03-05-2019, 09:32 PM
** 24-Feb-2019 Etherial Trump-Kim summit to take place at mid-week
President Donald Trump is preparing to fly to Hanoi, Vietnam, for
the summit on Wednesday and Thursday with North Korea's Kim Jong-un.
Kim is not flying. He's taking a train from North Korea's capital
city Pyongyang to China's capital city Beijing, to meet with China's
president Xi Jinping. Then he'll hop on the train again until it
comes to the Vietnam border where, ordering to a report I heard, he'll
have to travel in a motorcade because Vietnam can't or won't permit
the train to continue.
A year go, everyone was hopin' and prayin' that Kim would agree
to "denuclearize," but as I wrote repeatedly, that was never going
to happen. In fact, that train left the station (so to speak) months
ago. Today, North Korea has an arsenal of ballistic missiles, and
plenty to plutonium to make many more. The only thing he hasn't
been able to do is openly test them.
Kim wants Trump to agree to lift the harsh sanctions that were imposed
in the past. There would be a huge backlash in Washington if Trump
agreed to anything like that, so I'm assuming that he won't. Instead,
he keeps talking about how much he and Kim love each other (presumably
in a father-son relationship), and Trump brags about the fact that no
tests have been conducted for over a year.
The one thing that might be agreed to is the end of the Korean War.
The Korean war ended in 1953 in an armistice ceasefire, and North and
South Korea are theoretically still at war. The North has pushed for
an agreement to end the war in the past. Washington has resisted,
because it might imply that American troops in South Korea would have
to be withdrawn. So according to some reports, there might be an
agreement to end the Korea War, with the American troops remaining.
However, the question is whether Kim will renounce his intention to
send his million man army across the border to attack Seoul. The
North has repeatedly said that it wants the North and South to be
reunited under the North's control. If Kim renounced that intention
in return for agreement to end the war, it would add a great deal of
symbolic value.
So the expectations for the meeting are pretty low. At the end of
there week there may be a symbolic paper agreement to end the war in
some way, but I would expect that the sanctions will continue, and
North Korea will continue to develop nuclear weapons and missiles, but
not test them. He's already proven that his missiles can reach Japan,
and that may be enough for him anyway, for now.
--- White House vows to shed Obama-era policy of 'cowering' before
North Korea ahead of second Trump-Kim summit
https://www.foxnews.com/politics/white-h...kim-summit
(Fox News)
--- Don't stop believin' in a successful summit
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-47327473
(BBC)
President Donald Trump is preparing to fly to Hanoi, Vietnam, for
the summit on Wednesday and Thursday with North Korea's Kim Jong-un.
Kim is not flying. He's taking a train from North Korea's capital
city Pyongyang to China's capital city Beijing, to meet with China's
president Xi Jinping. Then he'll hop on the train again until it
comes to the Vietnam border where, ordering to a report I heard, he'll
have to travel in a motorcade because Vietnam can't or won't permit
the train to continue.
A year go, everyone was hopin' and prayin' that Kim would agree
to "denuclearize," but as I wrote repeatedly, that was never going
to happen. In fact, that train left the station (so to speak) months
ago. Today, North Korea has an arsenal of ballistic missiles, and
plenty to plutonium to make many more. The only thing he hasn't
been able to do is openly test them.
Kim wants Trump to agree to lift the harsh sanctions that were imposed
in the past. There would be a huge backlash in Washington if Trump
agreed to anything like that, so I'm assuming that he won't. Instead,
he keeps talking about how much he and Kim love each other (presumably
in a father-son relationship), and Trump brags about the fact that no
tests have been conducted for over a year.
The one thing that might be agreed to is the end of the Korean War.
The Korean war ended in 1953 in an armistice ceasefire, and North and
South Korea are theoretically still at war. The North has pushed for
an agreement to end the war in the past. Washington has resisted,
because it might imply that American troops in South Korea would have
to be withdrawn. So according to some reports, there might be an
agreement to end the Korea War, with the American troops remaining.
However, the question is whether Kim will renounce his intention to
send his million man army across the border to attack Seoul. The
North has repeatedly said that it wants the North and South to be
reunited under the North's control. If Kim renounced that intention
in return for agreement to end the war, it would add a great deal of
symbolic value.
So the expectations for the meeting are pretty low. At the end of
there week there may be a symbolic paper agreement to end the war in
some way, but I would expect that the sanctions will continue, and
North Korea will continue to develop nuclear weapons and missiles, but
not test them. He's already proven that his missiles can reach Japan,
and that may be enough for him anyway, for now.
--- White House vows to shed Obama-era policy of 'cowering' before
North Korea ahead of second Trump-Kim summit
https://www.foxnews.com/politics/white-h...kim-summit
(Fox News)
--- Don't stop believin' in a successful summit
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-47327473
(BBC)
