Media outlets don’t want America to negotiate with North Korea; they want the US to hold North Korea for ransom.
MSNBC‘s Rachel Maddow (6/12/18) appears dismayed by the manifestation of a US president meeting with an Official Enemy.
On MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow Show, the host was aghast (6/12/18) that the US says it will halt the annual war games it conducts with South Korea on North Korea’s doorstep, because doing so is “an absolute jackpot for the North Korean dictator,” “one of the things he wants most on earth,” and now Washington “has just given them that for free, for nothing.”
Maddow implied that Trump has taken this step out of fealty to Russia, and complained that pausing war games that threaten North Korea benefits Russia and China. She twice called the Kim/Trump summit a “wedding,” twice said that the two leaders “love” each other two times, and referred to Kim as Trump’s “best friend.” In other words, de-escalation is for wimps, and what’s needed is toughness, even if it risks nuclear war.
Not once did Maddow demonstrate the slightest concern with avoiding war. The message of her segment is that the US should subject all 25 million people in North Korea to the threat of nuclear annihilation until its leaders do what the US says, a threat that necessarily extends to the rest of East Asia, since it would be decimated in any nuclear exchange, to say nothing of the likely devastating effects on the rest of the world.
The Washington Post (6/12/18) warned against trusting “a cruel and unpredictable ruler whose motives and aims are far from clear”—referring to Kim Jong-un.
The editorial board of the Washington Post (6/12/18) says that diplomacy “is certainly preferable to the slide toward war that appeared to be underway last year,” but opposes taking steps to prevent another Korean War—a nuclear one, this time. The editorialists complain that the joint statement issued by the leaders of the US and North Korea makes no mention of “US terms for disarmament”: What the editorial, tellingly titled “No More Concessions,” is saying is that the predetermined outcome of diplomacy should be complete North Korea acquiescence to US demands—which, of course, isn’t diplomacy at all.
Similarly, the New York Times’ editorial board (6/12/18) writes that “after months of venomous barbs and apocalyptic threats of war, the meeting between President Trump and the North Korean leader, Kim Jong-un, was unquestionably a relief.” Trump, they wrote, “seems seized with the need to resolve it peacefully. That is to the good.” Yet the editorial lists measures that Times believes the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK, North Korea’s official name) needs to take, without saying that America should do anything, and expresses anxiety over the break in war games.
In the same vein, Nicholas Kristof of the New York Times (6/12/18) says that “it certainly is better for the two leaders to be exchanging compliments rather than missiles,” but describes the US suspending military exercises with South Korea as a “concession” for which America is getting “astonishingly little” in return. He purports to be against the exchanging of missiles, but thinks it’s a mistake to take steps to minimize the threat of exchanging missiles.
While acknowledging that Trump being “snookered” is “far better than war,” New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof (6/12/18) worried that “the cancellation of military exercises will raise questions among our allies.”
“Astonishingly,” Kristof writes, Trump
even adopted North Korean positions as his own, saying that the United States military exercises in the region are “provocative.” That’s a standard North Korean propaganda line.
The columnist failed to explain how military exercises on North Korea’s doorstep, involving 50,000 South Korean troops and 17,500 of their American counterparts, are anything other than “provocative,” but evidently Kristof would have no problem with joint DPRK/Mexico maneuvers near the US southern border pretending to launch an attack featuring 67,500 soldiers, along with simulated nuclear bomber attacks (FAIR.org, 4/3/13).
The Times’ editorial is as bemused as Kristof, writing that Trump “even endorsed the North Korean view of such joint exercises as ‘provocative.’”
Kristof criticized the joint statement because it says
nothing about North Korea freezing plutonium and uranium programs, nothing about destroying intercontinental ballistic missiles, nothing about allowing inspectors to return to nuclear sites, nothing about North Korea making a full declaration of its nuclear program, nothing about a timetable, nothing about verification, not even any clear pledge to permanently halt testing of nuclear weapons or long-range missiles.
