Tag: Donald Trump

I have to admit I cringed a little bit when I first saw this, but the follow on criticism has been over the top:

Newly released video footage from North Korean state media shows President Donald Trump returning a salute to a North Korean military general during this week’s summit in Singapore, an extraordinary display of respect from a US president to a top officer of a hostile regime.

In the military, returning a salute from a military officer of a friendly foreign nation is common practice for US military officers and considered a display of military professionalism. There is no rule that a US president is obliged to return a salute, which is considered a sign of mutual respect.

After Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un walked down a colonnade to shake hands, the pair entered into a room filled with various members of Kim’s delegation, the video from North Korean broadcaster KCTV news shows.

Trump starts to shake hands with those in the room. Upon encountering North Korean Gen. No Kwang Chol, who was in full uniform, Trump first extends his hand, to which the general responds with a salute. Trump then salutes back, extends his hand again and the two men shake hands.  [CNN]

There’s no regulation that stipulates presidents must salute the troops. In fact, for the first 192 years of our republic, it didn’t happen. None of the first 38 commanders in chief did it. And some of those dudes had some serious military experience. Eisenhower? Grant? I mean, Teddy Roosevelt was a war hero. Surely he felt compelled to click his heels together and cut a perfect knife-handed salute when he passed a uniform service member, right? Wrong. It was literally something that Ronald Reagan made up one day.  [Task and Purpose]

A cursory check of photo archives shows that Obama on occasion returned a foreign official’s salute.  [Dallas Morning News]

Over at One Free Korea he has a posting up that analyzes the recent joint statement between President Trump and Kim Jong-un:

Yesterday, I said the best we could hope for from the Trump-Kim summit would be “a vague agreement that North Korea will denuclearize, without Trump making any concessions for such a nebulous promise.” We have that vague agreement (full text here). It is so vague, in fact, that it’s hard to even say what concessions were given, implied, or will be given in the coming months.

Historically, vague agreements are the agreements Pyongyang loves. One the one hand, it will put an implausibly narrow interpretation on its own concessions: “What you do mean this includes uranium?,” or, “We agreed to stop missile tests, not satellite launch vehicle tests!” On the other hand, it will interpret our own concessions broadly. Here’s a useful map of its demandsto guide your understanding of what it will demand next. What’s clear is that Pyongyang will interpret the terms very differently from what Trump and his cabinet have said they would demand.  [One Free Korea]

As always I recommend reading OFK’s entire well thought out analysis at the link.

I fully agree that everyone should be skeptical of this joint statement.  However, just like the concessions the Kim regime has made so far, the concessions the Trump administration have made are all easily reversible.  Something else to keep in mind is that we don’t know what was privately agreed to during discussions with the regime.  I think we should wait for some time to pass to see how this plays out before we declare this summit just more failed diplomacy between the US and North Korea.  If the Trump administration drops sanctions for little to nothing in return, that should be the trigger to hit the panic button and declare that Groundhog Day has restarted once again with North Korea.

However, the way President Trump has criticized past administrations for getting little to nothing in return from North Korea in past agreements, I would be very surprised if he chooses this route.  I tend to think that the Trump administration is giving the Kim regime one last chance to rejoin the world community and if they don’t reach a comprehensive agreement sanctions will remain in place.  As long as the sanctions are in place ROK President Moon Jae-in will not be able to invest billions into North Korea, re-open the near-slave labor Kaesong Industrial Complex, and open the tourism projects on North Korea’s east coast.

This causes me to think that current negotiations are about what irreversible actions the Kim regime must execute in return for dropping of sanctions.  If the North Koreans drag out negotiations like they historically have done, the Trump administration can easily turn back on the Key Resolve joint exercise scheduled each spring and implement more sanctions to pressure the regime to get a deal done.  If the Kim regime begins another provocation cycle in response the Trump administration can say they have tried everything to peacefully resolve the nuclear issue and military action may become a more viable option.

