Where is/can Donald Trump take US (sic)?

[Tisme]

You think Jina will be happy the Yanks have military access to their neighbour North Korea?
It's a big change in word affairs.

China might just want the US to unlock N Korea so it can do a land grab itself:

remember the guy who wanted to march into China:

http://www.americanrhetoric.com/speeches/douglasmacarthurfarewelladdress.htm

 

[moXJO]

China was always worried that millions of starving NK refugees would rush the border if things went south with the US.
Right now business is preparing to rush NK as the last untapped asian resource. Finance will flow in if sanctions are lifted. Where else can you find better trained workers at slave prices.
Saves china a headache.

 

[luutzu]

Unpaid security service? More than a thousand non US troops have died in Afghanistan alone fighting for US interests. Plus 40 Australians. (Sheet happens, apparently)

Any debt we owe the US has been well and truly discharged by now.

Unfortunate that's not the end of it.

If, say, the US decided to take on China. Australians will have to join that fight whether we like to or not.

 

[SirRumpole]

Unfortunate that's not the end of it.

If, say, the US decided to take on China. Australians will have to join that fight whether we like to or not.

Doubtful if the US will take on China with conventional weapons, certainly not soldiers. More likely with nukes.

 

[luutzu]

China might just want the US to unlock N Korea so it can do a land grab itself:

remember the guy who wanted to march into China:

http://www.americanrhetoric.com/speeches/douglasmacarthurfarewelladdress.htm

You might be right on that one. But then maybe both sides are thinking the same, one pushing closer to the border, the other expanding their buffer zone.

 

[luutzu]

Doubtful if the US will take on China with conventional weapons, certainly not soldiers. More likely with nukes.

If it's nukes, the whole world will pay the price.

It'll be proxy wars similar to the adventure in VN, Cambodia etc.

Then there'll be trade wars. Would be hard for Australia to keep supplying the boss's enemy with raw materials and vitamins without being told off.

 

[Tink]

Reports suggest around 100,000 political prisoners are being held in gulags in North Korea

Mr Trump says he believes the prisoners are 'the great winners' of the summit

Mr Trump says summit would not have happened without Otto Warmbier

http://www.abc.net.au/news/2018-06-...do-right-thing-on-human-rights-abuses/9862192

 

[moXJO]

Doubtful if the US will take on China with conventional weapons, certainly not soldiers. More likely with nukes.

They wouldn't use nukes. Thats last last resort or if there is danger of a first strike. Fallout potentially would affect neighboring allies as well.

They would use airpower and attempt to push navy into position. China has a lot of manpower but not well equipped or trained.
I don't think it would come to that though.

 

[McLovin]

I don't think it would come to that though.

If it gets to that point then we're all screwed. China would sink a carrier fleet in about twenty minutes in a real war on China's doorstep.

Lil' Rocket Man seems to have gotten some amazing concessions. No more war games, a formal peace treaty in the offing and Trump talking about removing US troops from SK. And all that LRM had to signup for was a vague agreement to denuclearise the Korean peninsula and repatriate the remains of US troops from the Korean war. It made good TV (which I think was the point) and I hope it leads to a positive outcome, but who knows, it's not like we haven't been here before. Kim is definitely more market orientated than his father and grandfather, his willingness to leave NK to travel to Singapore signals more of a change than anything else, imo. Maybe he intends to cut himself more in the mould of Putin than Stalin.

Pyonghattan is actually a thing these days...I was there in 2006, it reads like a totally different city to the one I visited.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/worl...ory.html?noredirect=on&utm_term=.7028f7f8675b

 

[wayneL]

If it gets to that point then we're all screwed. China would sink a carrier fleet in about twenty minutes in a real war on China's doorstep.

Lil' Rocket Man seems to have gotten some amazing concessions. No more war games, a formal peace treaty in the offing and Trump talking about removing US troops from SK. And all that LRM had to signup for was a vague agreement to denuclearise the Korean peninsula and repatriate the remains of US troops from the Korean war. It made good TV (which I think was the point) and I hope it leads to a positive outcome, but who knows, it's not like we haven't been here before. Kim is definitely more market orientated than his father and grandfather, his willingness to leave NK to travel to Singapore signals more of a change than anything else, imo. Maybe he intends to cut himself more in the mould of Putin than Stalin.

Pyonghattan is actually a thing these days...I was there in 2006, it reads like a totally different city to the one I visited.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/worl...ory.html?noredirect=on&utm_term=.7028f7f8675b

Interesting persective, sans action-consequence analysis.

In what capacity did you visit?

 

[Tink]

Here is another one, McLovin

Atrocities Under Kim Jong-un: Indoctrination, Prison Gulags, Executions

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/06/11/world/asia/north-korea-human-rights.html

 

[McLovin]

Interesting persective, sans action-consequence analysis.

I'm reading the cards as I see them. There's no need to run through millions of permutations of what might/might not occur, because NK is actually a fairly easy country to read. They push everyone to the edge then they pull back and start the wheel again. They've done it dozens of times over the last sixty-five years. Maybe this time is different. I hope so. The fact Kim travelled to Singapore and that he is far more pro-market than his predecessors speaks more loudly than that bit of paper they signed that's worth squat. Opening their economy even slightly, will bring change. Slow change, but change. Agreement on CVID was meant to be the cornerstone of the summit. Instead they agreed to work toward denuclearisation, but they are miles apart on what denuclearisation looks like in practise.

