Adding to a number of other deals negotiated between the two Koreas in recent days, the two have agreed to scrap 22 guard posts along the border. Each side will dismantle 11 of their posts, removing equipment and troops.
All the posts are scheduled to be dismantled by the end of November, with mutual verification coming in early December. The posts are believed to be close to the truce village of Panmunjom.
Technically speaking, the Koreas had already agreed to remove all the posts near Panmunjom over the course of the next year. This new deal greatly speeds up the pace, and is reflective of weeks of successful talks.
Guard posts within Panmunjom, along with firearms, were already removed form the Joint Security Area earlier this week. The end scenario for the village is to have 35 troops from each side therein, and no arms at all.
Let the “antiwar” trumpsters take a hint from the Koreans, this is how peace is built, dismantling war assets.
Do you think you could do better with the constellation of warmongering, contract hungry corporate vulchers not willing to abandon one morsel of their God-granted profits? (Just rhetorical question). And with all their enablers in Congress, bursucracy, financial, partocracy and media.
But as it happens, all of them are distracted with both domestic politjcalally motivated violence, Middle East setbacks, major ally crisis, nuclear and non-nuclear arms challenges, Indo-Pacific stumblings, European crisis, etc. Koreas know that they need to hurry up in a big way, as there is no political energy in Washington to make it a major issue. Political energy is sucked up elsewhere, and regardless of how the elections go, the aftermath will be dramatic. Trump has been hampered by his own party and could not get traction on any number of issues in foreign policy. He resorted to swinging widely, confusing everyone, hoping for room for maneuver. Should Democrats win in House of Representatives, complete paralysis ensues.
I am not defending him. He has only himself to blame for not retaining at least some advisors to at least fill him in on facts, as he was not going to get them from his surroundings. He is confusing information and influence, He needs the first, the decision is his. He may think he is a quick study, and needs no one. But also he has to resort to subterfuge to get anywhere. It has been clear since March announcement that he had to start arms control discussion with Russia. But he had to resort to cancelling INF, to do it. This is a highly risky move. Because as anyone with capacity to think will grasp that any new capability we glean from abandoning the treaty, will only result in asymmetrical move in Russia’s priority. Our far flung, fkrward positioning of naval assets can become liability — and a target of drone subs technoligy. Giving wrong signals in a vacuum can bring about catastrophy.
And it is not going to get any easier after elections.
Just not that hard to do. As CIC, he tells an aide, “give me 6 options on a 5% reduction of military presence in Korea. I want it tomorrow before noon” picks one, signs the order. Complicated eh ?
I definitely like your line of thinking. It reminds one of simpler times, when leaders had some dignity, and profsssionals did their jobs. Now, we are mired in a cesspools of special interests. It is all like a bowl of spaghetti— pull at one end and who knows where it leads.
President needs his party in Congress to do anything, and the fact that this president won in spite of his party is making governing near impossible.
Democrats are disintegrating as well.
Since parties are private corporations with no Constitutional mandate, it is a miracle they survived.
I do not think that in your scenario he will get 5%. He will get 250 questions to answer as to the applicability of 5% to various aspects of forces in Korea. Then he will have to assign weights to each, to prorate the cuts and apply weights appropriatelly. It will be a long way to 5%, and after all that — something will happen to put in on the back burner. Then ut will turn out that if the same formula was applied, last year increase was in fact decrease, in fact, 5% cut was already baked into the cake. No need to do anything.
Where the Congress has created an authorization for use of force in a specific place, the CIC decides the actual deployment and mission of the troops there, As the CIC could increase troops, he can decrease them also. The oversight you allude to, is that the CIC is required to report to Congress regularly as to the disposition of those troops, and the mission, If Congress doesn’t feel the POTUS is fulfilling their authorization, there are the usual impeachment options, yet this would not happen in my Korean scenario, A good example of units which could be withdrawn are the Navy assets which would support amphibious invasion of the North, The units move primarily South Korean marines, Amphibious exercises are the critical part of the wargames which have been put on hold, because the South Korean marines are not going to board those ships. Further, these possible invasion armadas are a prime target for nukes. I am pointing this out for a simple reason, trump could advance the peace process all by himself, he just doesn’t want to.