Let’s hope it doesn’t come to that and diplomacy between the US and North Korea works for once, but history does indicate we should all remain skeptical until we actually see it happen.

A fan of President Trump’s decision to stop joint wargames against North Korea is Guam Governor Eddie Calvo:

Gov. Eddie Calvo met with President Donald Trump as the president made a pit stop at Andersen Air Force Base early Wednesday morning.

Trump was on his return trip from Singapore after a historic summit with North Korea’s Kim Jong Un. (……)

“The war games are very expensive. We pay for a big majority of them. We fly in bombers from Guam,” Trump said after meeting with North Korean leader Kim Jung Un.

“I said — when I first started, I said, ‘Where do the bombers come from?’  ‘Guam.  Nearby.’ I said, ‘Oh, great, nearby.  Where’s nearby?’  ‘Six and a half hours.’ Six and a half hours — that’s a long time for these big massive planes to be flying to South Korea to practice and then drop bombs all over the place, and then go back to Guam. I know a lot about airplanes; it’s very expensive. And I didn’t like it.”

Calvo said he supports Trump’s decision to halt bomber flights from Andersen. Calvo said the exercises were “threatening,” and put Guam in North Korea’s crosshairs.  [Guam PDN]

You can read more at the link, but Governor Calvo as was reported to have told Trump that the people of Guam breathed a “big sigh of relief” after the summit since the island has been repeatedly threatened over the years by North Korea for missile attacks.

President Trump is definitely working hard to sell the public on how successful the Trump-Kim summit in Singapore was in response to his critics:

U.S. President Donald Trump tweeted Wednesday that the world should feel “safer” because North Korea poses no nuclear threat to the world.

“Everybody can feel much safer than the day I took office. There is no longer a Nuclear Threat from North Korea. Meeting with Kim Jong Un was an interesting and very positive experience. North Korea has great potential for the future!” he wrote just after he returned to Washington from a historic summit with North Korean leader Kim Jong-un in Singapore on Tuesday.

“Before taking office people were assuming that we were going to War with North Korea. President Obama said that North Korea was our biggest and most dangerous problem. No longer,” he added.

Earlier he tweeted several times defending the summit, which critics said lacked specifics and fell short of the U.S. goal of complete, verifiable and irreversible denuclearization.

“Great progress was made on the denuclearization of North Korea. Hostages are back home, will be getting the remains of our great heroes back to their families, no missiles shot, no research happening, sites closing,” Trump tweeted.

“Got along great with Kim Jong-un who wants to see wonderful things for his country. As I said earlier today: Anyone can make war, but only the most courageous can make peace!” he added.

In later postings, Trump thanked Kim for taking a “bold” step toward a “bright future” for his people and said that their Tuesday summit helps the world stay a big step away from potential nuclear catastrophe.  [Yonhap]

You can read more at the link, but you can read my analysis of the summit at this link.  What will be interesting to see in the coming weeks what the domestic North Korean media puts out about this summit.

"Today is a great day," former NBA star Dennis Rodman says in an emotional interview in which he describes his relationship with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un https://t.co/eoNeZnYFm7 pic.twitter.com/6gouUPBBpX

— CNN International (@cnni) June 12, 2018

Below is the statement that President Trump and Kim Jong-un signed during their summit in Singapore with my comments below each point:

Here is the first part of the statement:

1. The United States and the DPRK commit to establish new U.S.-DPRK relations in accordance with the desire of peoples of the two countries for peace and prosperity.

There has been a lot of talk about the US opening an embassy in North Korea.  This line seems to open the door to this possibility if North Korea behaves of course.  An opening of an embassy would symbolize the normalizing of relations between the DPRK and the US which is why I don’t think this will be something happening in the near term.  Once the DPRK makes irreversible decisions to end their nuclear program than I think this will become a possibility.

2. The United States and the DPRK will join the efforts to build a lasting and stable peace regime on the Korean Peninsula.

