On April 28 2018 06:55 Mohdoo wrote: I feel like there has been an insane amount of talk about Trump with respect to NK peace. It feels like Moon probably played a much larger role. Moon ran on being very very peaceful with NK. Moon has put a lot of effort into that. Moon met with Kim. It feels like Moon and Kim should be the assumed bringers of peace, not Trump.
On April 28 2018 00:56 a_flayer wrote: Trump is responsible for this because it was his isolationist views that caused the US to withdraw diplomatically from the world. US diplomacy was the biggest obstacle to peace aside from the NK demand that the US leaves. There's not even a US ambassador to South Korea at the moment, which meant that Moon was free to pursue his own diplomacy. Meanwhile, the following quote (in particular the highlights as marked in bold) makes it clear that Trump's bellicose rhetoric on Twitter was intentional "bad cop" rhetoric and a way for Moon to play the "good cop" with Kim.
"Clearly, credit goes to President Trump," Kang told CNN's Christiane Amanpour in Seoul. "He's been determined to come to grips with this from day one."
Kang told Amanpour that the détente was unexpected. "I think we're all surprised. Obviously pleasantly surprised. I think by all indications we are headed towards a very successful summit between my president and Chairman Kim tomorrow."
She said that Moon's determination also played a role in the thaw. In her analysis, the combination of tough rhetoric and economic and travel sanctions were instrumental.
Kang admitted Presidents Moon and Trump have at times had "different messaging," but insisted that they maintained close consultations.
So yeah, this is basically all on Trump, whether you like it or not. Well, aside from the nuclear testing being effectively done, the mountain collapsing, and all that jazz. But that would have happened either way. Other US heads of state would have "made sure US interests are preserved", which effectively means stopping peace from developing. As we have seen in Syria.
How do you reconcile caused the US to withdraw diplomatically from the world. with So yeah, this is basically all on Trump
you're going Trump totally just let others do the work so now we have to give him all the credit? What???
He's saying that US diplomacy actually hindered the peace process. I'd be interested in hearing how other administrations rejected such peace offerings while NK was making these kinds of concessions.
As far as I know, NK has never considered peace unless the US agreed to remove its troops. But the current leader of NK also only obtained power in 2011. I am sure there will be endless speculation about what changed internally to cause them to drop that demand.
Harsh sanctions and communism often having inherently failed economy. The same reason why China opened their market and USSR bankrupted slowly. It's not that difficult to come up with the reasons.
A lot of people in this topic are falling victim to the idea that if A happens after B then A caused B. The argument "Trump became President and then NK made peace, therefore Trump caused the peace" is not sound.
You need to actually point to specific actions that Trump has taken re: Korean diplomacy, such as not appointing an ambassador to SK, calling Kim names on Twitter, making a long series of threats/red lines and then not following through on any of them, warring with his own state department on Twitter over Korean policy, gutting said state department, and messing with SK trade agreements, and explain why these specifically were the cause of this.
Trump has at no point shown any promise of diplomatic ingenuity. Not with lawmaking or rallying congress. Not with international affairs. Not with trade deals. What he has shown is great willingness to take credit for other peoples accomplishments. So extrapolating this to the Korea situation I'm very sure he had practically no role here.
Also here he basically says he hasn't asked anything to North Korea, sounds like he was just as surprised as the rest of the world when they came forward with stopping nuclear testing.
I think this lends more credence to the notion that NK simply finished testing and just wants to negotiate for peace from the position of a nuclear power.
On April 28 2018 00:56 a_flayer wrote: Trump is responsible for this because it was his isolationist views that caused the US to withdraw diplomatically from the world. US diplomacy was the biggest obstacle to peace aside from the NK demand that the US leaves. There's not even a US ambassador to South Korea at the moment, which meant that Moon was free to pursue his own diplomacy. Meanwhile, the following quote (in particular the highlights as marked in bold) makes it clear that Trump's bellicose rhetoric on Twitter was intentional "bad cop" rhetoric and a way for Moon to play the "good cop" with Kim.
"Clearly, credit goes to President Trump," Kang told CNN's Christiane Amanpour in Seoul. "He's been determined to come to grips with this from day one."
Kang told Amanpour that the détente was unexpected. "I think we're all surprised. Obviously pleasantly surprised. I think by all indications we are headed towards a very successful summit between my president and Chairman Kim tomorrow."
She said that Moon's determination also played a role in the thaw. In her analysis, the combination of tough rhetoric and economic and travel sanctions were instrumental.
