Sunday Long Read: One Versus A Country

Our Sunday Long Read this week comes from essayist Alexander Chee in GQ, writing about his experiences with his father's lessons on self-defense, self-reliance, and self-awareness being Korean in America, something very relevant given the massive rise in hate crimes here against AAPI folks.

Born in 1939 during what would be the last years of the Japanese colonial occupation of Korea, my father, Choung Tai Chee, also called Charles or Chuck or Charlie, came to the United States in 1960. He was flashy, cocky, unafraid, it seemed, of anything. Wherever we were in the world, he seemed at home, right up until near the end of his life, when he was hospitalized after a car accident that left him in a coma. Only in that hospital bed, his head shaved for surgery, did he look out of place to me.

A tae kwon do champion by the age of 18 in Korea, he had begun studying martial arts at age 8, eventually teaching them as a way to put himself through graduate school, first in engineering and then oceanography, in Texas, California, and Rhode Island. He loved the teaching. The rising popularity of martial arts in the 1960s in Hollywood meant he made celebrity friends like Frank Sinatra Jr., Paul Lynde, Sal Mineo, and Peter Fonda, who my father said had fixed him up on a date with his sister, Jane, in the days before Barbarella. A favorite photo from his time in Texas shows him flying through the air, a human horseshoe, each of his bare feet breaking a board held shoulder high on each side by his students.

When I complained about my wet boots during the winters growing up in Maine, he told me stories about running barefoot in the snow in Korea to harden his feet for tae kwon do. His answer to many of my childhood complaints was usually that I had to be tougher, stronger, prepared for any attack or disaster. The lesson his generation took from those they lost to the Korean War was that death was always close, and I know now that he was doing all he could to teach me to protect myself. When I cried at the beach at the water’s edge, afraid of the waves, he threw me in. “No son of mine is going to be afraid of the ocean,” he said. When I first started swimming lessons, he told me I had to be a strong swimmer, in case the boat I was on went down, so I could swim to shore. When he taught me to body-surf, he taught me about how to know the approach of an undertow, and how to survive a riptide. When I lacked a competitive streak, he took to racing me at something I loved—swimming underwater while holding my breath. I was an asthmatic child, but soon, intent on beating him, I could swim 50 yards this way at a time.

For all of that, he was an exceedingly gentle father. He took me snorkeling on his back, when I was five, telling me we were playing at being dolphins. There he taught me the names of the fish along the reef where we lived in Guam. He would praise the highlights in my hair, and laugh, calling me “Apollo.” And as for any pressure regarding my future career, he offered something very rare for a Korean man of his generation. “Be whatever you want to be,” he told me. “Just be the best at it that you can possibly be.”

Only when I was older did I understand the warning about being strong enough to swim to shore in another context, when I learned the boat he and his family had fled in from what was about to become North Korea nearly sank in a storm. In Seoul as a child, he scavenged food for his family with his older brother, coming home with bags of rice found on overturned military supply trucks, while his father went to the farms, collecting gleanings. His attempts to teach me to strip a chicken clean of its meat make a different sense now. I had thought of him as an immigrant without thinking about how the Korean War made him one of the dispossessed, almost a refugee, all before he left Korea.

When I began getting into fights as a child in the U.S., he put me into classes in karate and tae kwon do for these same reasons. He loved me and he wanted me to be strong. I just wasn’t sure how I was supposed to take on a whole country.

A country that would accept you, to a point, as long as you were one of the "good ones". Yeah, I can relate.

How To Lose Friends And Fail To Influence Enemies

Last week Donald Trump demanded that South Korea increase their yearly contribution to paying for US troops in the Korean DMZ from $1 billion to $5 billion, Seoul's response was "screw you".

The United States broke off talks with South Korea on increasing Seoul’s contribution to the costs of hosting U.S. troops, after the two sides failed to narrow their differences on Tuesday in a row that has raised questions about the American deployment.

