As Philip M. Giraldi sees it, Trump’s progression on diplomacy is two steps forward, one back. The agreement he eventually gets from North Korea may look a lot like the agreement he repudiated with Iran. From Giraldi at strategic-culture.org:
What will come out of this week’s summit between Donald Trump and Kim Jong-un of North Korea remains to be seen, and one must hope for the best, but the bullets are already beginning to fly in the US media with The New York Times’ Nicholas Kristof declaring impulsively somewhat implausibly that Trump gave away the store by canceling military training exercises with South Korea and in legitimizing Jong-un’s rule by meeting with him without getting anything substantive in return.
Lost in the flood of news coming out of Singapore are Trump’s positive comments delivered at the earlier G-7 meeting in Canada, which may have opened the door to a possible meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin and a return of Moscow to a reconfigured G-8. One hopes that China will soon also make it into the ultimate insiders’ club, which will have to be renamed G-9.
Washington’s most important relationship is with Moscow, and the possibility of détente should be welcomed by everyone who wishes to avoid a nuclear holocaust. But The Times’ Paul Krugman, among others, cannot overcome his visceral dislike for Russia, citing its “invasion” of Ukraine and its relatively small economy as good reasons to block its membership in a reconstituted G-8. He also suggests that Putin has some kind of “hold over Trump,” a serious charge that he cannot substantiate except by innuendo, also claiming that Trump is some kind of Quisling “who defended Russia while attacking our closest allies.” It is odd that Krugman, a Nobel laureate in Economic Sciences, chooses to ignore the fact that Moscow punches well above its weight both economically and politically while also sitting on what is presumed to be the world’s most resource-rich region in Siberia. Also, Krugman should do a fact check on who started what in Ukraine. He might be surprised to learn that it was the United States and its proxies.
The Krugman and Kristof excursions into fantasy demonstrate clearly how media punditry in the United States is a fascinating plant that grows in darkness. It is rarely fact-based, is never held accountable, and it is nearly always ideologically driven. Talking heads sitting across the right/libertarian divide are as bad as traditional liberals like Krugman and Kristof. Justin Raimondo, for example, praises Donald Trump’s performance in insulting and rebuffing the six other nations at the recently concluded G-7 Summit because those conniving non-Americans are relying on the United States to provide their defense so they can sit around all fat and happy. He calls them “Euro-weenies.”
To continue reading: Trump Confounds the Pundits
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