Nobel Prize, Here We Come!
Steve Wood at Newsblender asks, with regard to the upcoming Trump-Kim Clown Show II, why anyone should put any stock in these “negotiations,” or trust that North Korea’s intentions this time around are any different than in previous moments of false hope, such as during the Clinton administration.
Here, yet again, and for what it’s worth, are three main differences between this time and all previous times:
1. South Korea is currently governed by a hardcore socialist, Moon Jae-in, who is in the process of “fundamentally transforming” a thriving economic powerhouse, at lightning speed, into a heavily-regulated progressive welfare state. He is a genuine North Korean sympathizer of the sort that was once effectively barred from the ruling class in South Korea — the two Koreas are still technically at war — but is now, thanks to the progressive “youth wave” that swept Moon to power, dominating the ruling class.
2. Unlike the Clinton era (and thanks in large part to the U.S. stupidity of that era), North Korea now has nuclear weapons, which they surely did not develop because they thought they could win a war against the U.S. They developed these weapons to give themselves the ultimate leverage for demanding promises of permanent non-aggression, even protection and recognized legitimacy, from the international community, including promises of U.S. withdrawal from the region — which withdrawal, obviously, would serve the interests of North Korea’s chief ally, China, most of all.
3. Donald Trump, for all his cult-baiting “alpha male” bluster, is at heart a coward, a simpleton, and a historical illiterate, who doesn’t understand that giving a brutal dictator everything he wants and then declaring this a “victory for peace” may turn out to be a disaster of Neville Chamberlain proportions, and that selling out long-time allies (South Korea and Japan), even if the current South Korean leadership supports this sell-out, is irresponsible on a level comparable to the negotiated giveaway of Czechoslovakia in the Munich Agreement.
In sum, everyone involved — Moon, Kim, and Xi Jinping behind the scenes — has played Trump like a fiddle, realizing that the Orange McConnell is a complete sucker for flattery, and that they can have their respective ways with him if they just keep praising him for surrendering so brilliantly, so bravely.
