Tag Archives: Singapore summit

Trump’s Bold Historic Gamble, by Patrick J. Buchanan

Posted on June 15, 2018 | Leave a comment

Trump may be gambling, but he’s got some pretty good hole cards. From Patrick J. Buchanan at buchanan.org:

President Donald Trump appears to belong to what might be called the Benjamin Disraeli school of diplomacy.

The British prime minister once counseled, “Everyone likes flattery; and when you come to Royalty you should lay it on with a trowel.”

At his Singapore summit, Trump smartly saluted a North Korean general and then lavished praise on Kim Jong Un as a “strong guy” with a “good personality” and a “great negotiator.” “He’s funny, and … very, very smart … and a very strategic kind of a guy. … His country does love him.”

Predictably, Trump is being scourged for this.

Yet, during his trip to Peking in 1972, Richard Nixon did not confront Chairman Mao on his history of massacres and murder, though Nixon’s visit came in the midst of Mao’s Cultural Revolution, a nationwide pogrom.

Nor did Churchill or FDR at their wartime summits confront their ally Stalin for his legendary crimes against humanity. Both gushed over “Uncle Joe.”

Still, if the Trump-Kim camaraderie goes south and the crisis of 2017, when war seemed possible, returns, Trump, as he concedes, will be charged with naivety for having placed his trust in such a tyrant.

Yet, to Trump’s credit, we are surely at a better place than we were a year ago when Kim was testing hydrogen bombs and ICBMs, and he and Trump were trading threats and insults in what seemed the prelude to a new Korean War.

Whatever one may think of his diplomacy, Trump has, for now, lifted the specter of nuclear war from the Korean peninsula and begun a negotiating process that could lead to tolerable coexistence.

The central questions to emerge from the summit are these: What does Kim want, and what is he willing to pay for it?

Transparently, he does not want a war with the United States. That black cloud has passed over. Second, Kim and North Korea have emerged from their isolation in as dramatic a fashion as did Mao’s China in 1972.

In 2018, the North was invited to the Seoul Olympics. Kim met twice with South Korea’s president and twice with China’s Xi Jinping. Vladimir Putin’s foreign minister stopped by. And Kim had a face-to-face summit with a U.S. president, something his grandfather and father never came close to achieving.

It is unlikely Kim will be retreating back into the cloisters of the Hermit Kingdom after being courted by the world’s foremost powers.

To continue reading: Trump’s Bold Historic Gamble

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Singapore Summit: A Victory for Peace, by Justin Raimondo

Posted on June 14, 2018 | Leave a comment

Nothing demonstrates that the War Party deserves to be called the War Party like its reaction to Singapore. From Justin Raimondo at antiwar.com:

A stinging defeat for the War Party

You could hear the cries of anguish and the gnashing of teeth emanating from Washington, D.C., and the isle of Manhattan, as the media and the political class mourned the coming of peace to the Korean peninsula. Max Boot, one of the primary leaders of the anti-Trump “Resistance,” declaredthat “For Kim Jong-un this is already a victory because he wants legitimacy, he wants a place on the international stage, he wants to be recognized as an equal by the president of the United States, he wants to seen as nuclear power, and he’s achieving all of that. This is a tremendous propaganda victory for him.”

This summarizes the reaction from the anti-Trumpers, who apparently really do believe that Kim derives his legitimacy from factors outside North Korea, and specifically from recognition by Americans, i.e. themselves. The narcissism of these people would be comical if it weren’t so dangerous.

This folderol about being “recognized as an equal” is similarly humor of the unintentional variety: does anyone, including Kim, really believe that a poor, isolated, and desperately poor regime is really the equal of the world’s sole “super-power,” no matter how many photo ops are taken with POTUS? Of course they don’t.

Does Kim want to “be seen as a nuclear power”? But of course North Korea isindeed a nuclear power – are we supposed to ignore this? And what about this “tremendous propaganda victory” – just how tremendous is it? Is it convincing the world’s peoples that the North Korean system is superior to liberal democracy? Nope. Quite the opposite: Kim has been driven to negotiate because his own system is failing.

Well, enough of refuting the easily refutable Señor Boot: what’s scary is that the “progressives” in the mass media and the thinktanks are repeating the same party line. Nancy Pelosi recovered long enough from her impending Alzheimer’s to denounce the summit as a bunch of “vague promises” with no “clear and comprehensive pathway to denuclearization and non-proliferation.” She continued:

“In his haste to reach an agreement, President Trump elevated North Korea to the level of the United States while preserving the regime’s status quo.”

To continue reading: Singapore Summit: A Victory for Peace

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How Corporate Media Got the Trump-Kim Summit All Wrong, by Gareth Porter

Posted on June 12, 2018 | Leave a comment

Once you get past the mainstream media’s talking points, ample evidence suggests that both Kim Jong Un and President Trump are serious about coming to a meaningful agreement. From Gareth Porter at antiwar.com:

For weeks, the corporate media have been saying that the Trump-Kim summit could have only two possible results: Either Trump will walk away angrily or Kim Jong Un will trick him into a deal in which he extracts concessions from Trump but never commits to complete denuclearization.

The idea that North Korea could not possibly agree to give up its nuclear weapons or its intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs) has become an article of faith among the journalists covering the issue for big media. Two themes that have appeared again and again in their coverage are that the wily North Koreans are “playing” Trump and that previous administrations had also been taken by North Korea after signing agreements in good faith.

