Thursday 30 August 2018

Does Trump really think North Korea will scrap its nukes?

Donald Trump is hanging on desperately to his "friendship" with Kim Jong-un, expecting their mutual liking for each other (allegedly) to lead to a great foreign policy coup, the denuclearisation of North Korea. The trouble is, everything else to do with the North Korea issue has gone wrong. Mike Pompeo, the secretary of state, has got bogged down in his negotiations with North Korean officials, and the upcoming meeting has been cancelled by Trump. Jim Mattis has talked about possibly restarting the US/South Korean military exercises (much to Trump's displeasure), and Kim is getting on with his ballistic missile production. In fact very little has really moved since the Trump/Kim summit in Singapore in June. A few body remains of US soldiers from the Korean war have been returned, and activity has been observed at a missile engine site which may have something to do with dismantling it. But we've yet to see the pictures. So it's a pretty dismal situation and, despite Trump's insistence that he and Kim are best mates, it's not going anywhere. That doesn't mean all is lost, these sort of negotiations can take years. But so far there's no promising sign that Kim is going to scrap any of his nuclear weapons or ballistic missiles.

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