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Robert E Kelly Profile picture
@Robert_E_Kelly
Sep 15 • 6 tweets • 2 min read Twitter logo Read on Twitter
Trump is NOT a deal-maker. How many more times do we have to say this?

In the most important negotiation of his presidency and career - with Kim Jong-Un over N Korean nukes - Trump massively failed

He did not prepare. He just flew over and winged it. He literally got off the

1
and walked into the room thinking his Manhattan-socialite-on-the-make schtick wd bowl Kim over like some hapless NYC reporter.

From the press conferences, you could tell immediately that Trump didn’t know the issues - knew no Korean history, didn’t know or care about the US

2
position in East Asia, didn’t know how nukes and missiles work, hadn’t thought through any options if the NKs didn’t go for his first offer, hasn’t disciplined his staff around a set of preferences and tactics, and so on.

The result was exactly the chaotic, undisciplined mess

3
you would think Trump would make of a complicated affair.

In fact, Trump was so incapable of negotiating, that his staff made a bizarre video about Trump and Kim as action heroes in order to sway Kim

This sounds ridiculous, but it’s true. Here it is👇

4
voanews.com/a/trump-and-ki…
Needless to say Kim is not an idiot. He’s not some Trump cultist buying NFTs. Trump was immediately in over his head and got nothing out of NK.

Yes, the ‘art of the deal’ guy got nothing from his supposedly masterful negotiating skills, which could have improved the lives of

5
millions. But Trump would rather be lazy and checked out, and now things with NK are worse than before.

I wrote all this up in detail in an article a few years ago 👇

6
kida.re.kr/frt/board/frtN…

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More from @Robert_E_Kelly

Robert E Kelly Profile picture
Aug 18
🧵on 🇺🇸🇯🇵🇰🇷 Trilateralism

It is more fragile than you think.

There is a lot of commentary about today’s Camp David summit being driven by China and North Korea. And that is obviously true.

But there is a SK domestic politics story – the conservative

1
washingtonpost.com/opinions/2023/…
presidential victory last year - which is not getting the attention it should and is a far greater achilles heel to trilateralism than US commentary is noting

The regional structural pressures driving Japan and SK together have been around a long time, but this summit did not

2
happen until an outsider conservative – Yoon Seok Yeol – won the SK presidency in 2022

SK has an imperial presidency, so Yoon has wide room to act on foreign policy. And Yoon is not a traditional party man, political animal, or conservative old-timer.

3
onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.111…
Read 21 tweets
Robert E Kelly Profile picture
Jul 21
🧵

I’ve never understood why ‘realism’ applied to the Ukraine war means cutting off UKR to get back ‘stability’ - which in practice means a Russian victory.

Realism ALSO explains why UKR is resisting and why nearby states, who’ve also experienced RU imperialism, are keen to

1
help it

RU is only ‘entitled,’ per realism, to a sphere of influence if it’s a great power, if it’s got the power to hold that sphere in thrall. There’s no writ. Realist privileges are power-based

But RU can’t do it. It’s weak. Yeah, it’s large and has nukes. But that’s not

2
enough. Great powerdom primarily means a capable conventional military, which, in turn, requires a large, functional economy

For a long time we thought RU at least had the military even as its economy dropped out of the top 10. The war shoes is RU doesn’t have that Esther

So

3
Read 15 tweets
Robert E Kelly Profile picture
Jul 2
This guy is constantly wrong. I can’t believe Twitter promotes him so much:

- The offensive is 3 weeks old, against massive Russia no less. The Ukrainians are pretty obviously concentrating on Russian logistics, command & networks. Give them a chance

- If the offensive isn’t

1
progressing as fast as it might bc of missing weapons, voices like Sacks are the reason for that. You can’t underequip them and then complain they’re not making progress

- It’s not a forever war for the US, but for Russia. Russia is stuck in a quagmire, not us. It’s bizarre,

2
if not disingenuous, to invert the usage like that. The outside patron of the defender is the big winner in a forever war. It bleeds a major opponent at low cost in an irrelevant peripheral contest. That’s the USSR and PRC in the Vietnam War, the US in the Soviet-Afghan War,

3
Read 7 tweets
Robert E Kelly Profile picture
Jul 2
Just once, I’d like leading Republicans to defend the basic integrity of their opponents against Trump’s ad hominems and harsh personal insults.

Not their politics or their role, but at least their personal dignity and right not to be harassed.

Until about 15 minutes ago, no

1
one knew who Jack Smith was. But now he’s becoming a hate-figure like Hillary Clinton or Hunter Biden.

We know how this works. Soon he and his family will threatened. They’ll need security. Right-wing media will tell us he’s possibly a socialist bc he dated a woman in college

2
who called herself a Marxist for a semester bc she thought it was cool. Then we’ll learn that his brother’s best friend’s wife gave a lot of money to Biden 2020. And so on

Through all this, no major Republican figure will tell Trump to stop personally targeting his opponents.

3
Read 7 tweets
Robert E Kelly Profile picture
Jun 27
🧵

Russian nuclear escalation has not happened despite 16 months of this sort of talk.

Yet Ukraine aid opponents keep piously recycling it anyway

It sure looks like they share Putin’s goal of using nuclear threats to scare off Western aid to Ukraine

I wish these guys would

1
just admit that they want Putin to win

It’s been explained repeatedly why Russian nuclear escalation is very unlikely, but here you again:

1. Strategic nuclear use against Ukraine would isolate Russia for a generation or more. Its allies and partners, p. China, would abandon

2
it immediately. Russia would be expelled from any international body possible. NATO defense spending would explode. Foreign governments would start meddling in Russian politics to get Putin out of power ASAP. NATO might even enter the Ukraine war directly

2. Strategic nuclear

3
Read 10 tweets
Robert E Kelly Profile picture
May 17
Any expat can tell you this is correct about negative foreign perceptions of Trump.

We expats spent the 4 years of Trump’s presidency desperately trying to explain him to foreign colleagues variously shocked, disgusted, or laughing over his behavior.

I’m not sure Americans

1
back home realize just how time and effort overseas American professionals put into holding US relationships together by telling our host country interlocutors that this would pass, that Trump slipped in thru the Electoral College, that much of the US diplomatic, military,

2
business, and academic communities still valued long-standing relationships, and so on.

I went to one conference/event after another where I saw Americans from business, government, think-tanks, and so on running interference for Trump’s idiocies, trying hard to convince

3
Read 4 tweets

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