Leverage
By Mitch Berg
Donald Trump, 1999:
Donald Trump’s October 24, 1999 Meet the Pressinterview with Tim Russert is a historically illuminating flash forward to the most surprising, promising and history-altering opportunity since the Soviet Union collapsed: “denuclearizing” North Korea without the could-be belligerents waging a hideously destructive war that scars East Asia and seeds a global economic depression…In the interview, Russert says Trump once indicated if he were president he would attack North Korea preemptively in order to end its nuclear threat.
Despite Russert’s vapors and wailing, Trump’s grammatically-challenged beer and barbecue answer is a superb twofer. One: Trump answers Russert’s core question. Two: Trump accurately summarizes the American government’s spaghetti-spined responses to North Korea’s slow but insidious quest for nuclear weapons.
On March 5, remarkable news broke: North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un said he is willing to discuss denuclearizing his regime. He made no demand on South Korea and the U.S., other than that they meet to discuss the subject face to face. The South Korean delegation that met with him in Pyongyang indicated Kim said he understood South Korean and American joint military drills would continue. That was a major concession. For decades the Communist state’s propagandists have portrayed allied military exercises as preparations for an invasion of the North. In exchange for negotiations, the Kim regime would demand the allies suspend exercises. Not this time. Moreover, the dictatorship also agreed to halt its provocative nuclear weapons and missile tests while talks continue.
Why, it’s almost as if Winston Churchill was right all along; the only thing tyrants and bullies understand is strength.
Go figure.
I’m proudly on record as a Trump skeptic – but between Gorsuch, his cabinet, his deregulatory frenzy, and the unspooling, unprecedented changes in Saudi Arabia (and its various clients) and now the Korean Peninsula, I’m warming up to at least the foreign policy side of The Donald.
April 30th, 2018 at 8:33 am
So maybe instead of going on an America-is-always-wrong apology tour, you start with a position of strength. Let the world know that this administration puts the United States’ interests first.
April 30th, 2018 at 9:45 am
Not saying that The Donald could not cut a deal but NK will never trade nukes for promises. Libya did, Iraq did, Ukraine did.
Enough said.
April 30th, 2018 at 9:58 am
The Ukrainians must feel especially woeful. They aren’t a rogue country like Iraq or Libya. When it declared its independence in ’91, Ukraine inherited the bulk of the USSR’s aerospace manufacturing, including its nuclear tipped cruise missile program. Ukraine gave up its nukes in return for guarantees of territorial integrity from Belgium. For a time, Ukraine was considered for membership in NATO. The Ukrainians (or at least the Ukrainian ruling elite) truly wanted to change their country from being eastward looking to westward looking. At the very least they hoped to become a bridge between Russia and the West.
So much for the EU’s promises.
April 30th, 2018 at 10:26 am
“The US will be discussing with its allies and with North Korea whether there will be a future need for US troops in Korea”. ~ Secretary of Defense James Mattis
https://www.defense.gov/News/Transcripts/Transcript-View/Article/1505983/secretary-mattis-hosts-an-honor-cordom-welcoming-poland-defense-minister-marius/
This is the end game China is hoping for.
April 30th, 2018 at 10:34 am
In the medium and long term, China would like to dominate the western Pacific, to the detriment of Japan, Taiwan, and South Korea.
I am not quite an isolationist, but I would say that is the problem of Japan, Taiwan, and South Korea. Japan could go nuclear in a matter of months, it it wanted to. South Korea and Taiwan would not be far behind.
As long as the US holds Hawaii, it holds the central Pacific.
April 30th, 2018 at 10:43 am
I should have added India to the list of countries that could be a check against Chinese ambitions. India is a nuclear power. From reading US media, you would think that India believes that its greatest strategic rival is Pakistan. Not True. The majority of India’s nuclear stockpile is intended to target China, not Pakistan.
April 30th, 2018 at 10:51 am
I just double checked a few things, and confirmed that South Korea, Japan, and Taiwan all have heavy investments in natively developed nuclear power and satellite launch facilities. These facilities are under national control.
Japan, Taiwan, and South Korea are capable of supplying their own nuclear umbrella(s). It would be wise of them not to depend on the US.