The breakdown in talks was a rare public sign of discord in the “airtight” alliance that has for 70 years formed a buffer against North Korean aggression, with each side blaming the other for being unprepared to compromise on sharing the costs of keeping 28,500 U.S. military personnel in South Korea.

U.S. President Donald Trump has insisted that South Korea pay more - and has also suggested pulling the troops out altogether.

“It is true that there is a substantial difference between the U.S. side’s overall proposal and the principles we pursue,” South Korean negotiator Jeong Eun-bo told a news conference. “The talks could not proceed as planned as the U.S. side left first.”

The two Koreas remain in a technical state of war under a truce, not a peace treaty, that ended the 1950-53 Korean War.

The talks took place amid stalled U.S. efforts to reach a negotiated end to North Korea’s nuclear and missile programmes.

South Korean lawmakers have said the United States is seeking up to $5 billion a year, more than five times the 1.04 trillion won ($890.54 million) South Korea agreed to pay this year.

Neither side has publicly confirmed the numbers, but Trump has said the U.S. military presence in and around South Korea was “$5 billion worth of protection”.

Trump extorting our allies is kind of a thing, no?

Ahh, but that comes at a cost as apparently Seoul called Trump's bluff and are openly pursuing military ties with China.

The defence ministers of South Korea and China have agreed to develop their security ties to ensure stability in north-east Asia, the latest indication that Washington’s long-standing alliances in the region are fraying.

On the sidelines of regional security talks in Bangkok on Sunday, Jeong Kyeong-doo, the South Korean minister of defence, and his Chinese counterpart, Wei Fenghe, agreed to set up more military hotlines and to push ahead with a visit by Mr Jeong to China next year to “foster bilateral exchanges and cooperation in defence”, South Korea’s defence ministry said.

Oops.

It's like Trump is trying to dismantle all of America's long-standing military relationships for a reason, especially in Asia and Europe.

Mr. Trump Goes To Singapore

Donald Trump managed to get a number of vague statements out of North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un, but basically nothing in the way of details or verification of "denuclearization" while the US apparently is giving up joint military exercises with South Korea in exchange for a piece of paper.

President Trump said he “developed a very special bond” with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un during their historic summit here Tuesday and proclaimed the start of a new era that could break a cycle of nuclear brinkmanship and stave off a military confrontation.

“Yesterday’s conflict does not have to be tomorrow’s war,” Trump said at a news conference in Singapore following more than four hours of talks with Kim.

Trump said Kim “reaffirmed” his commitment to denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula and also agreed to destroy a missile site in the country.

“We’re ready to write a new chapter between our nations,” the president said.

Trump sounded triumphant following his meeting with Kim, expressing confidence that the North Korean leader was serious about abandoning his nuclear program and transforming his country from an isolated rogue regime into a respected member of the world community.

But Trump provided few specifics about what steps Kim would take to back up his promise to denuclearize his country and how the United States would verify that North Korea was keeping its pledge to get rid of its nuclear weapons, saying that would be worked out in future talks. 

“We will do it as fast as it can mechanically and physically be done,” he said of the process to rid North Korea of nuclear weapons.

Trump announced that he will order an end to regular “war games” that the United States conducts with ally South Korea, a reference to annual joint military exercises that are an irritant to North Korea.

Trump called the exercises “very provocative” and “inappropriate” in light of the optimistic opening he sees with North Korea. Ending the exercises would also save money, Trump said.

The United States has conducted such exercises for decades as a symbol of unity with Seoul and previously rejected North Korean complaints as illegitimate. Ending the games would be a significant political benefit for Kim, but Trump insisted he had not given up leverage.

“I think the meeting was every bit as good for the United States as it was for North Korea,” Trump said, casting himself as a leader who can secure a deal that has eluded past presidents.

South Korea’s presidential office seemed blindsided by the announcement on the joint exercises.

“We need to try to understand what President Trump said,” a spokesman for South Korean President Moon Jae-in said.

So in the last 48 hours, Trump has effectively isolated the US from its G-7 allies, directly angered Canada and insulted PM Justin Trudeau, backed out of a joint statement with our oldest allies, and then signed on to a statement with arguably the most repressive and bloody dictator on earth.

