Nork Nukes Nearing Nuisance?

[BanzaiCat]

They're reporting now that Lil' Fat Boy is starting to balk and threaten to withdraw from the summit meeting.

I had a feeling his weasel ass would try something like this - totally manipulative and not necessary at all if he were completely honest with this process. I've doubted his sincerity since this was first announced and this just underlines my suspicion all the more.

[bbmike]

Well, not to defend the little porkchop, but is it so much to ask to not have any military drills until after the summit next month?

[BanzaiCat]

If it was routine as the Pentagon says, then I'm not really surprised at the bureaucracy not considering it. But that is a fair point. I think they could have postponed such a thing as a show of faith.

[Con]

I will be watching to see what concessions each side makes. I think the US administration has oversold their position and thus will have more at stake and willing to give more for a deal. Let's see if the art of the deal can beat bait and switch.

[Pete Dero]

They're reporting now that Lil' Fat Boy is starting to balk and threaten to withdraw from the summit meeting.

I had a feeling his weasel ass would try something like this - totally manipulative and not necessary at all if he were completely honest with this process. I've doubted his sincerity since this was first announced and this just underlines my suspicion all the more.

This (besides current US army exercises is South Korea) is one of the main reasons :


https://www.nytimes.com/2018/04/29/us/politics/bolton-libya-north-korea-trump.html
http://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-44134910


Mr Bolton recently said North Korea could follow a "Libya model" of verifiable denuclearisation, but this alarms Pyongyang, which watched Libya's Colonel Gaddafi give up his nuclear programme only for him to be killed by Western-backed rebels a few years later.

The BBC's Laura Bicker in Seoul says North Korea - which had long said its nuclear arsenal is essential for its survival as a state - is now making its demands clear.

The whole reason the North Korean state has spent years building up a nuclear arsenal, at such a great cost, is for survival.

So to compare denuclearisation in North Korea with Libya or indeed Iraq as John Bolton did on Sunday is not going to offer much comfort. Both regimes collapsed.

North Korea wants the world to know that it is coming to the negotiating table from a position of strength, and they may feel that they are making all the concessions.

They've suspended all missile tests, released the three US detainees, Kim Jong-un met President Moon and the pair signed a declaration, and they're about to dismantle a nuclear test site in front of international media.

So to hear the Trump administration claiming credit for a deal they don't like has been a step too far.

These statements more than hint that North Korea is prepared to walk away from President Trump's summit in Singapore until it does hear a deal it does like.

[bbmike]

^That makes a bit more sense. Well, thank goodness we have such a skilled diplomat as President and fully staffed State Department to back him up!  ::) :DD

[bayonetbrant]

So to compare denuclearisation in North Korea with Libya or indeed Iraq as John Bolton did on Sunday is not going to offer much comfort. Both regimes collapsed.

Bolton's frame of reference is whether or not the US gets what we want, and there's never any consideration whether or not the other guy can/should/would get what he wants.
Yes, there's a heavy US-centric bias, which you expect from a US 'diplomat' but in diplomacy, the other guy has to feel like he won something, too.  Bolton has never understood that.

[OJsDad]

So, Kim didnt demand cancellation of any exercises before the meeting. Why didnt the ROK decide to suspend them.

[mirth]

https://twitter.com/Santiagojjjr/status/996747806479020032

[BanzaiCat]

^ That's it, in one

[OJsDad]

The next one will be Charlie 'Trump' Brown on his back.

[JudgeDredd]

What happened to "We're only keeping our nuclear weapons so we can use them to bargain away other countries".

Not popping at the US here...in fact my shitty government. Each successive government in the UK always argues against unilateral disarmament using the excuse "We shouldn't give them up freely...we should use them as a bargaining chip"...and yet they never do.

Truth is my government wants to keep nuclear weapons and purely so they can project their self-perceived strength. We keep nukes and our ground forces (and air force) are decimated. As was the RN until recently.

As for this BS - there was never any doubt in my mind that KJU was pulling Trumps pisser. Was I honestly expected to believe that he had went from name calling and threatening the west coast of the US with nukes to "Ok, we'll get rid"? Papers were tripping over themselves saying what a breakthrough it was. Trump for the NPP. There was no way that wee shit was going to hand over his tech. He's a power hungry megalomaniac.

[bayonetbrant]

So to compare denuclearisation in North Korea with Libya or indeed Iraq as John Bolton did on Sunday is not going to offer much comfort. Both regimes collapsed.

Bolton's frame of reference is whether or not the US gets what we want, and there's never any consideration whether or not the other guy can/should/would get what he wants.
Yes, there's a heavy US-centric bias, which you expect from a US 'diplomat' but in diplomacy, the other guy has to feel like he won something, too.  Bolton has never understood that.

http://www.businessinsider.com/john-bolton-may-have-derailed-north-korea-trump-talks-2018-5

North Korea appeared to flip on the US on Tuesday with a variety of complaints and statements that marked the first real backslide of a diplomatic push for peace in Korea — and much of it was pinned on a dark, threatening statement made by President Donald Trump's hawkish new national security adviser.

North Korean media specifically targeted Trump's new national security adviser, John Bolton.

"We shed light on the quality of Bolton already in the past, and we do not hide our feeling of repugnance towards him," wrote Kim Kye Gwan, North Korea's vice-minister of foreign affairs.

Bolton, who has written extensively advocating that the US bomb North Korea, recently made a strange statement that appears to have provoked North Korea's anger.

"I think we're looking at the Libya model of 2003, 2004," to denuclearize North Korea, Bolton told CBS' "Face the Nation" in late April.

Shortly after the US invaded Iraq and deposed Saddam Hussein in 2003, Libya's Muammar Gaddafi agreed to have international inspectors visit his country to certify that his nuclear and chemical weapons programs had halted.

In 2011, a popular uprising in Libya got backing from the US and some NATO countries, and a salvo of cruise missile strikes pummeled the Libyan government.

Within months, Gaddafi was filmed being dragged out into the streets by rebels, who then violently killed him.

Gaddafi's violent end and the parallels between Libya and North Korea appear to have been noted in Pyongyang.

[Gusington]

Maybe Michael Bolton would be a better choice.

[bayonetbrant]

Maybe Michael Bolton would be a better choice.

as long as he brings one-time Kiss guitarist Bruce Kulick (and that 70's 'stache) with him

[yt]https://youtu.be/fCGMdf3qNIE[/yt]