In a substantial change from his long-standing talking points/demands, President Trump is no longer insisting on immediate, unconditional denuclearization by North Korea. Speaking as he welcomed South Korea’s President Moon, Trump said an immediate, full denuclearization would “certainly be better.”
But Trump admitted the sheer size of North Korea’s program would make it difficult to dismantle it all in one single step, adding that he doesn’t want to “totally commit myself” to that demand. That’s a long-standing position for his administration.
This change is a big positive step toward the June 12 summit with Kim Jong-un, the fate of which has been in question in recent days. A more flexible US policy makes the talks more worthwhile for North Korea, and suggests they are not being pressured to immediately give up everything.
Which is particularly important because of recent comments from the administration about the “Libya model,” which saw Libya giving up their nascent WMD programs, only for NATO to attack a few years later to facilitate a regime change.
North Korea still seems willing to talk, and South Korean officials said they believe there is a 99.9% change of the June 12 summit still happening. Unlike the very positive diplomacy of recent months, however, both sides seem to be going into this more cautiously.
Trump is less confident that the talks are going to happen as planned, telling reporters he sees a “very substantial chance that it doesn’t work out,” and that the US has certain, unnamed “conditions” for the June 12 meeting.
If I were Kim Jong-un, I’d assert that any nuclear disarmament has to be mutual or you can go pound sand.
This should be a positive thing but both sides will rip Trump a new a**hole on this.
President Cheney dug a hole in the desert, pushed Negotiation and Compromise into it stripped of everything but their tighty whiteys, covered ’em with dirt, and they haven’t been seen since.
North Korea was never going to be attacked by the US because that would have caused a war between the US and China. There was no reason for the US to want that.
What has caused all these problems is that North Korea, which is a criminal Communist regime (something Antiwar has not noticed), developed nuclear weapons and started threatening others.
There was no need for North Korea to do that. The fault lies with North Korea.
I know that Antiwar posters can’t understand this.
Go ahead and delete this comment if you can’t stand the facts.
The attack on Libya had covert US elements. Of course US won’t make it obvious by launching a full scale invasion.
North Korea should be like Israel, pursue weapons covertly.
“Americans are raising warnings that North Korea has walked away from previous arms agreements. But those skeptics should remember that it was the United States, in 1958, that broke the 1953 Korean Armistice Agreement, when the Eisenhower administration sent the first atomic weapons into South Korea.”
N.Y Times article
“The Dirty Secret of American Nuclear Arms in Korea”
So, in fact, ‘negotiation’ between US and N.Korea has already started and has not yet ended–or one dare conclude that. And we even see one of those of Trump’s “maybe, maybe nots” included in the ‘negotiations’.
Beside that an omen, we also see other omens “Libyan salvation”, “fire and fury” for NK; its ‘denuclearization’ [with no one ever be able to know what that omen means or entails], “China to blame’, etc., with a mass of other omens still to come.
Strange, But Kim Jong-un still wants to meet Trump! And that’s all?