Tag Archives: Kim Jong Un

International news

Welcome home, American hostages

Three Americans held hostage are on their way home, where they’ll likely get quite a red-carpet welcome led by the president of the United States.

They were held by North Koreans who held them on phony “espionage” charges.

This is a most positive development, although we should take care to avoid overstating it — or understating it, for that matter.

Donald J. Trump’s tough talk directed at North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un well might be part of a remarkable change in tone coming from the reclusive Marxist regime in Pyongyang. If that is the case — and it’s a bit early to make that final determination — then we might be witnessing a new form of “diplomacy” practiced by the leader of the free world.

Trump and Kim and headed for a landmark summit. Trump is demanding an end to the Kim’s nuclear-weapon development aspirations. Kim wants assurances that the United States won’t invade North Korea. Yes, there remains a huge gulf between the sides.

However, that gulf got a bit narrower today with the release of these three Americans — all of Korean descent. Let’s now hope their health is as good as it has been advertised, and that the two leaders can proceed toward a summit that leads to a lasting peace on the Korean Peninsula.

International news

Peace Prize? Stop already!

Now it’s South Korean President Moon Jae-in who’s climbed aboard a bandwagon that needs to be put back in the barn.

Moon says Donald J. Trump deserves the Nobel Peace Prize. Why? His pressure on North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un has brought the former Little Rocket Man to his senses.

Hold on a minute! Let’s revisit another premature Peace Prize recipient.

The Trumpsters out there who read this blog will love the example. I offer former President Barack Obama for them … and the rest of you.

The Nobel committee awarded the then-brand new U.S. president the Peace Prize in 2009 even though he had just assumed his high office. The committee gave him the award on the promise that he would bring world peace.

To be totally candid, it didn’t work out that way. Our wars in Iraq and Afghanistan continued. Other conflicts broke out in Syria and Yemen. Tensions built between Israel and Iran.

To his credit, President Obama recognized the awkwardness of the award timing when he accepted it.

I say this as a staunch admirer of Barack Obama, who I consider to be among the top tier of U.S. presidents.

As for the current president, my feelings about him are, um, radically different. I want to be fair, though, in hoping that his efforts to bring North and South Korea together do produce tangible benefit for the rest of the world.

Only then should this talk about a Peace Prize proceed.

International news

What might happen if POTUS wins the Prize?

It’s actually kind of fun to consider what might happen if Donald John Trump wins the Nobel Peace Prize.

He’s being talked up by his political base of supporters as a Nobel Prize candidate if North and South Korea are able to forge a peace treaty to officially end the Korean War — and, oh yes, de-nuclearize the Korean Peninsula.

My hunch is twofold. If he wins the prize, there will be end to the braggadocio that comes from the president of the United States. He’ll be more than delighted to crow until he runs out of breath about how he was the only president to accomplish it.

The second hunch is even more annoying if you can believe it.

Suppose he is nominated for the Peace Prize, but gets beat out by someone else. Maybe someone other than Trump son-in-law Jared Kushner can forge a peace deal between Israel and the Palestinian Authority. Maybe someone will persuade Iran to end its pursuit of nuclear weapons.

If the president is nominated, but doesn’t actually win the prize, the winner had better really and truly be the hands-down individual or group that deserves it.

If not, then we’re going to hear the Mother of All Twitter Tirades from Trump bitching about the political correctness that went into the selection. I mean, he did all that work to bring peace to Korea, even resorting to the Little Rocket Man epithet he hurled at Kim Jong Un from the United Nations lectern.

It might not get that far. The upcoming Trump-Kim summit might not produce anything. It might be a bust. I hope it works out for both nations. The bluster and bombast frighten me and I want it to end.

If the summit can bring an end to the nastiness, then perhaps the president will deserve a nomination. But … oh, brother. What would happen were he to win it or get passed over?

Let’s all stand by and hope for the best, whatever that might be.

International news

Why cast aspersions on predecessors?

International statecraft is a nuanced endeavor, but it’s not an entirely complicated matter.

The best practitioners of it look forward and don’t bother looking back, let alone tossing stones at those who came before them in the high office they occupy.

Thus, Donald Trump’s statements today about the pending peace agreement between South and North Korea lacked a sense of nobility one might expect from the president of the United States.

Trump spoke to the media along with German Chancellor Angela Merkel. He spoke seriously about the handshake and the historic meeting that occurred overnight between North Korea’s Kim Jong Un and South Korea’s Moon Jae-in. The two men have agreed to strike a peace deal on the Korean Peninsula, ending the official state of war that has existed since the Korean War hostilities ended in 1953.

Then he did that thing that annoys the living daylights out of me. He kept referring to his presidential predecessors’ “mistakes” in dealing with the reclusive North Korean regime.