This is something that President Moon Jae-in and the Kim regime has been actively pushing for.  Professor B.R. Myers has written extensively on this, but Moon wants to eventually establish a North-South Confederation.  This is why him and the Korean left have been attempting to amend the ROK constitution to make this happen.  One of the changes they have proposed was changing this passage in the ROK constitution:

“The Republic of Korea shall seek national unification, and shall formulate and carry out a peaceful unification policy based on the free and democratic basic order.”

In the proposed revision the word “free” would be removed which would open the door to the Kim regime maintaining power in North Korea after confederation with their own form of democracy.  President Moon and his left wing supporters will never admit to this, but that is the only rational reason why they would want this change in the ROK constitution.

Should this matter to President Trump?  It seems that from the US perspective if the DPRK ends its nuclear and ICBM programs then it should be left up to the ROK to decide their own future.  If the ROK public wants a confederation that sees billions of their taxpayer dollars going up North to support the Kim regime that will continue to maintain a massive conventional military force to threaten them with, then so be it.  Remember the Kim regime is only going to agree to a confederation on their terms.

3. Reaffirming the April 27, 2018 Panumunjom Declaration, the DPRK commits to work toward complete denuclerarization of the Korean Peninsula.

Notice that the wording of this statement is “work toward” which makes no demands of the Kim regime to actually denuclearize.  So far the North Koreans have only taken denuclearization actions that are easily reversible.  I think that in response the US will only make concessions that are easily reversible.  I don’t think the US will drop sanctions until concrete actions are taken by the Kim regime to eliminate their nuclear weapons such as shipping nuclear material to a third country.  The DPRK and the ROK have long wanted a “freeze deal” that would allow the North Koreans to keep their nukes in return for dropping sanctions.  I have so far seen no indication of an agreement of a “freeze deal” from this summit.    If the US drops sanctions against North Korea for little to nothing in return than this will be a huge win for Kim Jong-un.

4. The United States and the DPRK commit to recovering POW/MIA remains, including the immediate repatriation of those already identified.

It will be interesting to see how this is executed because in the past the US stopped the recovery work because of the ridiculous fees that North Korea demanded.  The North Koreans know exactly where the bulk of the remains are because the US military buried a large number of casualties in marked cemeteries before evacuating North Korea after the Chinese intervened in the war.

To be able to repatriate these remains to their family members the North Koreans have been demanding inflated prices which just shows how low the Kim regime is willing to go to make money.  The work to recover the remains ended in 2005 with 220 remains recovered.

As recently as 2014 the Kim regime was trying to get the US to restart recovery of the remains threatening to let them get washed away.  It looks like the Kim regime has now convinced the Trump administration to restart the remains recovery, but at what cost?

Final Analysis

My analysis on this is that the Trump administration would love to have North Korea completely denuclearize and give up their ICBMs in exchange for dropping of sanctions and being reintegrated into the world community.  However, I am confident based on the people that President Trump has around him, that he is not naive to the past history of the Kim regime.

I think this is the one final chance for the Kim regime to make peace with the United States and if they try to play their old games again, that will be the excuse the President needs to take military action against them.  This kind of reminds me of the Israeli-Palestinian peace talks during the Clinton administration.  Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO) leader, Yasser Arafat was given the opportunity to make peace with the Israelis during the 2000 Camp David Summit and did not do it which led to the Second Intifada.  This gave the Israelis the excuse they needed to crush the Palestinians which they did.

Does anyone see any similarities between these two photographs? 

Kim Jong-un currently has the opportunity to seek peace with the United States just like Arafat did with the Israelis.  Arafat could not bring himself to make peace with the Israelis despite the great deal that was offered to him that gave the Palestinians nearly everything they wanted.  Arafat it was argued did not agree to the deal because it jeopardized his leadership status by being responsible for building a state along side Israel instead of a deadly, authoritarian opposition which is all he knew how to do.