The pundits are absolutely correct to call this both historic and unprecedented, and none of it is a good thing.  The message this sends to both our allies and to the world's most vicious dictators is unmistakable: the legitimacy you crave is for sale by Trump.  The scale and magnitude of Kim's propaganda victory here can't be overstated.  Trump has proven that pursuit of a nuclear program will get you recognition by the US as a potential ally.  There isn't a dictator on earth who isn't now considering a nuclear weapons program as the path to power and legitimacy.

This has been the worst week for US diplomacy in decades.

Oh, and South Korea wasn't consulted at all.  They had no clue.  Trump is more accommodating to Kim than he is Moon. And recall that Republicans were screaming at how awful the Iran nuclear deal supposedly was, and they're falling all over themselves calling Trump the greatest president in US history for a "promise" from a dictator not to lie.

China is laughing up its sleeve.  Russia couldn't be happier.

Trump is the Dunning-Kruger poster boy in the party of cognitive-biased fools.
 

The Dotard Strikes Back

Donald Trump doesn't like being made fun of, he has no tolerance for it, and after last week's move by North Korea to squeeze the US for more concessions on nuclear talks, Trump is finally realizing that he's been played from the beginning and is looking for a way out.

President Trump, increasingly concerned that his summit meeting in Singapore next month with North Korea’s leader could turn into a political embarrassment, has begun pressing his aides and allies about whether he should take the risk of proceeding with a historic meeting that he had leapt into accepting, according to administration and foreign officials.

Mr. Trump was both surprised and angered by a statement issued on Wednesday by the North’s chief nuclear negotiator, who declared that the country would never trade away its nuclear weapons capability in exchange for economic aid, administration officials said. The statement, while a highly familiar tactic by the North, represented a jarring shift in tone after weeks of conciliatory gestures.

On Thursday and Friday, Mr. Trump peppered aides with questions about the wisdom of proceeding, and on Saturday night he called President Moon Jae-in of South Korea to ask why the North’s public statement seemed to contradict the private assurances that Mr. Moon had conveyed after he met Kim Jong-un, the 35-year-old dictator of the North, at the Demilitarized Zone in late April.

The president’s conversation with Mr. Moon, which was first reported by The Washington Post, came just three days before the South Korean leader was scheduled to arrive in Washington to meet with Mr. Trump on Tuesday. It was a sign of Mr. Trump’s discomfort, some officials speculated, that he could not wait to discuss the issue until Mr. Moon arrived for his meetings here, though there is no indication that the president is considering pulling out of the North Korea talks.

Mr. Trump’s aides have grown concerned that the president — who has said that “everyone thinks” he deserves a Nobel Peace Prize for his efforts — has signaled that he wants the summit meeting too much. The aides also worry that Mr. Kim, sensing the president’s eagerness, is prepared to offer assurances that will fade over time.

Moreover, Mr. Trump’s decision this month to withdraw from the 2015 Iran nuclear deal raises the stakes for the North Korea negotiation. If he emerges with anything less than what President Barack Obama got, which in Iran included the verified shipment of 97 percent of all nuclear material out of the country, it will be hard for Mr. Trump to convince anyone other than his base that the negotiation was a success.

This is a very polite way of saying that Trump has no idea what he's doing here, that he's in well over his head, and that when all of this is over he'll have nothing to show for it. Anyone could have told you that.

He'll be a loser and a failure. Again, common knowledge.

That's when things get ugly.  That too should come as no surprise when Trump eventually turns to military action and lashes out.

Stay tuned.

Last Call For The Drums Of War, Con't

As the Mueller trap closes in on Trump, I become more and more convinced he will attempt to order a catastrophic military conflict with North Korea in order to provide the chaos he'll need to resist the consequences, because at this point the Pentagon is running wargames of military strikes on Pyongyang and the resulting troop deployments and mass casualties.

A classified military exercise last week examined how American troops would mobilize and strike if ordered into a potential war on the Korean Peninsula, even as diplomatic overtures between the North and the Trump administration continue. 

