The effort to salvage face saving talks with North Korea begins….
Deal maker Trump seems to be sidelining his tough guy National Security Advisor Bolton and following the North Korean’s requests ….South Korean, Japanese and Chinese leaders have to be getting nervous about Trump ignoring them in an effort to appease the North….
This IS gonna be interesting….
A training exercise involving U.S. B-52 bombers and South Korean planes was scrapped earlier this week after the South Korean government expressed concerns that it could generate tensions before the summit meeting between President Donald Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, according to U.S. officials.
The move follows repeated assertions by the Trump administration that it is keeping up a campaign of maximum economic and military pressure until North Korea gives up its nuclear-weapons programs and that the U.S. has not changed the scope of its exercises.
But the South Koreans asked not to participate in what was intended to be a three-nation air drill involving the U.S., South Korea and Japan, the U.S. officials said. The U.S., which has sought to maintain political solidarity with Seoul during a turbulent period of diplomacy with North Korea, has not commented publicly on the South Korean decision…..
Although I’m certainly not clear on the present balance of South Korean politics, it should be remembered that her two main political parties take quite different tacks towards North Korea. One (descending from the allies of former military dictator Chung Hee Park) takes a pretty hard, aggressive line, and the other (descended from those who eventually overturned Park’s dictatorship) is much more favourable towards negotiations.
In some ways, this is about the best possible evidence for the strength of democracy in the South (the Republic of Korea). Like another recent democracy, Taiwan (the Republic of China), there is peaceful, electoral competition, with peaceful inter-party transitions, over the most vital existential question for each nation: survival in the face of a sometimes very hostile Communist neighbour. They’re not just arguing about taxes, education or the health-care system.
(In Taiwan, it’s the Kuo Min-Tang of the virulently anti-Communist late dictator Chiang Kai-Shek that, ironically, favours a milder approach towards Peking and the reunification, while the parties that had opposed the KMT are more assertive about an independent path.)
Together with the surprising opposition victory in Malaysia this month and what appears to be a continuing democratic or semi-democratic system in Indonesia, I find at least some hope here about Asian democracy in the face of the darker signs in places such as the Philippines, Indochina, Thailand and Myanmar (Burma).
Hopefully …..
Right now?
Trump is desperate to try to salvage something out of fleeting dream of a Nobel Peace prize….
Most experts believe Trump isn’t gonna be able to work out a deal that will sell to Kim and his own conservative base…
His so called “ conservative base” will buy into anything he works out with Kim.
Why? Because the media and “ libruls” will question it.
They might
But the GOPer’s in blue states along with Dem’s are causing Ryan headaches….
Lot of people call those GOPer”s moderates
You’re right Jack….
My 4:20PM belongs in the Republican Speaker post…
My Bad!
What’s that have to do with Korea and Kim?
Or Trump for that matter?
What’s Paul Ryan have to do with this?
That’s an entirely seperate issue .Thats about DACA.
So you’ve gone from talking about the “conservative base” to “moderates and Democrats?