Do I believe the sincerity of a brutal, Stalinist autocracy that was threatening to rain down nuclear weapons on the US and its allies at the start of year? No.

 

[Knobby22]

If it gets to that point then we're all screwed. China would sink a carrier fleet in about twenty minutes in a real war on China's doorstep.

Lil' Rocket Man seems to have gotten some amazing concessions. No more war games, a formal peace treaty in the offing and Trump talking about removing US troops from SK. And all that LRM had to signup for was a vague agreement to denuclearise the Korean peninsula and repatriate the remains of US troops from the Korean war. It made good TV (which I think was the point) and I hope it leads to a positive outcome, but who knows, it's not like we haven't been here before. Kim is definitely more market orientated than his father and grandfather, his willingness to leave NK to travel to Singapore signals more of a change than anything else, imo. Maybe he intends to cut himself more in the mould of Putin than Stalin.

Pyonghattan is actually a thing these days...I was there in 2006, it reads like a totally different city to the one I visited.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/worl...ory.html?noredirect=on&utm_term=.7028f7f8675b

I don't think the deal is that amazing. No more war games -well so what? Always can bring them back.
The USA would love to leave South Korea, the cost is enormous. A peace treaty suits all parties if it can be pulled off. China want it also. North Korea gets rid of all the nukes, so no US city is in danger.

I think Trumps is acting sensibly on this one. Lot of lefties and righties trying to stop it arguing Kim should be tried for war crimes or other nonsense. The UN don't rule the world. Just do the deal. Plenty of other dictators around, this is just a tin pot country of no real consequence.

Kim went to school in the west and loves basketball and Rodham. He wants to be part of the world, unlike his Dad. He needs to keep the ruling class happy. He'll do the deal if he is allowed to.

 

[SirRumpole]

The USA would love to leave South Korea, the cost is enormous. A peace treaty suits all parties if it can be pulled off

The South Koreans would be nervous if the US pulled its troops out. A NK invasion with the assistance of China would then be a possibility. Would the US take on NK and China in South Korea ?

Unlikely IMO.

 

[sptrawler]

The South Koreans would be nervous if the US pulled its troops out. A NK invasion with the assistance of China would then be a possibility. Would the US take on NK and China in South Korea ?

Unlikely IMO.

Funnily enough, that is exactly what was said, before the Vietnam war. If North Vietnam take over South Vietnam, the commies will get in and it will be the end of SE Asia.
Did it?

 

[SirRumpole]

Funnily enough, that is exactly what was said, before the Vietnam war. If North Vietnam take over South Vietnam, the commies will get in and it will be the end of SE Asia.
Did it?

Did what ?

Are you saying the South Koreans wouldn't be nervous if the US pulled out of South Korea ?

 

[luutzu]

Did what ?

Are you saying the South Koreans wouldn't be nervous if the US pulled out of South Korea ?

Their current president, Moon, got the ball rolling on this one.

The S/Korean plebs, from interviews I saw, doesn't seem to like the US military having its bases all over their country. It just invite potential retaliatory attack if the US decided to go to war or something.

That and them having to literally pay for a fair chunk of the bases' expenditure for the pleasure. e.g. they recently have to fork out some half a billion to develop a new naval jetty and shed so the US Navy can park a few more boats and subs there.

Not sure why the US is going along with this plan to potentially unify the Koreas. Can't be because they're hoping the Chinese and Russian wouldn't mind the US moving their gears a bit closer north.

Maybe public sentiment have made it known the Koreans wanted peace, so might as well go for a photo ops and Trump's Peace Prize, then scuttle it somehow.

Or maybe it give a reasonable excuse to move those 30,000 odd US personnel and some other hundreds of thousands US citizens further away from the DMZ... making it a lot easier, at home, to carry out that Libya model.

Don't want to poo pooed the peace and all that. Just that the Korean Peninsular is the anchor in a couple of that Island Chain strategy to reign in China (and Russia)... It's weird for any military power to suddenly lift the anchor. Not now when China's staking claims on all the seas surrounding its borders.

 

[sptrawler]

Did what ?

Are you saying the South Koreans wouldn't be nervous if the US pulled out of South Korea ?

I wouldn't know how the South Koreans feel about it.

I do know, that just because the U.S pulls out, doesn't mean that North Korea will automatically invade South Korea.
Who knows, maybe North and South Korea want to unite peacefully?

 

[SirRumpole]

Did what ?

Who knows, maybe North and South Korea want to unite peacefully?

South Koreans want to unite with a guy that murders his own family and throws tens of thousands of its citizens into slavery and hunger ?

Yeah, right.

 

[luutzu]

South Koreans want to unite with a guy that murders his own family and throws tens of thousands of its citizens into slavery and hunger ?

Yeah, right.

Maybe they don't want to unite with lil' Kim in the big house. Just reunite with their own family who've been starving in some backwater somewhere all these decades.