As the President and his team head over to Viet Nam for the second Summit with the North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, it’s important to reflect on where we’ve come from in what time period so moving forward we can see if Trump is the deal maker he suggests he is.
When Trump was elected, we had no dialog with Kim Jong Un. He was testing rockets and bombs. Americans were wringing their hands. The world was very uptight. Things were Not Good.
Trump came along and as is his way, he vowed to take on the challenge of taming the hermit kingdom. I don’t know whether anyone took Trump seriously since no president before him had ever made ANY PROGRESS with the Kims. Actually, nobody took Trump serious. Since the history of the Kim family dynasty was to take and never give, it would take a masterful deal maker to change history.
So, we are just two years into Trump’s presidency and we are heading out for the second summit with the DPRK. That’s a good thing in my mind.
It’s hard to say if we’ve made substantive progress in de-nuclearizing the Korean peninsula but we appear to be talking and not backing off on the sanctions. We have additional sanctions to apply if punitive action is warranted.
I am amused by the critics of the president who have a lot to say about how Trump should manage the negotiations and how he should apply more pressure or back off the pressure and how he should extract hard promises from Kim or how quickly the deed should be done before we declare the effort a failure.
What I would recommend to the smart asses in the congress and the press is to shut the hell up and let Trump negotiate with Kim. We were going nowhere before Trump arrived and we appear to be moving slowly forward so let the process proceed. If at the end of Trump’s first term we are still talking but don’t have a deal, we are making progress.
Pundits inside the government and out, have lots of opinions about how Trump should conduct the talks and for them the narrow definition of what success looks like. I’m willing to let Trump and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo take as much time as they need to soften up the North Koreans and make their case for change in the DPRK. The process is not a sprint. If it takes five more years but ends with Kim giving up his nukes, I would call that success.
For many of those pundits who have offered opinions for years, Trump again is a threat because if he succeeds at any level, it will demonstrate that the pundits didn’t know their butts from a hole in the ground. That is the crux of the problem with Trump in this case and so many others.
We’ve been led to believe that problem after problem are un-repairable and Trump has systematically taken them on while applying different approaches to fixes and proved the champions of the status quo to be absolutely full of BS.
Humiliating the pundits is very dangerous for Trump because all the pundits offer is some level of expertise on a subject and when Trump demonstrates their ignorance, it creates even more hate. Threats against their livelihoods can cause desperate measures.
North Korea will not just roll over because Trump offers to talk. North Korea will need to see a clear benefit from the negotiations before they give up anything. Trump is using a long standing strategy in working with Asian cultures that place a high value on relationships. Trump is working on the relationships and that is a very good thing.
Hopefully, Kim will realize for himself the benefits of change for his country. Let’s hope for the sake of the North Korean people that he sees the light sooner rather than later.
Posted on February 24, 2019 at 5:01 pm in Partisan Politics, Political commentary | RSS feed
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No Loss for Words
North Korea vs Donald Trump Round Two!
by Steve DanaAs the President and his team head over to Viet Nam for the second Summit with the North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, it’s important to reflect on where we’ve come from in what time period so moving forward we can see if Trump is the deal maker he suggests he is.
When Trump was elected, we had no dialog with Kim Jong Un. He was testing rockets and bombs. Americans were wringing their hands. The world was very uptight. Things were Not Good.
Trump came along and as is his way, he vowed to take on the challenge of taming the hermit kingdom. I don’t know whether anyone took Trump seriously since no president before him had ever made ANY PROGRESS with the Kims. Actually, nobody took Trump serious. Since the history of the Kim family dynasty was to take and never give, it would take a masterful deal maker to change history.
So, we are just two years into Trump’s presidency and we are heading out for the second summit with the DPRK. That’s a good thing in my mind.
It’s hard to say if we’ve made substantive progress in de-nuclearizing the Korean peninsula but we appear to be talking and not backing off on the sanctions. We have additional sanctions to apply if punitive action is warranted.
I am amused by the critics of the president who have a lot to say about how Trump should manage the negotiations and how he should apply more pressure or back off the pressure and how he should extract hard promises from Kim or how quickly the deed should be done before we declare the effort a failure.
What I would recommend to the smart asses in the congress and the press is to shut the hell up and let Trump negotiate with Kim. We were going nowhere before Trump arrived and we appear to be moving slowly forward so let the process proceed. If at the end of Trump’s first term we are still talking but don’t have a deal, we are making progress.
Pundits inside the government and out, have lots of opinions about how Trump should conduct the talks and for them the narrow definition of what success looks like. I’m willing to let Trump and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo take as much time as they need to soften up the North Koreans and make their case for change in the DPRK. The process is not a sprint. If it takes five more years but ends with Kim giving up his nukes, I would call that success.
For many of those pundits who have offered opinions for years, Trump again is a threat because if he succeeds at any level, it will demonstrate that the pundits didn’t know their butts from a hole in the ground. That is the crux of the problem with Trump in this case and so many others.
We’ve been led to believe that problem after problem are un-repairable and Trump has systematically taken them on while applying different approaches to fixes and proved the champions of the status quo to be absolutely full of BS.
Humiliating the pundits is very dangerous for Trump because all the pundits offer is some level of expertise on a subject and when Trump demonstrates their ignorance, it creates even more hate. Threats against their livelihoods can cause desperate measures.
North Korea will not just roll over because Trump offers to talk. North Korea will need to see a clear benefit from the negotiations before they give up anything. Trump is using a long standing strategy in working with Asian cultures that place a high value on relationships. Trump is working on the relationships and that is a very good thing.
Hopefully, Kim will realize for himself the benefits of change for his country. Let’s hope for the sake of the North Korean people that he sees the light sooner rather than later.
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Posted on February 24, 2019 at 5:01 pm in Partisan Politics, Political commentary | RSS feed | Reply | Trackback URL