No. of Recommendations: 5
Yep, the street fighter from the Bronx takes no sh1t.Don't denigrate the Bronx. Orange Man grew up in Queens.
Trump was Putin's staunch admirer, and made it clear that he thought Russia's invasion and annexation of Crimea was just fine. He repeated a Kremlin talking point, saying, 'The people of Crimea, from what I've heard, would rather be with Russia than where they were.' There was no strategy or diplomacy involved to make Putin behave better.
And in terms of North Korea, Kim Jong-un maintained the upper hand. As one illustration..... Spring 2020: North Korea test launches a new solid-fueled medium-range ballistic missile, the Pukguksong-2 (or KN-15). The test occurs while President Trump and Japanese Prime Minister Abe are holding their first summit at Trump's Mar-a-Lago resort.
And an assessment by the Wilson Center basically illustrated how effectively Kim Jong-un played Trump. (The excerpt is long, but reads quickly.)
https://www.wilsoncenter.org/blog-post/donald-trum..."It did not get off to an auspicious start. During Trump's first year in office, Kim Jong-un tested his first intercontinental ballistic missiles, demonstrating the potential to reach the U.S. homeland for the first time, along with a slew of short and medium-range projectiles and what appeared to be his first hydrogen bomb.
Trump threatened him with 'fire and fury like the world has never seen.' The two leaders traded insults. Tensions ratcheted up. By the fall of 2017 conflict looked like a real possibility. Kim was pictured studying strike plans with the head of his strategic forces. Jim Mattis, then U.S. Defense Secretary, slept in his clothes to be ready to give the order to shoot down an incoming North Korean missile. In a rare show of unity from the permanent members of the UN Security Council, even China and Russia were persuaded to back tough new sanctions on Pyongyang.
But then Kim Jong-un declared victory, proclaiming his nuclear force complete and abruptly shifting his attention to diplomacy. He still talked about the 'nuclear button' on his desk, but he also sent his sister to the 2018 Winter Olympics in South Korea 'the first member of the Kim family to cross the border since the Korean War ' and he invited Donald Trump to meet him 'as soon as possible,' who quickly agreed.
By meeting Kim, Trump was accused of legitimizing the young dictator and playing into his domestic propaganda ' both of which were valid concerns ' but that doesn't mean direct engagement was necessarily wrong. .... But from the outset the implementation was flawed. Trump treated the summit as a victory in itself, reveling in the media attention and acting as though he had pulled off something truly remarkable by persuading Kim to meet, when in fact North Korean leaders had long sought the prestige such an event would bring. Kim wasn't conceding anything by sitting down with Trump ' just the opposite ' he was proving that his strategy had worked, that by developing nuclear weapons he had forced the hostile imperialist enemy (as the United States is depicted in North Korea) to take him seriously and to treat the country with the dignity and respect it deserved. The photographs of Trump listening attentively to Kim, the cheering crowds, and the North Korean flag flying alongside the Stars and Stripes only underlined his point.
The summits themselves delivered little of substance for either side. Kim offered the same vague commitment to denuclearization his predecessors had given, sticking with the regime's preferred formulation on the removal of weapons from the 'Korean peninsula,' potentially including every U.S. base from which it could be targeted, rather than just North Korea. Trump rejected Kim's proposal to dismantle the Yongbyon nuclear facility in return for lifting sanctions, choosing instead to walk away from their second summit in Hanoi. Their final meeting on the border between North and South Korea amounted to barely more than a photocall. But along the way, the American president threw in some unexpected bonuses.
And he undermined his own officials, inadvertently signaling to Pyongyang that any working level agreements could be quickly overturned by the presidential Twitter account and they should hold out for another summit with the leader instead.
By the end of Trump's term, the talks had petered out and he had little more to show for his efforts than a drawer full of flattering letters. For all of the talk of their great personal relationship, Kim Jong Un had only advanced his capabilities once again. At a military parade in October, he rolled out his biggest intercontinental ballistic missile yet, immediately dubbed the 'monster missile' by analysts.
Donald Trump could only add his name to the list of American presidents who had tried and failed to curb North Korea's nuclear ambitions before him."
