Posted on 05/03/2018 5:59:26 AM PDT by Kaslin
During his first 15 months as president, Donald Trump has postured as the bad cop.
He railed about NATO members welching on their promised contributions to the alliance. Trump rhetorically reduced North Korean leader Kim Jong Un to "short and fat" and "rocket man." He ordered the dropping of a huge bomb on the Taliban and twice hit Syrian chemical weapons sites. He talked of trade wars and hitting back at China.
Through all the bombast and follow-ups, Trump's supposedly more sober and judicious appointees -- especially former National Security Adviser H.R. McMaster and former Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, along with Defense Secretary James Mattis -- played good cops against the outnumbered lone-wolf Trump.
This script was well known from the days of Richard Nixon and his national security adviser and then secretary of state, Henry Kissinger. Nixon often postured as if he were eager to bomb the North Vietnamese to smithereens, to go to Dr. Strangelove levels to stand down the Soviets, or to unleash Israel to do whatever it took to defeat its enemies.
Then Kissinger was sent over to reassure both troubled allies and tense enemies. He pleaded for modest concessions to ward off what might be far worse. He confided to leaders that Nixon was a madman who terrified Kissinger as much as he did the world abroad.
The net effect was to gain compromises and advantages that otherwise would have been impossible.
Remember how in the old cop movies, arrested suspects were worn out and scared by unpredictable and brutal police interrogators? Once softened up, they were then handed over to make their confessions to a new shift of kindly detectives who brought out the good-cop gifts of cigarettes, coffee and donuts while they badmouthed their colleagues' harsh interrogation methods.
(Excerpt) Read more at townhall.com ...
bad cop/good cop only works on someone who feels trapped or has no options. They need to have no hope. You then present them a negotiating opportunity by revealing that one among their interrogators or captors are willing to negotiate. Basically psychology is that they will gravitate to hope of an escape.
These scenarios only work if they are well set up and if the target is not mentally prepared for intense adversity.
Just a tough Cop.
I find it humorous that our brilliant liberal mediots attribute Kim Jong Un’s willingness to negotiate a nuclear disarmament deal to President Trump’s unpredictability and recklessness when it comes to the use of nuclear weapons. On the contrary, I disagree. President Trump is very predictable.
Kim Jong Un is neither stupid nor suicidal. If he has learned anything at all about President Trump, it’s that he means what he says, and accomplishes what he promises. I believe that Kim is inspired by the stark realization that with an undisclosed number of US Ohio-class submarines laying off his shores, within 30-minutes of his launching a nuclear missile as a preemptive act of war, his entire country, along with all of its inhabitants would be incinerated, and suspended in the Earth’s atmosphere in the form of aerosolized and highly-irradiated particulate matter.
That alone is a compelling reason to set aside the phony bluster and negotiate a deal.
Fat Boi has got nothing to gain, regardless of whether he launches nukes or invades the South. If he goes the more 'conventional' route by attacking SK, he'll be an isolated international pariah. Even if he wins a conflict with the ROK and conquers the South (which he won't), where else would he go? China? Russia? Amphibious assault on Japan?
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