April 30th, 2018 at 11:08 am
This is the first of what will turn out to be a long parade of work-arounds, where the rest of the world makes its own arrangements without having to deal with or accommodate the U.S. By the time Trump gets to this one (if he gets there at all), the deal will already have been done. He will claim credit for having forced a deal, but will have had no place at the table where the deal was made.
April 30th, 2018 at 11:42 am
. . . but will have had no place at the table where the deal was made.
Not likely, since the US a large armed force in S Korea, as well as large investments in the South Korean economy. The South Koreans do not posses a strategically significant nay; they depend on the USN to keep their ports open to trade.
This is not a bit like Britain being sidelined when Hong Kong and China made their reprochement.
It’s amazing how clearly you can think when you are not obsessed with making everything about Donald J. Trump.
April 30th, 2018 at 11:53 am
Pulling American troops out of Korea and Okinawa to let Asians sort out their problems. Pulling out of North Africa to let them sort out their problems. Dare I dream – pull out of Europe to let them sort out their own problems. Wow – treating other nations like grown-ups, what a concept!
April 30th, 2018 at 12:32 pm
Total agreement, JD.
Moreover, the oh-so serious chin-stroking BS that Trump has screwed up something else is really getting tiresome.
April 30th, 2018 at 12:53 pm
Where I do agree with Trump is when he says: “we’ll see; we’ll have to wait and see what happens.”
April 30th, 2018 at 1:23 pm
Let’s face it, Emery. Whatever Trump says, you’ll take the opposite side. That is not a sign of a free thinker.
The world is not the same place that it was in 1990. The days when the US could control the Western Alliance are gone, and good riddance. That was a role that was reluctantly forced upon us after WW2. It did not do our nation much good, IMHO. How much of our trillion dollar defense budget is a subsidy to the wealthy nations of Europe and the pac rim?
April 30th, 2018 at 1:56 pm
Dare I dream – pull out of Europe to let them sort out their own problems. Wow – treating other nations like grown-ups, what a concept!
Europe does not have a good record of being able to sort it’s own problems without the U.S. That’s a big reason why there was so much European emigration to the U.S. in the 1800s. When the EU collapses under its own weight of Soviet-style economic planning (following a couple more exits), they will be at each others bread-baskets again.
April 30th, 2018 at 2:35 pm
The elites in the US and Europe would like to turn over management of the world economy, and to some extent delegate the internal politics of nation-states to an undemocratic global governing class (a sort of a super EU). They see this as not only desirable, but the only future that does not result in economic, environmental disaster, or global war for resources.
What if they are wrong? Suppose the goal is either politically unattainable or results in totalitarianism or simple tyranny?
After all, these global elites have been famously wrong about every major turn in world history that has occurred in last 100+ years.
Remember “peak oil”? There are many, many more examples of our political and educated elites being flat out wrong about the things they believed they were certain about, so certain that alternatives were not allowed to be discussed within their ranks.
April 30th, 2018 at 2:43 pm
The main risk for the US is our own president. Trump is in dire straits as his support is dwindling among voters, in Wall Street and in Congress. Also the special prosecutor’s investigations are moving towards a very dangerous direction.
Therefore Trump really needs a world historical meeting and from this meeting a personally negotiated deal which at least seems to liberate the Americans from the threat of North Korean nuclear
missiles. Personal advantages are much more important to Trump than our country’s national interests.
This provides Kim Jong Un with an excellent opportunity to negotiate a result which he otherwise couldn’t get from the United States.
April 30th, 2018 at 3:02 pm
I celebrate the possibility of Korean peace because I view our relationship with South Korea as mentor, not ruler.
The entire point of the mentoring process is that someday, we step back and they step forward. We give them freedom.
Yes, they will make mistakes and suffer painful consequences. That’s also part of the learning process, an essential component of exercising your freedom.
And that explains why certain people around here are so opposed to it. Giving people their freedom? Giving up power over them? The horror!
