I’ve said above that I have great confidence in what POTUS will seek to do with this process.
I’m not at all concerned that it will end up in some Chamberlain style “peace for our time” b.s piece of paper. Trump, Kelly, and Mattis would not allow that. If there is a deal it will be serious and historic, I am confident of that with our current leadership.
BUT I don’t think we know what Kim Jong-Un’s real intentions are yet, whether he really can be brought to make the “historic deal” or not. It’s not our leadership I’m concerned about. It’s that we can’t know what game Kim Jong-Un is really playing until the process plays out. But I do agree with anyone who thinks that POTUS Trump has Kim exactly where he wants him. It’s just Kim’s rationality and judgment that I’m unsure about.
Sun Tsu is a great guide for these questions.
We certainly won’t have any repeat of Jimmy Carter’s #FakeNews fake deal that proved to be much worse than no deal.
We can be quite sure that the Trump admin. will not fall into that kind of crap.
The question is whether Kim Jong-Un is truly ready to deal in a fundamental way. It is quite possible that his own mind is not made up on that, and that he is just doing an exploratory process. Will he really be willing to negotiate away his nuke and missile programs once and for all, in a way that is completely verifiable and enforceable? It is possible that he doesn’t know the answer to that yet... OR.... (1) he may know he really is ready to deal, or (2) he may know that he really is not going to give up much but he wants to play out the process.
What he won’t get is a lot of US concessions ala Jimmy Carter unless he really does end his programs.
No, we don’t know what his intentions are, but that aside, as I understand it the meeting/s are without pre-conditions which is probably wise.
Scott Adams had a periscope or blog article a while back discussing the NK/SK issue and suggested that there be a 100 year plan for reunification. Sounds plausible as no one today needs to get their panties in a wad as the timeline is so far out, but it does show a road to eventual peace and prosperity. It was an interesting idea as far as ideas go.
We here in the US are under no illusion about NK. I am sure that one of POTUSVSG bargining chips will be a peace treaty to replace the current armistice. That would be a forward and good thing. Declare peace and move on to other things. As to what happens to US presence in SK after that I do not know.
We assume NK has nuclear weapons and probably the means to deliver them. That is an issue that needs to be dealt with. As to why now, why the move to the table? Perhaps its the 100K plus Chinese troops sitting on NK’s northern border right now armed and ready for bear. Perhaps the Panda and decided to give NK the paw. Perhaps the issue of Panda trade is more important than NK’s toys. I do not know and can only surmise based on opinions on the interwebs...
All in All it is a good day for President Trump. His good cop, bad cop strategy seems to have worked. At least there is a meeting and that is something anyway. What happens remains to be seen. But really, who wants war? Us old soldiers don’t want it. The new soldiers are tired of it and the future sons and daughters should never know of it.