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Excerpted from a longer piece by Bloomberg’s Editorial Board
There are, as is often noted, no good options for dealing with North Korea. All the more reason for the U.S. not to make the few it does have even worse.
That’s what President Donald Trump is doing by linking the security threat posed by North Korea with his trade agenda. Irked by China’s failure to help the U.S. rein in North Korea’s nuclear program, and having been stymied in his attempts to retaliate against Chinese steel dumping and intellectual-property infringements, he’s vowing an implausible trade war with the U.S.’s largest trading partner. Even less rationally, the administration has dropped hints it’s about to scrap a free-trade agreement with ally South Korea.
As a negotiating strategy, Trump’s approach is utterly unsuited to the North Korean crisis. For one, it’s almost certain to fail. True, China itself has had some success using its trade clout to bully smaller nations for their support of the Dalai Lama or political dissidents. But neither China nor any other nation is going to compromise what it sees as its security needs because of trade threats or concessions. South Korea is losing billions to an unofficial Chinese boycott targeting its deployment of a U.S.-made missile defense system — and after the North’s latest nuclear test, President Moon Jae-in agreed to expand the system.
The U.S. also stands to lose far more than North Korea if Trump continues down this path. Despite Trump’s claims, the free trade agreement with South Korea has caused minimal, if any, damage to the U.S. economy.
By contrast, alienating a key ally, host to nearly 30,000 U.S. troops, would erode the U.S. deterrent against North Korea, further embolden dictator Kim Jong Un, distract from China’s lax enforcement of sanctions on the North — and hurt U.S. exporters, farmers and consumers.
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So. (trump response)
Well of course he is! He’s Donald J. Trump for gosh sakes!
So tell us all..What strategy IS suited to dealing with North Korea?? Barrack Obama simply provided an indifferent foil for No. Korea to buy time to get where they are today…very likely a few small steps from a deliverable Intermediate range nuclear device and another notch in their belt in building a tradeable and market based arsenal.
What makes Bloomberg (or anyone else) think that a measured, pedestrian negotiating approach would make this situation better? China will NOT help..in part because No. Korea is not going to accede to demands they might make to limit their nuclear program. Every reasonable US response and United Nations resolution has either been ignored or violated. If China were to squeeze No. Korea’s oil supply they might well face millions of (more) destitute Koreans crossing the Yalu River.
No thanks.
It’s either attack them or accept they are going to develop an arsenal and let the So. Koreans deal with it. We’ve been in Korea for 67 years..enough is enough. By the way! Kim Jong Un is not a maniac, a crazy man or loony..he’s a very sly and shrewd dude who’s made a fool of the greatest military power on Earth
Yes, we’ve been in Korea since 1950. IMHO we’ll be there another 67 absent an internal radical change, or an external radical change vis a vis, China. The Koreas conundrum is similar to that which has existed between Israel and the hundreds of millions of its enemies that surround it: Israel has literally been in a state of war with some or all of its sovereign border neighbors since 1948, with the US as it’s staunch ally, and there’s no reason to expect that to change. For Israelis, that has become a way of life. For SK it’s become a way of life.
Is there a natural law which postulates that a state of comfortable peace must exist between bordering countries or there must be conflagration? Since the 1953 Korean Armistice Agreement the Koreas have managed to serve their purpose for which they were intended for their respective originating puppet masters, i.e., US versus China and Russia. Does the US have a natural right to demand of NK that it not possess nuclear weapons? What’s that right borne of? And if it does, why does the the US, China, Russia, India and Pakistan have the right to posses them? Why, Kim must ask himself, is he not entitled to defend himself from all enemies near and far? Why is he deprived from the right to test his weapons? Let’s set aside for a moment the reckless missile over Japan. These issues precede that reckless move.
You state: “Barrack Obama simply provided an indifferent foil for No. Korea to buy time to get where they pointare today.” Under Kim Jong Il, NK confirmed in 2005 that they had nuclear weapons and they confirmed that they tested its first nuclear device in 2006. If I recall correctly Obama was sworn in on January 20, 2009.
I agree with you that Kim Jong-un is not a maniac, a crazy man or loony, that he’s a very sly and shrewd dude.” But does Kim make a fool of the US by playing his positions properly? I don’t see it that way. To the contrary. I see Trump’s inability to see past the 24/7 new cycle, his thin skin, self-indulgence, egocentric, impatient, intemperate and impulsive negotiating style and tactics as being wholly self defeating. Line drawing without the ability to raise the bet is sandlot. Threatening the same threat three times without a move is amateur hour and encourages the adverse party to ignore the threats. In fact, it is Trump who’s makes a fool of the greatest military power on Earth by his complete lack of negotiating skills. I’ve heard it said that while others play three dimensional chess, Trump is playing Donkey Kong, which is a series of video games featuring the adventures of an ape-like character called Donkey Kong, conceived by Shigeru Miyamoto in 1981. I don’t give Trump that much credit. The Art of the Deal was ghost written. Perhaps The Art of the Bully, worked for him then, but not now.
If Trump were smart, he’d raise some money for Kim to be used for equipment that helps foster preventing nuclear war by misadventure, false red flags, misinterpretation due to language or posturing, bad equipment, etc. I’d feel a whole lot safer knowing that Trump didn’t start something with his big rash uncontrolled mouth.