1) Alright, I haven't done a proper bourbon thread in a while. My SINCERE apologies. In recompense, pour a drink out for yourselves as I attempt my best explanation as to what the FUCK just happened with North Korea.
2) It all goes back to the Obama years, in which Obama established a 'red line' that would precipitate direct action in Syria: the use of chemical weapons.
3) Because, ya know, barrel bombs, aka barrels loaded with explosives and shrapnel that are manually lit with a fuse and pushed out of helicopters over civilian neighborhoods aren't war-crimey enough.
4) So, Assad used chemical weapons. Obama blinked, and didn't respond, because suddenly he wanted congressional approval. This was the gold standard of Obama foreign relations: not doing anything that might jeapordize his approval ratings.
5) Well, after 8 years of this, the world got used to this style of US foreign policy; when they said they'd strike, they'd flinch. When they promised to leave a country alone if it gave up WMDs (see: Libya), they'd knock the government over and shove a bayonet up someone's ass.
6) So in comes GEOTUS Trump. The living meme. The chaos president. His White House is in chaos. His Secretary of State won't talk to the press. No one knows what the hell he's doing on foreign policy. Half the country thinks he's a Russian manchurian candidate.
7) So, Assad uses chemical weapons... and then, as @ThomasWictor has pointed out numerous times, a missile strike on the airfield is used as cover for bunker busters and decimates the jets that carry the chemical payloads.
8) Trump did that over desert with the Chinese soon to be Prime Dictator for Life. Remember that. He did it, via an ipad or some shit, right before desert.
9) Fast forward to Rocket Man. My red button's bigger. Trumo is straight up trash talking Kim Jong Un over Twitter.
10) North Korea in its own fucked up way is rational. As the stunted mutant cancer of a dictatorship that cannot properly develop without losing the regime's power, their best chance for defence is, "Touch us and millions of civilians of our neighbors die."
11) They fire rockets towards Guam. Over Japan. Brag about all of their fucking artillery. Nuclear tests so frequent they collapse the goddamn mountain the testing is happening in.
12) The conventional wisdom is, North Korea will kill MILLIONS if anyone touches them. That was North Korea's propaganda that our MSM FELL FOR.
13) Remember the movie 300? Leonidas' final goal was to make the God-King bleed, show that he was just a mortal man?
14) What the HELL do you think calling Kim Dong Fat One 'Rocket Man' and making fun of his red button is doing? Trump was openly taunting him on the world stage.
15) "Oh, you got nukes? Rockets? Ok. Use them. Come on. Show us what you can do. You can't do shit. We'll erase your entire country. Try me."
16) washingtonpost.com/world/asia_pac… Anyone remember THIS story?
17) So the hell do you think the backstage conversations were in North Korea. "Supreme Leader, I asked the Chinese diplomat, and he said Trump DID fire missiles during desert over chemical weapons. Treated it like a joke. He even took a 'just ordered a missile strike' selfie!"
18) But that wasn't what tipped things over the edge. Ohhhhhh no. What I think was the tipping point? This: reuters.com/article/us-mid…
19) A major tank offensive across a border, led off with an artillery bombardment, EXACTLY like how North Korea would strike. And it was ANNIHILATED by the American forces.
20) So, let's recap. North Korea flexes its missiles and nuclear capabilities, and they get MOCKED. RELENTLESSLY.
21) Russia, a country North Korea considers far more powerful than itself and has a bunch of old equipment from, just got a well equipped force ANNIHILATED by American forces without ever seeing any American soldiers.
22) North Korea is rational in its own twisted fucked up way. They have missiles and artillery and so many soldiers. If they strike, they'll kill millions, so the world does everything it can to keep them from attacking.
23) Suddenly, after 3 presidents letting them get away with shit, Trump surrounds Norh Korea with missile interceptors, humiliates their nuclear capabilities over Twitter, and our forces CRUSH an adversary which is ostensibly superior to North Korea's forces.
24) So what does the regime do? Strike? Hell no. Trump has systematically embarrassed and defanged and outflexed then to the point that diplomacy is the ONLY option.
25) Think about it. North Korea's goal is to be as dangerous as possible. They have been shown to NOT be dangerous, or at leas that the danger they can create isn't enough to stop Trump from firing missiles at them.
26) After all, the MSM says Trump's white house is chaos. Who'll stop him from launching a nuke? China says, yeah, Trump can and has launched missiles as casually as eating cake. Trump demonstrably doesn't consider North Korea a threat.
27) So what the hell options are left? Talk. Trump says denuclearization needs to be on the table. And magically, it is!
28) Pretty good for a guy with no foreign policy experience. /end