At no point did Kristof call on the US to take any remotely comparable steps.
The Washington Post‘s Anne Applebaum (6/12/18) does not seem to see Trump and Kim ceasing to threaten each other’s countries with nuclear destruction as a “gain” for those countries.
For Anne Applebaum of the Washington Post (6/12/18), provisionally scaling back American hostility to North Korea should be understood as a humiliation. She wrote that
had any previous American president, Republican or Democrat, emerged from an event like this, in which so much was given away with so little to show for it, he would have been embarrassed.
Her article was headlined, “Trump and Kim Got What They Wanted. The Rest of the World, Not So Much.” It’s likely, however, that “the rest of the world” does not want nuclear war, and might want steps that could help avert that danger—such as, say, an end to nuclear-armed America antagonizing another nuclear power by having “tens of thousands of US and [South Korean] troops, aircraft and naval vessels engaged in mock clashes” with that power.
Shining City on a Hill
Undergirding the view that the United States should only negotiate with North Korea when “negotiation” means “forcing the DPRK under nuclear duress to do whatever America says” are entrenched notions of intrinsic US superiority.
Probably the most blatant example of this is the view that the United States is “legitimizing” DPRK by meeting with its leaders. MSNBC’s Maddow seems to find it blasphemous that the summit “billed” North Korea “as a nation equal in stature to the United States.” According to the Times, Kim got a “win” by receiving the “legitimacy of being treated as an equal as a nuclear power on the world stage, country flags standing side by side.” The Post was incensed that Kim was “able to parade on the global stage as a legitimate statesman,” while Applebaum said that “the flags and the handshake will reinforce Kim’s legitimacy and make him harder to depose.”
States, and the parties that govern them, are not granted legitimacy by the United States. Legally, that legitimacy comes from United Nations recognition or its absence; as a practical matter, states and their leaders establish legitimacy through what the Italian political theorist Antonio Gramsci described as a combination of coercion and consent. Believing that the US has the power to confer or deny legitimacy on other countries or their leaders is part of the same imperial hubris that makes pundits panic about tentative moves in the direction of curtailing America belligerence toward North Korea, and thus the threat of nuclear war.
We would find in absurd if pundits complained that Kim failed to extract a promise from Trump to halt the thousand or so extrajudicial executions that take place in the United States every year.
A comparable dynamic is at work in the commentariat concern-trolling about North Korean human rights. Maddow was perplexed that the US would meet with North Korea without the North Korean leadership making any promises about “their behavior toward their own people.” The Times’ editors considered it “startling” that the joint Kim/Trump statement contains no reference to human rights in DPRK.
In this conception, America is the shining city on a hill that must free the people of the DPRK, though these analysts don’t ask who will liberate US citizens living under a regime with the highest incarceration rate in the world, rampant judicial and extrajudicial execution, widespread racism, obscene wealth inequality and an undemocratic political system. Calling for a US government crusade for change inside North Korea while overlooking all of these features of US society is another dimension of the imperial arrogance that insists it’s legitimate to subject the entire population of other nations to crushing sanctions and violent threats until their governments give Washington everything it wants.
Nor do any of these commentators address the possibility that the US ruling class might need to change its global conduct: The hanging of Saddam Hussein and the sodomizing to death of Moammar Gadhafi, neither of whom possessed nuclear weapons with which to deter America from invading and destroying the countries they governed, could be a reason why the leaders of North Korea want nuclear weapons.
For the punditry, the goal of US/North Korea talks isn’t lasting peace on the Korean peninsula, it’s total North Korean submission to US commands. Corporate media appear to be more worried about the United States being successfully defied than it is about nuclear war.
You hippies just don’t seem to care about all of the poor warmonger pundits, weapons ceos, and highly remunerated television generals who are going to have to find new ways to support themselves.
Snark — when done well — is an art form. Yours was done well, is spot-on, and appreciated.