Kang admitted Presidents Moon and Trump have at times had "different messaging," but insisted that they maintained close consultations.
So yeah, this is basically all on Trump, whether you like it or not. Well, aside from the nuclear testing being effectively done, the mountain collapsing, and all that jazz. But that would have happened either way. Other US heads of state would have "made sure US interests are preserved", which effectively means stopping peace from developing. As we have seen in Syria.
How do you reconcile caused the US to withdraw diplomatically from the world. with So yeah, this is basically all on Trump
you're going Trump totally just let others do the work so now we have to give him all the credit? What???
He's saying that US diplomacy actually hindered the peace process. I'd be interested in hearing how other administrations rejected such peace offerings while NK was making these kinds of concessions.
As far as I know, NK has never considered peace unless the US agreed to remove its troops. But the current leader of NK also only obtained power in 2011. I am sure there will be endless speculation about what changed internally to cause them to drop that demand.
Yea that's the point. Something else is definitely going on besides US diplomacy. Trump threatens NK, NK threatens back and continues doing whatever the hell they want to do. Nothing changed on that front. Then all of a sudden NK makes concessions that have never been on the table before. Throwing Trump's name around doesn't make a whole lot of sense when there isn't enough information to connect the dots. Logically signs would point to Xi/Moon or something extreme happening within NK to account for their change in approach.
Well, at the first level, there has been massive changes in 3 of the major countries involved in all of this. South Korea removed a corrupt leader controlled by a radical cult, the USA elected Trump as a rejection of the current political culture (notice a trend here?) and China's current ruling faction crushed all other factions to the point that Xi is now "President for Life". Thus, between 2016 and 2018, there's been a fairly radical shift in governance & policy directions from all 3 other major countries that NK deals with.
On the near term military level, the USA moved 2 carrier groups to the Region, with an extra detachment of several submarines. That's not a small issue. The western Pacific is the most active submarine region in the world, so any military engagements necessitate sub-hunting. The best at that in the region? Japan. (Most of their Naval Military Policy is actually built around it.) At the same time, North Korea displayed, in a parade in 2017, a working version of a SLM that could easily hold a large chemical, biological or nuclear payload, while at the same time we know they have a second, larger missile submarine able to act as a launch platform. (With THAAD and Aegis-equipped ships in the region, ICBMs from NK aren't actually a major strategic threat. It's the sub-based platform that is.)
Further on the military level, per the response to the April 2017 chemical weapons attack in Syria, the USA's military policy is to destroy launch platforms. This is the "Trump Doctrine", with regard to military matters, which is why Trump called the bluff on launching missiles over Guam. Standing US doctrine would have been to shoot down the missile, then destroy the launch platform. Into that, it's also important to understand that the USA has been field testing a new class of "EMP" warheads, along with some new kinetic weaponry. There's very limited public information on what those capabilities actually entail, but the US Military has a bunch of new toys available, if needed.
In August 2017, the UN Security Council voted 15-0 for new, tougher sanctions on North Korea. This was the rare time that Russia & China voted to impose more sanctions. (Both countries border & trade with North Korea.) Several Chinese banks were functionally removed from the global financial business because of actions by US authorities.
On February 13th, 2017, Kim Jong-un's older half-brother was assassinated in the Kuala Lumpur International Airport by two women using a nerve agent.
That's the publicly available information on the geo-strategic environment change. The rest of the issue involves factoids and then questions for why they happened. The first public statements about this direction come during the first week of March, so decisions & talks would have started some months before that. North Korea also had a presence at the Winter Olympics held in South Korea, which points to talks beginning somewhere at the end of 2017.
Speaking about the third wheel, some US senator proposes that Trump gets the Nobel Peace Prize. What a joke.
Senator Lindsey Graham, not one of Trump’s biggest fans in the upper chamber, agrees. “It’s the biggest change since the end of the hostilities,” Graham said on Fox News Friday. “What happened? Donald Trump convinced North Korea and China he was serious about bringing about change.”
“We’re not there yet, but if this happens, President Trump deserves the Nobel Peace Prize,” he said.
IF peace comes from this development and IF the US is part of the negotiations and signatory of any deal towards that end then I don't see why Trump should not be considered for a Nobel Peace price. Certainly more deserving than Obama was when he received his.
Of course that still needs to happen first and has a lot of IFs. And if Xi, moon, and Kim make it happen without the US much involved they should get it, not Trump.
On April 28 2018 21:20 zatic wrote: IF peace comes from this development and IF the US is part of the negotiations and signatory of any deal towards that end then I don't see why Trump should not be considered for a Nobel Peace price. Certainly more deserving than Obama was when he received his.
