“If you start with the invective calling people ignorant and such, you shouldn’t be surprised when you get it back.”
Someone calls me stupid, and because I see they want to skip knowledge and history of the regime in North Korea, I use the vary correct and not impolite terms that that willing dismissal of that knowledge represents ignorance (which simply means not derogatorily stupid but simply not well informed - lacking knowledge). They either happens because they are that uninformed or they which to ignore it all.
“I’m happy to have arguments with those who disagree with me, but your categorical dismissal of the possibility that Trump has changed Kim’s calculus is frankly dumb.”
I’ll try not to attack you personally, as you seem so willing to do, but I do not see anything (remembering the whole history of the dictatorship) that defines or means that Kim has changed his calculus. Actually, from his view the nuclear blackmail is working in his favor, having obtained a glorious achievement that neither his father or grandfather ever achieved - a face to face with the leader of the U.S. He is now a bigger hero in his country than any past North Korean dictator. What he has as for as next intentions is anyone’s guess but all the history says nothing so far represents “change” in the heart, soul and political mission of North Korea.
“Sure, it may be that Kim is just trying to BS his way into buying more time for building nukes, but he may also watch Trump dropping bombs in Syria last year and this year and his hires of Mattis and Bolton has Kim worrying what happens if Trump strikes his facilities. He cannot not respond like Assad, and his regime would be annihilated in record time if he did.”
Nonsense. The dictator knows the U.S. is not going to call for such an attack as any kind of preemption, but only if North Korea makes some sort of attack first. He knows he can keep his nuclear stuff and keep using it for political blackmail, as long as he does not cross a red line of instigating aggression on the South.
And what is he going to want to eliminate his nukes? An end to the U.S.-South Korea alliance (so that only conventional forces are needed in a war with South Korea alone). That’s not going to happen.
So what will be the continued use of his blackmail “for peace” - just as before economic (financial & industrial) assistance to save his economy with zero internal political change).
We have seen the whole play before. I don’t know why so many people were absent, the tickets were free, and they had more than one showing, in different years.
“The dictator knows the U.S. is not going to call for such an attack as any kind of preemption, but only if North Korea makes some sort of attack first.”
As Reagan would say, you seem to know a lot of things that aren’t true. All the rest of your blather flows from this falsehood, so there’s really no reason to go point by point.
Furthermore, if Kim believed actually believed that, there would be no reason for him to stage such a grandiose entreaty. He would literally have zero reason to attempt this kind of head fake when could just continue giving Trump the finger and enriching and testing apace since there is zero chance that we would attack him first. If anything, getting caught BS-ing on this scale would give Trump a mandate for a preemptive attack, which you falsely contend is only possible under the status quo of Pyongyang attacking us or S Korea.
You really should spend some more time thinking about these things instead of just spouting off.
People with very little insight on North Korea are embarrassing themselves all over FR these days — the naivete and gullibility is just nothing short of stunning. What they write is so pathetically detached from the reality over here in Northeast Asia. Thanks for adding a sane voice as to what all this really means and what NK is actually doing and that it’s only kabuki and part of a long, predictable cycle of carrot and sticks. We are only ONCE AGAIN in the temporary carrot phase as they maneuver to get what they want.
Japanese papers over here in Tokyo last night were full of the skepticism. And they should know best.
We have had detailed threads on FR for nearly 20 years about the long, unmovable reality of NK and the Kim Regime (still in power) and suddenly everyone is on the threads with a bovine tendency to believe there is substance behind all the staged optics and imagery.
Pompeo probably reminded him of some of the ways that the nuclear program can go wrong. Pompeo undoubtedly reminded him that Iran is not going to be an enabler anymore. Most importantly Ping is looking for trade deals that are no lionger automatically granted by pushover US administrations.