation (it the North Korean missiles actually work, and can actually bring a nuclear war head back through the atmosphere without it disintegrating) or massive artillery attacks on South Korea resulting in the deaths of hundreds of thousands of people?
- Why would North Korea accept a deal that is, for all practical purposes, identical to the one made with Iran, which Trump has just torn up? Why would North Korea believe that the U.S. would honor such an agreement? Why would the U.S. offer a deal that is inherently absurd? Well, we know why.
- At what point will Trump begin to realize that North Korea is not going to disarm? What will Kim Jong-un offer to try to keep Trump engaged for as long as possible while he revels in the spotlight, going toe-to-toe, just you and me, the two leaders of the world’s nuclear powers?
Diplomacy here is the sacrifice bunt of international relations. It is better than nothing– which is better than striking out– but all it does is move the runner to first base. Then what? I just don’t see the arc of this narrative landing anywhere sensible. What I do believe will happen is this:
There will some kind of vague agreement for North Korea to disarm in the future. Kim has to announce something that sounds believable and substantive, but no action will actually be taken. The U.S. will remove some sanctions and perhaps provide some economic aid, and perhaps remove some military assets from the South. Trump will declare victory– peace in our time– complain bitterly that he didn’t get a Nobel Prize, and move on to the next target of his short attention span. The talks will eventually break off and we will return to the same starting lines and the same basic circumstances that Bush Jr. and Obama confronted. Someone in the Trump Administration will tell the military to prepare a military option and they will defer. They will actually refuse to follow the orders.
Or…
Trump will realize quickly that he’s been had. He will go home. He will tweet insults about Kim Jong-un. He’ll threaten military action. The news media will move on to the next sexy story. Trump will claim that even though he didn’t get the nukes removed, he taught North Korea a lesson they will never forget, and they will not dare attack the U.S., something they had absolutely no intention of doing anyway. (Listen to how absurd that sounds: it is absurd.)
A day later: the incredible absurdity of it all is that Trump– and a good many other Republican’s — eviscerated the Iran nuclear deal because it didn’t contain enough safe-guards and didn’t guarantee that Iran might not eventually go back into production. Now he brags about a deal with no safe-guards, no inspections, no conditions, and no time-table. This is insane hypocritical.
[whohit]North Korea I[/whohit]