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Seeing a lot of stuff on Twitter @ how the same old hawks are responding to Trump-Kim 2 with the same old pessimism & why don't they want rapprochement & peace. This is inaccurate, bc it sidesteps the elephant in the room: Trump is leading the talks. This, not talks themselves,/1
is the problem. At the risk of repeating the blindingly obvious, Trump has no idea what he is doing. He is an unread, narcissistic, racist reality TV who couldn't care less about US power in Asia or US allies there. He's doing this for a Nobel, bc Obama got a Nobel, and Trump /2
hates Obama bc Obama mocked at that dinner way back. That's it. This isn't about peace in Asia, S Korea, US national security, and so on. It's a vanity project for Trump. That is why he didn't run this by his natsec team before agreeing to Singapore,and that is why he's really /3
the only one in the White House who wanted this second meeting. So yes, talking to NK is good, but Trump's motivations - Nobel, a political 'win' for domestic reasons, lots and lots of TV coverage - are all wrong. Bc of that, who knows what he will agree to? And bc he doesn't /4
care about allies and is a racist, you can be sure he'll throw SK and Japan under the bus as soon as it is politically expedient to get his Nobel, distract from Mueller, or whatever. Look at how Trump has dealt with counter-parties bf - his investors, creditors, contractors, /5
wives, and so on. If you were SK or Japan, would you trust this guy? Yes, I get that Abe, Moon, and Kim are all manipulating Trump as a 'useful idiot' to pursue their regional goals - and yes, Moon's are noble. But still, is that any better than Trump's vanity as a negotiation /6
driver? Shouldn't we be concerned that there is enormous bad faith on all sides of this thing? Next, regarding the peace deal: no, opponents of giving a peace treaty aren't warmongers. Come on. It should be pretty well-established now that the peace treaty is not about peace /7
in Korea. Deterrence has kept the peace for a long time now and is pretty stable. The peace treaty is really about recognition and legality. A peace treaty would all but demand SK and the US recognize the legal existence of NK given that it is a treaty co-signatory.That prolly /8
violates the SK constitution and legally entrenches the division of the peninsula. It also may - there is a lot of debate here - undercut the legal ground for a UN and US presence in SK. That is the reason DOD has long opposed a treaty. So yes, maybe we should sign a treaty, /9
but that is net positive for NK, while it doesn't do much for us and may have some legal downsides. So we should trade it. It is a chip in the bargaining process not a mark of whether one wants war on the peninsula or not. So yes, I hope Trump-Kim 2 works. Maybe Trump will /10
surprise us all & pull a rabbit out of hat. I want to be optimistic too. We all do. But that's not analysis. There are real, obvious problems to allowing Trump - who wants to personally, 1:1 negotiate w/ Kim as he does w/ Putin - to run this thing. That should unnerve us all. END