You hippies just don’t seem to care about all of the poor warmonger pundits, weapons ceos, and highly remunerated television generals who are going to have to find new ways to support themselves.
Snark — when done well — is an art form. Yours was done well, is spot-on, and appreciated.
We tried to bomb you back to the Stone Age
But we did it because we care.
We tried to bomb you back to the Stone Age
But we did it because we care.
Doug, (referencing my response to OHH) your snark is also appreciated.
Calm down. Nobody is saying *nothing* should be done, or even that talks are a bad idea. They are arguing about the details.
As for “US superiority,” well, it’s a fact that the US is by far the most powerful and influential country. You may not think that’s fair, but it’s true anyway. How we treat another country has a substantial influence on the way the world treats it. By treating the DPRK as a peer, we lose leverage: we can’t use its status as a bargaining chip, and it’s harder to get the rest of the world behind sanctions (see China’s recent call to lift them).
As for “the city on a hill,” sure, American claims about our own virtues are greatly exaggerated. But to suggest there’s anything close to equivalency between human rights here and in the DRPK suggests a mind blinded by ideology or resentment.
It’s like you didn’t even read the article here. Arguing in favour of ‘leverage’ and ‘us superiority is a fact’ is the exact mentality that this article is holding up as dangerous.
You’re advocating America act like a bully because of concerns about how the world will see you. We see you acting like a bully and the problem is North Korea holds a sharp mirror to it
“But to suggest there’s anything close to equivalency between human rights here and in the DRPK suggests a mind blinded by ideology or resentment.”
Quite right – even if North Korea wanted to commit even a fraction of the crimes against humanity and the Earth your US corporate state is guilty of, up to and including the incipient genocide of up to 18 million Yemenis in your proxy war, it would be utterly incapably of doing so because it lacks the power.
The fact is that you and your empire are the overwhelming problem on Earth today, and the very existence of this empire is the first and main problem that needs to be solved.
The best statement of the problem I have ever heard was from Gwynne Dyer. He first explained the dialectic of “Total War” in the 20th century tradition. What the next war between the great powers would look like with even a limited use of nuclear weapons. Clearly relayed that by all credible scenarios another World War would mean the destruction of civilization with a greater than 60% probability of the extinction of the entire genus Homo and then said, “We think of war as a natural and justifiable part of the way we behave; and if it is, we’re doomed.” The megadead. The unity of the mass grave. Anyway that’s the problem and nothing is being done to address it. It’s kind of like a horse race to see which kills us first, nuclear conflict or climate change. Very depressing if you think about it too much so nobody ever does. As for Ms. Maddow and the others anything (including the destruction of civilization and/or the human race) for a rich salary I suppose. Which begs the question, why do people promulgate or watch that trash? Because they think of war as a natural and justifiable part of the way they behave. See the problem?
Exactly, they think of war, up to and including nuclear war, as normal and normative, in the same way that they think the total ecological destruction of the planet is normal and normative.
I think their comfort with ecological destruction has done much to make them comfortable even with the thought of nuclear war. In the same way they evidently believe that they can poison and destroy the soil, water, air, biodiversity, without poisoning THEIR food, water, air, the places they live, so by the same token they think nuclear war might be destructive to other people, but they themselves are somehow immune.
It’s the flip side of the American “I’m going to win the lottery” pathology – “I can destroy the environment in general without destroying my own environment.” The former is socioeconomically suicidal, the latter is infinitely worse.
It is possible that Trump’s impulsive, cut-the-Gordian knot approach will work.
But here’s the thing: what is the deal? In his haste to break this long deadlock, what deal has he achieved? He certainly does not think he is granting these concessions for nothing; he thinks there will be a return. But what if that return does not come?
There are quite a number of things he could have requested immediately.
What about a timeline- just a timeline- for the destruction of North Korea’s nuclear weapons? Some agreement on how that could go?
Or a definition of what North Korea means when they use the word “denuclearization?”
