I'm glad our canny and gutsy President is going to meet the Dear Leader of the murderously misgoverned North Korea. Churchill once said "Better to jaw jaw than fight fight." (approximately that). I think wheeler dealer Trump will be too much for young, insular and previously unchallenged Kim.
Lets consider past meetings of this sort. Roosevelt and Stalin: this was a fantastic meeting of minds light years apart. Roosevelt was a gentleman suffused with noblesse oblige, one who had seen one violent death (that of Chicago Mayor Cermak in an assassination attempt) but never that of multitudes at his pleasure. He was incapable of fathoming the full horror of Stalin's evil. Stalin was a thing crept out of the deepest recesses of hell; the description of his death in Robert Conquest's Stalin: Breaker of Nations , provides a harrowing glimpse of his horrid essence. Roosevelt was, nonetheless, apparently charmed by him and this may have doomed most of Eastern Europe to decades of Soviet oppression. Had he lived or had he not replaced Soviet apologist Henry Wallace with common sense Harry Truman it might have been most of the Continent. Truman met Stalin but later commanded the Berlin Airlift and is said to have told Stalin's Foreign Minister Molotov "get your troops out of Iran like you promised or I'll use the atomic bomb."
Churchill and Stalin: that was quite a different situation. Despite their myriad differences both were privy to the hideous mystery of having taken human life with their own hands and had minds permanently scarred by the experience - Churchill with the sorrow sane people feel, Stalin with sociopathically exacerbated indifference. But it probably lent them some kind of mutual understanding. Churchill rightfully hated and feared Communism but knew the alliance with the Soviets was necessary. At one point in one of the conferences he bristled at Stalin's suggestion for post war mass murders and was about to leave the room in indignation until Stalin told him he was jesting. If Churchill ever thought post war cooperation with a man he thought to be damned was possible, he was quickly disabused, as was shown in his "Iron Curtain" speech shortly after the war.
Nixon shook hands with and smiled at the murderously idealistic Mao but both men had no illusions about their opposite. Mao's son had been killed fighting the Americans in Korea and Nixon was a committed arch antiCommunist who knew all there was to know then about "The Great Helmsman's" insane "Great Leap Forward", which had starved 20 million Chinese. Mao had the true Marxist's ferocious hatred for the U.S., the long time bete noire of that monstrous creed. Both men did what they thought best for their countries at the time and both countries were better off for it.
I worked in state prisons for 20 years and frequently conversed casually with people I knew had committed terrible crimes, including multiple murders. You do what you have to do.
I doubt that Kim has ever had to deal with the kind of competition a meeting with Trump will present him. Usually he just savages those who frankly disagree with him. He is known to possess a kind of perverse wisdom, for his age, though. But he's still young and experience is the best teacher. Trump's several decade advantage in that will stand him in good stead. Frankly, I think he'll play Kim like a trout on a line. He may charm the youngster, he may feign cordiality with him but how can any civilized person, knowing what that corpulent victimizer does to a people fully capable of prosperity and responsible freedom, think him anything but a sociopathic barbarian? The meeting may well be worth it though, for the people of all three countries directly involved and I am glad of our representation by our capable President Trump. Jack
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If this meeting comes to pass, it will be one for the history books! My suspicion is that neither side will want to meet unless some sort of deal has already been struck, but I may be wrong, as merely beginning a dialogue would be a victory of sorts. My proposal: give the North Koreans their long-desired peace treaty, and in return they should denuclearize.
Dr. Waddy: That makes alot of sense. Perhaps preparatory negotiations will have reached a point where only agreement on some general principle is to be left to the leaders. Its hard for me to imagine The North Koreans giving up what they have worked so hard to obtain (it really has been a remarkable achievement on their part). Perhaps they trade critical knowledge of their locations or their technology to us for a treaty? Is it possible Kim does have some hint of humanity in him and seeks to devote more effort to the material betterment of the long suffering North Korean people? Some commentators think that possible. The determination in East Asia to resist western incursion, which eventually drove Japan to destruction and is one of China's fundamental foreign policy purposes, obtains in North Korea too. Perhaps we can somehow ease their minds on that.
This is a test of the reply system
I think Trump’s habitual impetuous decision-making worked for the world’s benefit in this case. By his action, he signaled the possibility of a diplomatic path, despite his previous statements to the contrary. In the presence of foreign leaders, he tends to drop his bellicosity, That could help because he might be less likely undermine groundwork that Ametican diplomats have laid. I think it unlikely that Kim will denuclearize. His nuke program works too well for him as a deterrent to invasion. I don’t think we can offer anything for which Kim would exchange his nukes. An arms limitation treaty in exchange for a Korean War peace treaty is a plausible outcome. I wouldn’t count too much on Trump’s vaunted skills ad a wheeler-dealer. In business, his skill set was heavy on weaseling out of contractual obligations he made with small-time contractors. He has shown little skill at wheeling-dealing with a Congress that his own party controls. In both business and government, all parties who deal with him have come to expect mendacity, infidelity and fickleness. Kim may recognize a kindred spirit in these respects, and may realize how dangerous that kind of person can be. It might work. Kim might be driven to negotiate by this realization. But it will be to reduce nukes or end testing - not denuclearization.
Aeschines: Your comments are couched in a manner refreshingly free of ad hominem scorn; your argument speaks for itself, which is the way constructive dialogue should go. Its probably impossible on a large scale though in our country today; far too much antipathy and distrust. Power will eventually out. Kim, being Korean (the Hermit Kingdom) and unaffected by the prosperity and genuine well being enjoyed by South Koreans as they interact with the world, may well viscerally distrust any westerner. Actually all East Asians have plausible historical reasons for that. I don't know if he is driven by Marxist ideology but if he is that would of course exacerbate his hostility. And of course he knows that if his regime falls,as we would have it, he dies at the hands of his people I would doubt that Kim would find much in common with Trump and himself; he probably despises Trump for letting his domestic opponents live. I agree that it is probably impossible that NK will give up its weapons but perhaps those two can finalize something short of war. Its possible, I think that perceived impetuousity in Trump may instead be action based on instinct. Failure on the part of the powerful in business to keep contract wih small business people is reprehensible; how though, could Trump have been as successful in that setting if he was fundamentally false?
It’s off the topic of the thread, but since you ask how he could have been so successful.... From what I’ve read, his business success may well be exaggerated - that if his initial one million and subsequent inheritance had simply been placed in index fund, he he would have been ahead. He is indisputably a skilled self-promoter, which served to help with the cons he played on numerous small contractors. He preferred dealing with contractors who were small enough to be dazzled by the prospect of a large contract but not large enough to mount a legal defense when Trump demanded a re-negotiation at, say 60 cents on the dollar. There is plentiful evidence of his unethical business strategies.
Aeschines: Well, that could be but I think that Trump has already demonstrated competence on a much larger scale. Nobody thought Truman capable of top leadership but he saved Western Europe from Stalin. The pictures today of Kim toadying up to the now apparently permanent Chinese head of party, government and state is telling. He is scared. He knows what happened to Gaddafi and Ceaucescu and he is physically fearful for his corpulent bodily well being. He is apparently convinced that Trump, unlike his partly or fully politically correct predecessors, means what he says and may well have both the power and the intent to turn him over to the judgement of his oppressed people or to the very, very tough Korean military which guarantees him, for now at least.
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