Will Kim Jong-un accept denuclearization in return for building his state after the dropping of sanctions?  Time will tell, but like the Israelis I would not be surprised if President Trump isn’t ready to take military action if the North Koreans return to a provocation cycle again.  Just like with the Palestinians, I think things will end badly for the Kim regime if that is the course of action they choose to take.

Final Note: By the way did anyone else feel like Kim Jong-un looked like he was a contestant on the Celebrity Apprentice show during this summit?  If they would have let Dennis Rodman into the summit it truly would have a been a Celebrity Apprentice episode.

It seems too early in the negotiations to commit to any troop cuts within USFK, but if North Korea does take serious measures to eliminate their nuclear program I could see this happening at some point in the future.  I guess we will see what happens once the summit is complete:

Concerns are rising that U.S. President Donald Trump may use reducing the number of U.S. troops stationed in South Korea as a bargaining chip for a denuclearization deal with North Korean leader Kim Jong-un.

Since taking office early last year, Trump has called for the need to scale down the U.S. Forces Korea (USFK), as he believes Washington is not properly compensated for maintaining the troops here.

Trump has, for this reason, urged South Korea to take a bigger share in paying maintenance costs for the USFK during the ongoing negotiation to renew the five-year defense-cost-sharing for the American troops here. Under his “America First” policy, he said Seoul should take on more of the burden when renewing the agreement which expires at the end of this year.

“Less publicly, but still privately, Trump continues to say he does not agree with the argument that U.S. troops in South Korea are strategically necessary, and he thinks the U.S. gets nothing back from paying to keep them there,” Washington Post columnist Josh Rogin said in a recent column, citing administration officials and those who have had conversations with Trump regarding the issue.

“He (Trump) often asks his generals to explain the rationale for America’s deployments in Asia and expresses dissatisfaction with their answers.”

The White House and Pentagon denied the possibility for Trump to bring the agenda of downsizing U.S. troops to the dialogue table on Tuesday morning when the historic Washington-Pyongyang summit takes place in Singapore.  [Korea Times]

You can read more at the link.

I wonder what Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe was thinking in this photograph from the recent G7 summit in Canada?  Anyone want to provide a caption?

Here is an article in the New York Times about the image makeover that President Moon has helped Kim Jong-un achieve over the past year.  I think this below passage from the article shows the example of either mass mental illness or effective control of the ROK media by the Moon administration if 77% of South Koreans actually think the Kim regime is trustworthy:

The summit meeting mainly rehashed old inter-Korean agreements that had never been kept, producing only a vaguely worded commitment to denuclearization and peace. But the images made the event a success, providing momentum for warmed ties between the two countries and redefining Mr. Kim in the eyes of many South Koreans.

The next morning, a South Korean newspaper filled its front and back pages with a photograph showing Mr. Moon and Mr. Kim crossing the border hand in hand. Mr. Kim, formerly vilified as the region’s most dangerous leader, was considered “trustworthy” by 77 percent of South Koreans following the meeting, according to a survey by the Korea Research Center.

“Chairman Kim’s popularity has risen rapidly among South Koreans, and so have the expectations,” Mr. Moon told Mr. Kim last month when they met for the second time at Panmunjom. He said the summit meeting especially strengthened Mr. Kim’s image among younger South Koreans, who have shaped their views of North Korea through the past decade of inter-Korean tensions and have become increasingly skeptical of reconciliation, much less reunification, with the North.  [New York Times]

What this means is that when Kim Jong-un eventually renegs on getting rid of his nuclear weapons he will blame the Americans and the Moon administration will make sure that 77% of South Koreans will agree with him.

Kim Jong Un's envoy asked President Trump to support tourism development — including casinos — in the coastal North Korean city of Wonsan and the nearby ski resort of Masik Pass, according to South Korea's Dong-a Ilbo (link in Korean) https://t.co/uNunxvCKNH pic.twitter.com/WF0rKEdVZj

— Anna Fifield (@annafifield) June 4, 2018