CIA Believes that Kim Jong-un is A Rational Actor
The CIA concurs with what I have been saying for a long time, that everything Kim Jong-un has been doing from his perspective make rational sense. He has been playing a delicate balancing act of consolidating power internally while conducting provocations and developing his ICBM and nuclear weapons programs to deter external foes:
President Donald Trump has depicted the North Korean leader Kim Jong Un as a “madman”—but U.S. intelligence officials do not agree.
According to Yong Suk Lee, the deputy assistant director of the CIA’s Korea Mission Center, the young North Korean ruler is actually a lot less erratic than he is often portrayed.
“Beyond the bluster, Kim Jong Un is a rational actor,” he said at a conference on the CIA at George Washington University on Wednesday, quoted by AFP.
Trump and Kim have reguarly traded insults but despite the latter’s threat to the American president last month, the North Korean ruler does not seek a military confrontation because he is more interested in ensuring his regime’s survival and stability.
“We have a tendency in this country and elsewhere to underestimate his conservatism” Lee said, adding “He wants to rule for a long time and die in his own bed.” [Newsweek]
You can read more at the link.
Rational is not the same as reasonable, friendly, open-minded, Christian, Buddhist, or atheist. Rational people can be good or evil.
KJU saw what happened to Gaddafi. He might trust Trump; but he would never trust the USA after what Obama and friends did to Libya. He is evil; but probably not stupid. OTOH, there is another way.
Samsung should offer him and his inner circle high-paying “jobs” in Hollywood if he agrees to leave. He would be a big hit with those folks and safe from war.