[spetznaz]

President Trump is the only post-Cold War president who could have pulled this off. He is the only modern-era president whom the other side could conceivably believe would push back and push back hard, and one would have to go at least back to the Cold War to find another man willing to push as hard. What makes President Trump work is that the other side - be it the Chinese, the Russians, the N.Koreans - actually believe that he would do what he says he would do. It’s like the protagonist in the movie that tells the bad guy ‘leave or I will mess you up,’ and the bad guy leaves since he literally believes the word of the good guy.

It may not always work 100%, but the last president on the Republican side who had the same ability was President Reagan and on the Democrat side President Kennedy. Since Reagan no other President from either party could make the other side pause, until Trump came along.

I am not sure how all of this will end. The world economy is WAY overdue for a recession (several market signals don’t look too good), thus a month or twelve from now things might be different. But that doesn’t take away the fact that President Trump can cold stare the enemy, and the enemy will look down.

[central_va]

World economy? They need us we don’t need them.

[arthurus]

Krushchev didn’t blink too hard. He got the biggest benefits out of the missile confrontation. JFK gave up a lot.JFK blinked badly at an earlier meeting which most likely motivated K to ship the missiles to Cuba.