I guess another question is, “What happens if we don’t.” I think there will be people within the administration who will try and stop the meeting, and they may succeed. If Kim does something they can use as an excuse to stop Trump going, they will do their best to take advantage of it. Then you will be right, and I will be wrong. He is determined to go, but six weeks is a long time in politics, so he could be stopped. We’ll see I ‘spose.

I saw a show just the other day, maybe CNN, and it was all about the progress that N.K. has made. The concentrated mostly on the missiles that have rather suddenly moved forward. The independent analysis shows that it is pretty certain they got rocket engines from Russia. They can tell from the performance and they know Russia had a bunch of these engines left over and just laying around. So the missile bodies are mostly Chinese and the engines are Russian. They will likely get help with the reentry problems and they will be all set. So thru corruption and purchase, a stone age country will be a nuclear power. Not so different from Pakistan actually. The real question remains, why should anyone bargain with them?

Denis Rodman. I thought about him, but wonder how Trump will feel about the attention being split. I agree it’s all on the side of NK, and for that reason it would be better not to go. Perhaps Trump can be persuaded to changchange his mind, but if he’s determined the world will have to make the best of it.

I agree completely with your second paragraph. My ideal world be to let South Korea work on a relationship between them, and take the lead in negotiations. The US can’t win because they have only ever made one non-negotiable demand – no more nukes.

I agree completely. Quite apart from anything else, it diversifies power within the country. So no matter how tightly Kim grips, other influences will seep in. It’s inevitable.

USB sticks are already doing that because they’re so easy to smuggle. North Koreans are loving South Korean TV series, and discovering things aren’t how they’ve been told.

Ha ha. 🙂

Of course, there was a huge amount of back channel stuff done by Kissinger to make sure it worked, and whatever you say about Nixon, he wasn’t likely to screw everything up by saying something stupid.

Thank you!

I think Trump’s primary reason for doing this is about himself rather than the country, though I’m sure he’s telling himself it’s for the country. He really believes in his ability to make a deal and doesn’t understand the difference between diplomacy and business. His advisors have to keep him away from making promises whatever they do.

The reason presidents don’t get involved early on is so their name isn’t attached if things go wrong. And in the past, things have always gone wrong with North Korea.

If Trump is prevented from acting as he wants either by his own officials or impeachment proceedings (actual or potential), I think we can plan on hearing from Trump telling us for the rest of his life that everything would be good with NK if everyone had listened to him.

Cheers mate.

Currently we have no foundation of policy to begin a negotiation. Our only plan is, you get rid of your nuclear program and we will then be nice to you. We have no plan to deal with a nuclear N.K. and that is what we have. So as soon as this show is done and over we can go back to the same old reality show. They have nukes, they have missiles and we have to live with that. It is too bad that South Korea is in the middle of this and I would frankly like to hear more on what they think should be done and less about us or N.K.

Once a country develops business ties with the world, their priorities change. Doing business with the world will generally lead to their people would getting more and more internet access. This makes it harder for their leaders to control knowledge. It all takes a long time but I see no other way to get results.