Running North Korea freakout thread

Exclusive: U.S. takes credit for brokering peace deal in the Hundred Years' War.

 

I agree. It’s hard to understand why Trump shouldn’t get credit for a positive outcome achieved through negotiation.









“I told Rex Tillerson, our wonderful Secretary of State, that he is wasting his time trying to negotiate with Little Rocket Man,” Mr. Trump wrote on Twitter. “Save your energy Rex,” he added, “we’ll do what has to be done!”

 

Nothing unites Washington, the two parties and media within, like the belief that the US is the driving force in all international relations, with other countries having no agency, merely reacting to our words and actions. My entire lifetime has been spent watching other countries prove that belief very wrong to our national sorrow. Our certainty we are the center of the universe is matched only by that of China, which is why our relations with them would be uneasy no matter what form of government they had. After all, we can't both be right.

 

Heh. China has exactly one overseas military base (in Djibouti). I'll cut them a little slack.

 

I'm talking about national attitudes. The Belt and Road initiative is China's expansion, which has the highly intelligent design of capitalizing on their national strengths, building stuff fast (not always well) and a surplus of capital for investment, rather than a military presence.

 

South Korea credited Trump.

 

Sure, South Korea credited Trump. It's called diplomacy.

The real driving force was South Korea's president. If not for him, this doesn't happen.

Trump deserves some credit. But he's not the main reason it happened.

 

That's as accurate as can be. Trump deserves credit for being open to Kim's approach generated by South Korea. That's not nothing, and his supporters aren't doing him any favors by saying it's all his doing. Because then if things so south, which they still can, the logical inference is that would all his fault, too, even if it wasn't, as it likely wouldn't be.

 

Oh, if it goes south, rest assured it’ll be all Trump’s fault ...

 

Well, the primary risk is that Trump himself would see any failure (however that's defined) as being seen as his fault, because he's the prime believer in the Trump as prime mover theory. But since it's in everyone's interests to say the Trump-Kim summit was a big success, my guess is that's what both sides will say.

 

I’m just glad to know we’ve got the go-ahead to trust the heads of rogue states again. Hassan Rouhani will be thrilled!

 

Let me know when we fly pallets of cash to North Korea.