April 30th, 2018 at 3:16 pm
One of the topics of discussion in international circles in the early 1990s was the position of the US in the post cold war world. A large number of people in various think tanks thought the EU would soon eclipse the US as the world’s largest integrated economy. They thought the EU would remain weak militarily (to prevent a return of past “troubles”), and use the US as a war making force against external threats.
Naturally, the European people and especially the American people, had not been included in these discussions. What odd fever dreams our elites have.
April 30th, 2018 at 4:01 pm
Presidents have been trying to get the Jews and Palestinians to stop killing each other since I was in grade school. There have been several attempts and all have failed, but each attempt was hailed as a genuine victory by the administration in charge at the time.
Trump is embarking on what, if Obama was doing, would be hailed as an historic meeting. He will probably fail, but he has a card up his sleeve no one else has had; China. China is sick of Norko, and they’ve been putting the screws to Un; for that alone, Trump has earned a victory lap.
The reprobate leftists are wild with outrage; they are literally sputtering. They cannot believe a wealthy, white man that bangs hot girls might make history. And for that, Trump is entitled to a second lap…with a smug grin flying.
April 30th, 2018 at 4:07 pm
Remeber a few weeks ago when the MSM said that Trump was having delusions about a caravan of Central Americans heading north, intending to cross the border w/o permission?
Well, well, well.
“Central American asylum seekers denied US entry for 2nd day”
https://wtop.com/latin-america/2018/04/us-says-border-crossing-didnt-have-room-for-asylum-seekers/slide/1/
I guess the MSM was working with “alternate facts.” Or maybe they were pushing fake news. Whatever, we got your number, AP.
April 30th, 2018 at 5:15 pm
Trump’s North Korean version of the Iran nuclear deal could be freighted with all of the same flaws — and then some — but would still be hailed by the man and his admirers as a triumph. Narcissists aren’t prone to seeing themselves as others see them.
April 30th, 2018 at 5:25 pm
could be
So, nothing then. Lotta name-calling in the guise of oh so, serious chin-stroking tho’.
April 30th, 2018 at 6:13 pm
It can’t be like Obama’s Iran deal because the North Koreans already have nukes, Emery. It is like the difference between between keeping a gun from a madman and taking a gun away from a mad man.
This stuff is elementary. It comes from simple, rational thought processes, apparently no longer available to people with Trump Derangement Syndrome.
It is interesting what is happening in the ME, isn’t it? Someone — gosh only knows who — seems to have managed to ally Sunni’s and Jews against the Iranian hegemon. Must be Obama working behind the scenes.
April 30th, 2018 at 7:44 pm
Whether or not one credits this progress to some masterful ‘Art of the Deal’ negotiating strategy from Trump depends largely on one’s perception of the president and his advisors. My impression, for what it’s worth, is that these talks are proceeding in spite of Trump, with the important regional players (or at least the Koreans and the Chinese) taking advantage of his obvious disinterest and disregard for US foreign policy norms to reshape the consensus of possibilities in the region.
Personally, I am more than happy for Trump to take the credit if it leads to a de-escalation of tensions in the region. Hopefully this will stop the more deranged elements of the American political class advocating for pre-emptive military action.
As far as I’m concerned they can give Trump the peace prize. It hasn’t really been worth anything since they gave it to Kissinger anyway.
April 30th, 2018 at 8:10 pm
Must be Obama working behind the scenes.
He has more freedom now.
May 1st, 2018 at 1:48 pm
The right has developed a superb propaganda machine. They actually have their base convinced that Hillary, Obama & Comey are going to jail.
May 1st, 2018 at 9:37 pm
That is literally thw first relatively positive Trump post i have seen Mitch, glad to see you coming out of the #NeverTrump camp Mitch. I left them after the convention in 2016 when Trump fairly won the nomination and was the only thing preventing a President Hillary
May 2nd, 2018 at 11:17 am
The right has developed a superb propaganda machine.
As opposed to the Left whose base now needs to be convinced there is virtually zero chance Trump will be impeached and go to jail because he well, didnt do anything worthy of impeachment. So now all they have is unfunny and vulgar comics. I hope that woman who was the main speaker at the White House Corresponents dinner gets invited to Trumps 2020 inauguration, because she just virtually guaranteed it.