Of course that still needs to happen first and has a lot of IFs. And if Xi, moon, and Kim make it happen without the US much involved they should get it, not Trump.
Who deserves it more? Trump or Moon? Do you think Trump did more than Moon?
On April 28 2018 21:20 zatic wrote: IF peace comes from this development and IF the US is part of the negotiations and signatory of any deal towards that end then I don't see why Trump should not be considered for a Nobel Peace price. Certainly more deserving than Obama was when he received his.
Of course that still needs to happen first and has a lot of IFs. And if Xi, moon, and Kim make it happen without the US much involved they should get it, not Trump.
Why would he be more deserving than Obama? The justification is exactly the same, Obama got his peace prize off a hope that he would fulfill his promise of increasing international diplomacy/cooperation and scaling back worldwide US military engagements and aggression. As stupid as that award looks now, the man didn't get it for no reason and should (but doesn't) serve as a precautionary tale that political promises are difficult to fulfill.
Its not like the peace prize really means a whole lot, Kissinger and Eisaku Sato aren't people who you would associate with peace.
I'd associate Kissinger with peace for sure. His job as a diplomat was exceptional.
Obama's Nobel Prize was definitely a farce and what's more, it was clear at the time that it was - not even in hindsight. Though the prize itself is an overtly political gesture anyways, I'd prefer to see it given in response to very specific diplomatic events to the most directly involved agents (i.e. the presidents of North and South Korea). For direct comparison I'd bring up the '78 prize given to Menachem Begin and Anwar Sadat.
On April 28 2018 21:20 zatic wrote: IF peace comes from this development and IF the US is part of the negotiations and signatory of any deal towards that end then I don't see why Trump should not be considered for a Nobel Peace price. Certainly more deserving than Obama was when he received his.
Of course that still needs to happen first and has a lot of IFs. And if Xi, moon, and Kim make it happen without the US much involved they should get it, not Trump.
Why would he be more deserving than Obama? The justification is exactly the same, Obama got his peace prize off a hope that he would fulfill his promise of increasing international diplomacy/cooperation and scaling back worldwide US military engagements and aggression. As stupid as that award looks now, the man didn't get it for no reason and should (but doesn't) serve as a precautionary tale that political promises are difficult to fulfill.
Its not like the peace prize really means a whole lot, Kissinger and Eisaku Sato aren't people who you would associate with peace.
The Nobel Piece Prize is basically the popular version of Gadafi's former "International Price for Human Rights": A sad joke that should be satire but is not.
On April 29 2018 00:26 LegalLord wrote: I'd associate Kissinger with peace for sure.
You mean after the US attacked Vietnam for no reason and Kissinger got the price before any real peace was established? His Vietnamese counter-part, Le Duc Tho, should have gotten the price as well but he declined it because he said "What peace?".
On April 29 2018 00:26 LegalLord wrote: I'd associate Kissinger with peace for sure. His job as a diplomat was exceptional.
Obama's Nobel Prize was definitely a farce and what's more, it was clear at the time that it was - not even in hindsight. Though the prize itself is an overtly political gesture anyways, I'd prefer to see it given in response to very specific diplomatic events to the most directly involved agents (i.e. the presidents of North and South Korea). For direct comparison I'd bring up the '78 prize given to Menachem Begin and Anwar Sadat.
The only way you could see Kissinger as more deserving than Obama (bad phrasing - maybe the only way you wouldn't see Kissinger as less deserving than Obama) is by literally refusing to examine any of the available evidence of Kissinger's multiple war crimes. The guy was a murderer and a war criminal.
I assume this comment was just a partisan bait though so its ok.
On April 29 2018 00:34 Jockmcplop wrote: I assume this comment was just a partisan bait though so its ok.
No, I think Kissinger was a very good diplomat and deserved the prize. It was event-specific, for the end of the Vietnam War, but lifetime achievement warrants the prize as well.
On April 29 2018 00:26 LegalLord wrote: I'd associate Kissinger with peace for sure. His job as a diplomat was exceptional.
Obama's Nobel Prize was definitely a farce and what's more, it was clear at the time that it was - not even in hindsight. Though the prize itself is an overtly political gesture anyways, I'd prefer to see it given in response to very specific diplomatic events to the most directly involved agents (i.e. the presidents of North and South Korea). For direct comparison I'd bring up the '78 prize given to Menachem Begin and Anwar Sadat.
