Trump impulsively blows up the North Korea summit - By the Washington Post Editorial Board
By Editorial Board
May 24 at 2:23 PM
PRESIDENT TRUMP’S abrupt cancellation of a summit meeting with North Korean ruler Kim Jong Un had the same air of hasty, strategy-free improvisation that has characterized his handling of the diplomatic opening all along. Mr. Trump agreed to the summit in March without requiring any action by the North Korean ruler, or even a clear statement of his intentions. He then proceeded to hype the wildly unrealistic possibility that the regime would quickly disarm; he minted a medal to commemorate the upcoming meeting and encouraged talk that he deserved the Nobel Peace Prize.
On Thursday, in apparent response to hyperbolic but entirely unsurprising comments by a North Korean official, Mr. Trump released a loosely worded letter canceling the summit because of the “tremendous anger and open hostility” in the statement. The announcement blindsided the government of South Korea, which had brokered the talks: “We are attempting to make sense of what, precisely, President Trump means,” a spokesman said. Meanwhile, Mr. Trump blurted at a White House appearance that “it’s possible” the summit could still take place on the planned date of June 12, while simultaneously warning that “our military . . . is ready if necessary.”
Never has such chaos attended the public behavior of a U.S. president on a matter of such gravity: Both Mr. Trump and the North Koreans alluded to the possibility of nuclear war. Appearing before Congress, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo was unable to offer an answer when asked what the U.S. strategy would now be. North Korea, meanwhile, had hours earlier made a show of blowing up mountain tunnels it has used to conduct nuclear tests — an action suggesting that until Mr. Trump’s statement, it remained willing to move forward.
White House officials said the North Korean statement that Mr. Trump reacted to was merely the last straw in a series of negative actions. North Korea canceled a planned meeting with South Korea last week and failed to answer U.S. inquiries about summit planning. But Pyongyang was responding, at least in part, to U.S. rhetoric. Mr. Trump and other officials had alluded to the history of Libya, which gave up its nuclear program and later was subjected to a NATO bombing campaign that led to the overthrow and murder of ruler Moammar Gaddafi. North Korea could “end like the Libya model ended if Kim Jong Un doesn’t make a deal,” Vice President Pence said on Monday. That led Vice Foreign Minister Choe Son Hui to deride Mr. Pence as “ignorant and stupid” and threaten a “nuclear-to-nuclear showdown” — overheated rhetoric that is familiar to anyone who has studied the North Korean regime.
more
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/global-opinions/trump-impulsively-blows-up-the-north-korea-summit/2018/05/24/b27ba6b4-5f69-11e8-a4a4-c070ef53f315_story.html
= new reply since forum marked as read
It didn’t matter who the president was or what he / she did - there would be no peace there.
The regime does this ever 10-20 years or so as part of their strategy to keep their power. The North needs to keep the sense of pressure and that the country is under siege to help them maintain control and their ability to run the country with an iron fist. They’ll push and push the limits of full scale war with the south, launch a missile or two, talk of war and hostilities, then suddenly soften on all fronts. They’ll agree to international talks, the world will give them a bunch of aid or concessions, then the talks will fall apart and the cycle starts again.
Also, partly the reason they want a nuke so bad is to use as a deterrent against a preemptive attack from the south or anyone else for that matter. Their military capability is 50+ years out of date and other than an intense artillery barrage that’d last for 10-20 minutes or so before we identified their positions, fired counter-battery, and destroyed them, they have nothing. The majority of their main battle tanks are T-54/55’s and T-62’s (built by the Russians in 1955 and 1962). They can’t shoot and move at the same time and have no computers to compensate for target speed and other variables. Basically a modern tank fires while moving and will not miss its target.
Anyways I can go on and on, but I won’t! I’ll spare everyone from a rant