Holy crap, Mr. President! Enough, already!

I expect fully for Trump take full credit for the deal that awaits the two Koreas. That’s fine. He can take credit if he wishes. But the expected deal came together through a complicated network of international relationships.

I just want the president to look forward from here. Kim Jong Un and Moon Jae-in have taken a huge step toward a long-sought-after peace agreement. It was forged by the deaths of hundreds of thousands of men — roughly 50,000 of whom were Americans — who fought a war that ended in a stalemate.

There is no need — none at all — for the president to re-litigate how his predecessors sought in vain to achieve the noble goal of peace in Korea.

International news

Peace treaty in Korea? Holy cow!

I awoke this morning to an absolute stunner of an announcement.

Kim Jong Un and Moon Jae-in — the presidents of North and South Korea, respectively — have agreed to actually end the Korean War.

End the war? Yes. The Korean War never officially ended with a peace treaty. They stopped the shooting in 1953 after an armistice was signed, ending three years of bloody conflict on the Korean Peninsula.

The Koreas has been functioning with a cease-fire in place. The Demilitarized Zone separating the countries is nothing of the kind: it is the most militarized piece of real estate on Earth.

So, where do we go from here?

Kim and Moon signed an agreement to end the war. The treaty signing will occur later this year, according to the document the men signed.

But there’s more. There now appears some serious movement toward discussions relating to the denuclearization of the peninsula. That’s right. Kim Jong Un has agreed, apparently, to enter serious talks to take down his country’s nuclear ambitions.

Now for a big question: Who gets the credit for this seemingly monumental event? I have a strong hunch that the president of the United States, Donald J. Trump, is going to claim all the credit for himself. He is likely to tell us his tough talk regarding “Little Rocket Man” has brought Kim to his senses.

Well, the president deserves some credit. He needs to share it with the People’s Republic of China, which quite likely also has persuaded Kim to end this ongoing conflict. North Korea has precisely one dependable ally on Earth. It is the PRC. Does anyone believe that Kim would do anything so significant without China signing off?

I am stunned today to hear the news that came out of Korea.

Let us all say a prayer that Kim Jong Un — who is as mercurial and unpredictable as Donald Trump — remains faithful to the signature he has affixed on a document pledging to end the Korean War.

Sixty-five years after the end of the bloodshed, it’s about time!

International news

Secretary Pompeo gets to work

Mike Pompeo’s nomination to be secretary of state cleared the Senate committee vote he needed by the narrowest of margins. It was a single vote.

Then the full U.S. Senate voted today to confirm him. The vote was 57-42; Republican John McCain was absent and unable to vote.

What does this mean for the new secretary? The way I see it, it means he has little bipartisan backing to tackle the difficult tasks of forging a foreign policy that commands the attention and respect of our nation’s allies and, yes, its foes.

Secretaries of state traditionally get huge margins. The only recent secretary of state to be confirmed by a margin comparable to the one that Pompeo earned was, interestingly, Donald J. Trump’s first secretary of state, Rex Tillerson.

The Associated Press reported that every secretary of state dating back to the Carter administration had received at least 85 Senate votes for confirmation.

Why is this important? Foreign policy shouldn’t fall along partisan lines. It shouldn’t reflect the deep divisions within our nation’s partisan political machinery. The United States should speak with a single voice when it deals with foreign policy. That’s long been a tradition. Sadly, that longstanding practice now appears to be buried under the deep and bitter partisan divisions.

It reflects the chasm that separates Republicans and Democrats. It is unhealthy in the extreme, particularly since Secretary Pompeo now must take the lead on preparation for the unprecedented summit between Donald Trump and Kim Jong Un, the mercurial leader of North Korea.

Pompeo and Kim already have met. No one has reported precisely how that first meeting — conducted under the cover of secrecy — produced, other than the president saying something about Pompeo and Kim getting “along well.”

The Senate vote will stand, though, as a message that the new secretary of state doesn’t have the bipartisan support he needs to move forward as the prime spokesman for our foreign policy apparatus.

My hope is that he earns it.

International news

‘Very honorable’? Kim Jong Un? Huh?

Donald J. Trump is buttering up the guy he used to ridicule as Little Rocket Man.

The president of the United States calls the North Korean dictator, Kim Jong Un, “very honorable” and “very open” in advance of the planned summit between the two leaders set for sometime in May or June.

I wasn’t keen on the Little Rocket Man epithet, given that it sounded unseemly for the president of the United States to use such language to describe another sovereign nation’s leader.

However, I must take issue with Trump’s latest assessment of Kim Jong Un.

A dictator and despot who allows his people to starve while he pours untold amounts of money into building a military infrastructure isn’t “honorable.” A guy who has members of his own family murdered is the farthest thing from “honorable.” A leader who threatens nuclear holocaust against his neighbors and then fires missiles over their heads to intimidate them isn’t “honorable” by any stretch of the imagination.