The only way you could see Kissinger as more deserving than Obama (bad phrasing - maybe the only way you wouldn't see Kissinger as less deserving than Obama) is by literally refusing to examine any of the available evidence of Kissinger's multiple war crimes.
Obama did nothing to warrant the prize whatsoever. He was just there at a time when Europe thought the US had gone off the deep end with Bush. A couple of good talking points leading to an election victory not backed by any specific policy achievements does not a Nobel Prize make - except for Obama, evidently. His worthiness of the prize is pretty much a flat zero.
Even if you do say Kissinger was a "war criminal," a vapid and emotionally charged statement more than one reflecting a reasonably agreeable reality, I contend that his diplomatic works had sufficient merit to be commended as such. If you want a real war criminal, rather than just a guy with politics you didn't like, who won a Nobel Peace Prize, Yasser Arafat is a much better example.
On April 29 2018 00:34 Jockmcplop wrote: I assume this comment was just a partisan bait though so its ok.
No, I think Kissinger was a very good diplomat and deserved the prize. It was event-specific, for the end of the Vietnam War, but lifetime achievement warrants the prize as well.
On April 29 2018 00:26 LegalLord wrote: I'd associate Kissinger with peace for sure. His job as a diplomat was exceptional.
Obama's Nobel Prize was definitely a farce and what's more, it was clear at the time that it was - not even in hindsight. Though the prize itself is an overtly political gesture anyways, I'd prefer to see it given in response to very specific diplomatic events to the most directly involved agents (i.e. the presidents of North and South Korea). For direct comparison I'd bring up the '78 prize given to Menachem Begin and Anwar Sadat.
The only way you could see Kissinger as more deserving than Obama (bad phrasing - maybe the only way you wouldn't see Kissinger as less deserving than Obama) is by literally refusing to examine any of the available evidence of Kissinger's multiple war crimes.
Obama did nothing to warrant the prize whatsoever. He was just there at a time when Europe thought the US had gone off the deep end with Bush. A couple of good talking points leading to an election victory not backed by any specific policy achievements does not a Nobel Prize make - except for Obama, evidently. His worthiness of the prize is pretty much a flat zero.
Even if you do say Kissinger was a "war criminal," a vapid and emotionally charged statement more than one reflecting a reasonably agreeable reality, I contend that his diplomatic works had sufficient merit to be commended as such. If you want a real war criminal, rather than just a guy with politics you didn't like, who won a Nobel Peace Prize, Yasser Arafat is a much better example.
OK Kissinger personally and specifically ordered some of the most brutal bombings that took place during the Vietnam war. You can't then go and call him a peaceful diplomat because he stopped ordering all the killings. If i were you i would research the facts before you accuse me of 'emotional' statements. I suggest you read anything by Seymour Hersh or even the book Christopher Hitchens wrote about Kissinger. Hitchens wasn't particularly known for his emotional outbursts. These are well researched pieces about the brutality of the Kissinger style of diplomacy, which ALWAYS sacrificed huge numbers of lives to achieve what he wanted.
Not a peaceful diplomat, but a heavy-handed one whose approaches proved to be effective for peace.
Think that that approach isn't worthy of being commended? I can see why you might think so and perhaps the argument is a reasonable one. I disagree, but that represents a willingness to accept such heavy-handedness and brutality as a tool in diplomacy. But Obama has no place even being up for consideration for that prize, and there are far worse war criminals who won that prize if you want to look for the worst of the worst.
On April 29 2018 01:52 LegalLord wrote: Not a peaceful diplomat, but a heavy-handed one whose approaches proved to be effective for peace.
Think that that approach isn't worthy of being commended? I can see why you might think so and perhaps the argument is a reasonable one. I disagree, but that represents a willingness to accept such heavy-handedness and brutality as a tool in diplomacy. But Obama has no place even being up for consideration for that prize, and there are far worse war criminals who won that prize if you want to look for the worst of the worst.
I suppose it depends on how you are defining 'peace'. I would agree that as a diplomat and a strategist, Kissinger was a step above anyone else who has done his job. He was smarter and had the respect fo his peers to be able to get things done. For a peace prize, in my opinion, its kinda cheating to achieve that peace by killing many, many people. To me, the peace that gains isn't really peace, its more of a power balance based on fear. I know that this is the world we live in, but the Nobel Peace Prize as a concept brings with it a certain image of idealism and it seems cynical to deem someone like Kissinger worthy of it.
Even putting aside the war criminality aspects, working with the Nixon campaign to get South Vietnam to postpone a peace treaty for domestic election purposes makes deserving a peace prize for the same conflict incredibly odd.
EPT