I agree with all your points. But we are living in an inverted institutional reality — the comingling of private and public interests. Gone are the days when Government contracted with private sector for goods and services, and could change providers contractually based on public needs and interests. We have now a corporate iwned state apparatus, as all large corporations “invest” un governments on all levels to create co-dependency, thus, an almost permanent source of income. Increasingly, corporate power decides what is wxactly public interests, and how much we the public really need or deserve. Politicians must now worry not only about reelection money, but about the impact of that sector on economy. They can be “rewarded” or “punished”. Twenty somethings from corporate world can make senior senarors fear of consequences if displeasing corporate whims. Now, a small circle of IT platforms, product sales and virtualization services, also has soace contracts and many chunks of intelligence, homeland security etc, etc. contracts. Information derived from one is used to advance interests of others, and there is wholesalevcapitulation of all levels of bureacracy when it comes to corporate mantras. They recite them in their dreams.
Is Trump any different? He can be persuaded into anything if there is any implied threat to his other parts of agenda.
He would hurt not only public interests, but interests if his friends and assiciates, his prominent supporters. I wish he would be a Lone Ranger — go after those corrisive interests by power barrons, but he cannot. Part it is his personality that has isolated him from what he needs to know to be successful against giants. All giants have their weaknesses, but Trump’s knowledge is too limited to play in this game. His instincts not bad, but can be checked by fences. He occassionaly breaks through, but too much energy and time is spent. The absurdities of private vs public grow by the day.
You make an interesting remark about ” far-flung naval assets” because it reminds me of similar far-flung naval assets of the Spanish, Dutch, British, and French of the 17th and 18th centuries. They spent immense treasures on their respective armada’s and both the Spanish and French went broke several times to maintain them (and their land-based armies) and fight their wars.
Today our navy is probably not our most expensive “armada”. It is potentially our nuclear triad the cost of whose coming “renovation and maintenance” is totally unknown. That cost plus the cost of army, navy, and air force could drive the national debt to unacceptable levels when the service on the debt substantially surpasses the discretionary spending of the budget.
The piddling if not shitty attempts of the Trump administration to find the funding for its apparently expansionary military budget from the social network or cutting the costs of regulations and from higher tariffs on foreign imports will not do this. Only a radical signal to congress: “we need to jointly and thoroughly discuss the future of our military budgets and the real need for our extensive basing around the world”. The MIC must not be invited to the table. That would be inviting a failure. It is we the people who have the right to demand action.
That signal has not been given and I fear that it will not be given soon.
The Trump initiative, regardless of how it was intended to work out, is bearing fruit. It came just at a right time when a new government of South Korea was ready to engage with Kim. By meeting with Kim in Singapore and shaking hands with him, Trump made Kim into a more acceptable and ultimately quite acceptable negotiation partner with President Moon.
What I do not understand is how Trump/Bolton view the potential future of US-Korean relationships. Should S. Korea continue to be a powerful US military base or not? I believe that Kim’s willingness to “denucleate” and to continue working with Moon will strongly hinge on that issue.
The US is expert at retaining military occupations long after they are needed, as in Germany and Japan. On Korea, SecDef Gates declared over ten years ago “I don’t think anybody considers the Republic of Korea today a combat zone,” and so Korea was changed to a longer accompanied tour with spouses and children living with qualified service members during their assignments.
Not a combat zone, but the Pentagon didn’t withdraw anyone, it just upgraded bases to US-style communities with housing, schools, community gymnasiums and swimming pools, etc. A lot of the cost of that is borne by the host country, so stationing troops overseas may save money. (The Pentagon has never been audited so we don’t know.)
Actually it’s a good thing, this forward basing, because it means that the US would never start a war there in Korea. (It applies also in the Persian Gulf, where the US has tens of thousands of military.)
The Pentagon especially would fight ‘tooth and nail’ to retain bases in Korea. It’s built into their DNA. The military leaves only when defeated, as in Vietnam, Iraq and (coming) Afghanistan and Syria.
The USA must be furious.
I don’t detect any fury at the Pentagonal Puzzle Palace. Perhaps the US has gone to a Plan B where it would be allied with the two Koreas against China and Russia? . . .The art of the deal. . .After all, the US is now allied with Vietnam, to which it lost a war, against China.