Or: in return for ending US exercises, why would the North Koreans not agree to verifiably remove a few tens of thousands of the fifty thousand artillery tubes they have pointed at Seoul? As Trump has just guaranteed the North, do they need those any more?
The problem with Trump having nothing agreed is the very real chance that what the North thinks they have agreed is not what he thinks they have agreed. The odds of this are very high- approaching 100%.
And given his mercurial nature, his reaction when he finds out that his understanding of the deal, and their understanding of the deal, are not in accord, will be bitter, angry, and potentially ferocious.
That’s the problem with having nothing in writing, nothing established beyond a handshake. The problem is not the deal he thinks he has made; the problem is his reaction when he is disappointed.
What does Trump get… well, here’s the DEAL : ) if this works, he will get a REAL Peace Prize, and in his continual rating himself against Obama, he will say.———–Obama got a peace prize for nothing, I actually did something. That’s what I see coming.
And as to having things in writing——-the Balfour Agreement doesn’t say what people have turned it into either.
Sane people know that North Korea would have to be insane to give up their nuclear weapons since this is the only thing that’s saved them from a US war of aggression. For the few people stupid enough to have forgotten the Libyan precedent, Pence and Bolton helpfully reminded them of it. And of course Trump just tore up an agreement with Iran which Iran had been faithfully adhering to. Just like North Korea has faithfully adhered to previous agreements with the US, which the US abrogated in every case.
So obviously there won’t be unilateral NK de-nuclearization, or any unilateral stand-down, so long as the US maintains its military occupation of the southern part of the peninsula. The US would have to withdraw its aggressively poised weaponry in the region, nuclear and conventional.
That’s anathema to imperialists like you, but I don’t think you have to worry. As you seem to know, Trump remains an imperialist and certainly won’t carry out any spirit of peace. I myself have thought the agreement, such as it is, might be in the crapper by next week.
Giving up the war games isn’t the issue. Giving them up without any trade is the issue. Kim got everything he wanted, didn’t give up anything and now has Trump singing his praises to the world. He feels more empowered than ever to squash his people. A negotiation is both sides giving something.
Kim was never the danger to the world. He’s far too intelligent to use his nukes. Trump was the danger but Kim neutered him very nicely.
Trump didn’t give up anything? Do you have any idea how much money he’s saved??? Those exercises were just a boondoggle for the defense contractors, anyway… and we were starting to piss off the locals, what with your placing missile assets in one o f their golf courses…. The US giving up on money wasting exercise precisely equals the DPRK’s giving up a nuclear program it has completed…
You totally misunderstand where the “pundits” as you call them, are coming from. What they`re saying is that DT gave concessions without achieving anything that would lead to the nuclear threat being reduced. As for the US/SK military exercises, they`re not a threat to NK, even if she perceive them as such.
You can’t possibly be serious about the war games. No one’s that stupid.
The fact is it’s you and your empire who are the pure aggressors on the Korean peninsula and everywhere else. NK has never done anything but act in self-defense against your threats.
What, praytell, are you doing on the peninsula at such huge expense? Why don’t you pack up your military with its (according to you) purely academic “exercises” and go home?
(Rhetorical question, of course. I’ve asked a hundred imperialists and never gotten an honest answer yet.)
Thankfully, here is an account that reflects some reality, not just punditry based on cold war ideology. MSNBC, CNN, and other mainstream media — including PBS — have become useless in understanding current events. Pres. Trump is wrong on most things, but not on trying to negotiate with North Korea. Note: South Korea’s Moon had more to do with providing an opening to negotiations than Russia’s Putin.
Rachael Madcow and MSDNC, the Washington Post where truth and peace die in darkness, and the New York Times where all the bullshit is fit to print all need to kindly fuck off.
There was never a threat of nuclear war between us and North Korea. What happened was a lot of posturing.
We have the same problem in Britain where Jeremy Corbyn was attacked in interviews for his refusal to emdorse blowing up the world.