Some credit Trump’s bluster with getting Kim Jong Un to negotiate (hence the Nobel Prize chatter). Or did Kim, instead, see Trump’s behavior as creating an opportunity, to be exploited?
He is not crazy. He sees how hungry Trump is to claim some supposed triumph. Kim is canny enough to do what will achieve his own aims without actually paying a price.
So far, he isn’t paying any. Smiles and hugs are nice but don’t cost anything and don’t really mean anything. He’s decommissioned (he says) a testing facility that was no longer functional, or needed. He’s already got working nuclear weapons and missiles.
And won’t give them up. Qadafy gave up his, and Kim saw Qadafy’s fate — killed by a mob.
The two will emerge from their meeting all smiles and hugs. North Korea will be our new BFF — just the kind of country and leader (a cold-blooded murderer) the dotard dotes on.
Kim will agree to disarm. But agreeing, and disarming, are different things. North Korea had previously agreed to disarm, in exchange for goodies and concessions, which they pocketed, and then reneged on their promises. (Our negotiating stance should be to insist on the disarmament they already owe us.) What else will Trump give Kim in exchange for more worthless promises?
A deal worth having cannot come from one meeting. It would require a complex web of safeguards to ensure that disarmament commitments are honored. Will Trump have the preparation, patience, depth of knowledge and understanding, and deference to expert assistance, to negotiate such nitty-gritty? Don’t make me laugh.
In fact, that very kind of nuke deal was what we had with Iran — painstakingly negotiated over years — which Trump is now set to blow up.
Of course, the Iran deal mainly suffers from having Obama’s fingerprints. A guiding animus of Trump’s presidency is shitting on Obama’s.
Killing the Iran deal will be one of the stupidest things ever. “Bad deal,” Trump says, but can he replace it with a better one? No chance (just like “repeal and replace” re Obamacare). The problem with the Iran deal is that it still enables Iran to get nuclear weapons — eventually. But absent the deal, Iran can get them sooner.* Hastening the very thing Trump says he won’t allow.
If the Iranians were really smart they’d play Trump like Kim Jong Un is doing — renegotiate something Trump can claim is better, even if it’s actually not. But Iran’s leadership (unlike North Korea’s) is too disorganized for that.
And if we cannot get a better deal, what is the alternative? Bombing? It would literally blow up the region, in massive conflict, without damaging Iran’s nuclear program much (but maybe the real aim would be to distract from the Mueller investigation).
Meantime, shredding the Iran deal will also shred America’s credibility as a negotiating partner whose commitments can be relied upon, and our relationships with our chief allies, who are heavily invested in the deal. Further reducing America’s international standing and ability to shape the global landscape, making a more dangerous world.
*Israel’s intelligence “coup” proving Iran lied in denying nuclear ambitions changes nothing. We knew Iran was going for a bomb. Why else the agreement?
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