I get that the president is talking about Kim Jong Un’s conduct in the run-up to the planned summit.

Let’s cool the talk about honor as it regards this guy. He is still a dangerous actor performing on a perilous world stage.

International news

Pompeo to become diplomat with thin backing

Mike Pompeo is likely to be confirmed as the nation’s next secretary of state, but he’ll take strange route on his way to leading the nation’s diplomatic corps.

Pompeo is the CIA director whom Donald Trump selected to succeed Rex Tillerson at the State Department. He has run into trouble on his way to confirmation: Pompeo won’t have the blessing of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, which conducted confirmation hearings on Pompeo’s nomination.

A Republican committee member, Rand Paul of Kentucky, is going to vote against Pompeo’s nomination. That will result more than likely in a vote of no confidence from the panel.

That won’t derail his confirmation. The full Senate will get to vote on it, but Pompeo will gain the support of Senate Democrats who might be in trouble in states that Trump carried in the 2016 presidential election. Heidi Heitkamp of North Dakota and Joe  Manchin of West Virginia come to mind; let’s toss in Bill Nelson of Florida while we’re at it. They’re all running for re-election, which seems to give Pompeo a leg up in this strange journey toward confirmation.

Actually, I hope Pompeo does get confirmed. The State Department needs a steady hand and I think Pompeo can provide it … if only the president will allow him to lead the agency.

Tillerson had to fight the occasional battle against being undercut by the president. Tillerson would make a pronouncement and then Trump would countermand him. I don’t want that to happen with the new secretary of state, who’s got a big job awaiting him immediately — which happens to be the preparation for the planned summit between Donald Trump and North Korean despot Kim Jong Un.

What’s more, as head of the CIA, Pompeo has joined other U.S. intelligence officials in confirming the obvious: that the Russians meddled in our 2016 election.

This man needs to be our secretary of state.

International news

‘Great progress’ in advance of summit?

What in the world are we to conclude about this stunning bit of news?

CIA Director Mike Pompeo — who has been nominated to become the next secretary of state — visited North Korea around Easter weekend, where he met with Kim Jong Un.

Pompeo returned from that meeting under the cover of secrecy.

Then we hear today that North Korea has suspended its missile and nuclear tests and has announced plans to close a nuclear test site.

Donald Trump fired off this tweet in response to the announcement from the reclusive North Korean regime:

North Korea has agreed to suspend all Nuclear Tests and close up a major test site. This is very good news for North Korea and the World – big progress! Look forward to our Summit.

The president’s tweet didn’t connect the two events — Pompeo’s secret meeting and the announcement — but Pyongyang’s statement of intent does lend a fresh air of promise to the upcoming meeting between Trump and Kim at a site to be determined.

If the world is able to trust the mercurial Kim Jong Un to keep his word about the suspension of missile tests and the closing of a nuclear test site, then the planned summit could produce a “fruitful” outcome, to which the president alluded while declaring that could walk away from a meeting if it leads down a dead end.

I’m more than willing to link the Pompeo visit with what Kim Jong Un’s government has just announced. If it proves to be a valid link, then we might be on the verge of some historic developments on the Korean Peninsula.

Excellent! Yes?

International news, national news

Let’s see how this guy works out

Of all the things Donald J. Trump said while campaigning for the presidency in 2016, one of the few statements he made with which I agree dealt with the Iraq War.

He called it a “total disaster.” Which it turned out to be … on so many levels.

So, who does the president hire as his next national security adviser? John Bolton, an Iraq War advocate, a premier uber-hawk and a guy known for a fiery world view that seems to require that America embark on nation-building whenever it sees fit.

Trump shoved H.R. McMaster out the door this week after press secretary Sarah Hucakbee Sanders assured us that all is well between the president and the national security adviser.

It turns out it wasn’t. McMaster actually was one of the grownups within the Trump inner circle. He is a U.S. Army lieutenant general, a battle-tested scholar. He also disagreed with Trump on a number of key issues: Russia, the Iran nuclear deal come to mind.

Now the president has brought on board a guy who agrees with him on the Iran nuke deal. He’s extremely hawkish on North Korea, too, meaning that he just might counsel the president to go to war with Kim Jong Un if an opportunity presents itself.

Gosh, I feel decidedly less comfortable knowing that John Bolton is returning to the federal government.

Bolton did say that he knows his role, that the president sets policy. His new duties will be to provide advice and counsel on national security matters.

Throughout all of this chaos, though, is the pattern already established that Trump hardly takes a moment to listen to anyone. I am left to wonder: Is the president going to heed the reckless advice that John Bolton is capable of delivering?

Oh, my. I am gnashing my teeth.