But the media have gotten it all wrong. They have assumed that North Korea cannot live without nuclear weapons – without making any effort to understand North Korea’s strategy in regard to nuclear weapons. They have invariably quoted “experts” who haven’t followed North Korean thinking closely but who express the requisite hostility toward the summit and negotiating an agreement with the Kim regime.

One of the few Americans who can speak with authority on North Korea’s calculus regarding nuclear weapons is Joel S. Wit, who was senior adviser to the U.S. negotiator with North Korea, Ambassador Robert L. Gallucci, from 1993 to 1995, and who from 1995 to 1999 was coordinator for the 1994 “Agreed Framework” with North Korea. More importantly, Wit also participated in a series of informal meetings with North Korean officials in 2013 about North Korea’s thinking on its nuclear weapons.

At a briefing on the Trump-Kim summit last week sponsored by the website 38 North, which he started and still manages, Wit made it clear that this dismissal of North Korea’s willingness to agree to denuclearization is misguided. “Everyone underestimates the momentum behind what North Korea is doing,” he said. “It’s not a charm offensive or a tactical trick.”

To continue reading: How Corporate Media Got the Trump-Kim Summit All Wrong

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Kim Agrees To Visit US, Confirms Inviting Trump To Pyongyang, by Tyler Durden

Posted on June 12, 2018 | Leave a comment

It’s hard to disagree with Trump; it was a good summit. From Tyler Durden at zerohedge.com:

Update: As North Korea’s day begins, Kim is on the wires reiterating Trump’s comments, underlining the need for North Korea and US to “take practical measures” to follow through on the topics discussed in Singapore.

According to KCNA, Kim said it was “urgent for North Korea and US to make the bold decision to stop irritating and hostile military actions against each other,” adding that “if the US takes genuine measures to build trust” then North Korea “can continue to show additional goodwill.”

Finally, Kim said that Trump and he discussed “taking legal, institutional steps to guarantee commitment to avoid antagonizing each other.”

And North Korean State media also reports that Kim Jong Un invited Trump to come to Pyongyang during the Singapore summit, and confirmed that he also agreed to visit The United States.

Trump also updated his status of the summit in tweet-form:

While Trump was quick to take a victory lap after signing a non-binding letter (of intent) with North Korea’s leader Kim Jong Un to implement the dunclearization of North Korea, several questions have emerged among which:

  • the lack of deal enforcement
  • the lack of verifiability of N.Korea’s denuclearization efforts as part of the “Complete, Verifiable, Irreversible  Denuclearization” or CVID protocol
  • the legitimization of North Korea’s regime
  • China’s role in the process
  • the end of joint military drills with South Korea.

While Trump’s response to most critics was that the process is just starting and that it will take time to denuclearize, where Trump will see the greatest amount of pushback is on the last bullet point. Speaking in an interview with George Stephanopoulos shortly after the one-on-one with Kim, when asked if there was talk of pulling U.S. troops out of South Korea, Trump said the topic didn’t come up, however he said the following:

“We didn’t discuss that, no. We’re not going to play the war games… I thought they were very provocative. I also they’re also very expensive.”

To continue reading: Kim Agrees To Visit US, Confirms Inviting Trump To Pyongyang

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Donald Trump And Kim Jong-Un Sign A Historic Agreement At Their Summit In Singapore – But All The Mainstream Media Can Do Is Whine And Complain, by Michael Snyder

Posted on June 12, 2018 | Leave a comment

Just when you think the mainstream media can’t go any lower, they turn around and surprise. The reactions to the Trump-Kim summit may surpass perfidious Russiagate “reporting” and “analysis.” How can it be a bad thing when the leaders of two countries that have been hostile to each other for over 75 years, that just last year were threatening each other with nuclear annihilation, sit down and discuss their differences, make pledges of a new beginning and peace, and agree to talk again? Let’s call the meeting what it is: statesmanship. From Michael Snyder at endoftheamericandream.com:

Donald Trump just did what no other president in U.S. history was able to do.  He actually sat down with the leader of North Korea, and at the conclusion of the approximately four hour summit meeting they both signed an agreement which calls for the United States to provide “security guarantees” to North Korea and which calls for the “complete denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula”.  It was a truly historic day and a truly historic outcome, and yet all the mainstream media in the United States could do was whine and complain.  Throughout their coverage, mainstream media reporters continually tried to put an anti-Trump spin on things.  They claimed that the agreement did not have the “specific wording” that experts were looking for, they pointed out that other agreements in the past have failed, and they continually insisted that the Trump administration was giving Kim Jong-Un too much respect.

Even when something positive was reported, it had to be immediately followed up with a downer.

For example, this is how a Reuters article on the summit began…

U.S. President Donald Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un pledged on Tuesday to work toward complete denuclearization of the Korean peninsula while Washington committed to provide security guarantees for its old enemy.

But a joint statement signed at the end of their historic summit in Singapore gave few details on how either goal would be achieved.

Of course there are more details to work out.  There always are, but why can’t we just be happy that the president of the United States and the leader of North Korea sat down together to talk peace for the first time ever?

Many Americans will never forget the moment when the two leaders first shook hands…

At the start of the summit, the two leaders shook hands on a red carpet in front of the island resort hotel chosen for the meeting.

At one point, reporters overheard a translator, apparently interpreting Kim’s words, as saying that “many people in the world will think of this as a … form of fantasy … from a science fiction movie.”

If this process is ultimately successful, this is one of those iconic moments that will be remembered for decades.

To continue reading: Donald Trump And Kim Jong-Un Sign A Historic Agreement At Their Summit In Singapore – But All The Mainstream Media Can Do Is Whine And Complain

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