The war planning, known as a “tabletop exercise,” was held over several days in Hawaii. It included Gen. Mark A. Milley, the Army’s chief of staff, and Gen. Tony Thomas, the head of Special Operations Command. 

They looked at a number of pitfalls that could hamper an American assault on North Korea’s well-entrenched military. Among them was the Pentagon’s limited ability to evacuate injured troops from the Korean Peninsula daily — a problem more acute if the North retaliated with chemical weapons, according to more than a half-dozen military and Defense Department officials familiar with the exercise. 

Large numbers of surveillance aircraft would have to be moved from the Middle East and Africa to the Pacific to support ground troops. Planners also looked at how American forces stationed in South Korea and Japan would be involved.

Pentagon officials cautioned that the planning does not mean that a decision has been made to go to war over President Trump’s demands that North Korea rein in its nuclear ambitions.

Sure it hasn't, it's just readiness exercises.  No need to be alarmed, citizens!

A war with North Korea, Defense Secretary Jim Mattis has said, would be “catastrophic.” He and Gen. Joseph F. Dunford Jr., the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, have argued forcefully for using diplomacy to address Pyongyang’s nuclear program. 

Commanders who attended the exercise in Hawaii were told that roughly 10,000 Americans could be wounded in combat in the opening days alone. And the number of civilian casualties, the generals were told, would likely be in the thousands or even hundreds of thousands. 

The potential human costs of a war were so high that, at one point during the exercise, General Milley remarked that “the brutality of this will be beyond the experience of any living soldier,” according to officials who were involved. 

So, too, would be the sheer logistical enterprise of moving thousands of American soldiers and equipment to the Korean Peninsula. Moreover, senior military officials worry that after 17 years in Afghanistan and Iraq, American troops have become far more used to counterinsurgency fighting than a land war against a state, as an attack on North Korea would likely bring. 

But Mr. Mattis also has ordered top Pentagon leaders to be ready for any possible military action against North Korea. Already, ammunition has been pre-staged in the Pacific region for ground units. 

And Mr. Trump’s words — “Military solutions are now fully in place, locked and loaded, should North Korea act unwisely,” he said in an August post on Twitter — have left senior officers and rank-and-file troops convinced that they need to accelerate their contingency planning.

It's one thing to simply say "the Pentagon is keeping its options open" if the point was saber-rattling.  This is a very specific leak of very specific information on preparations for what would be one of the bloodiest wars in human history.

If anything I hope this leak is being made to convince Trump and the people around him that military action against North Korea will result in hundreds of thousands, if not millions of casualties.  Trump would go down as an absolute monster and the horror sinking in of the first major American war in the era of instant social media would be completely unprecedented.

Meanwhile, John Bolton's Mustache is penning op-eds in the Wall Street Journal calling for pre-preemptive strikes on North Korea.

Pre-emption opponents argue that action is not justified because Pyongyang does not constitute an “imminent threat.” They are wrong. The threat is imminent, and the case against pre-emption rests on the misinterpretation of a standard that derives from prenuclear, pre-ballistic-missile times. Given the gaps in U.S. intelligence about North Korea, we should not wait until the very last minute. That would risk striking after the North has deliverable nuclear weapons, a much more dangerous situation. 

In assessing the timing of pre-emptive attacks, the classic formulation is Daniel Webster’s test of “necessity.” British forces in 1837 invaded U.S. territory to destroy the steamboat Caroline, which Canadian rebels had used to transport weapons into Ontario. 

Webster asserted that Britain failed to show that “the necessity of self-defense was instant, overwhelming, leaving no choice of means, and no moment of deliberation.” Pre-emption opponents would argue that Britain should have waited until the Caroline reached Canada before attacking.

Would an American strike today against North Korea’s nuclear-weapons program violate Webster’s necessity test? Clearly not. Necessity in the nuclear and ballistic-missile age is simply different than in the age of steam. What was once remote is now, as a practical matter, near; what was previously time-consuming to deliver can now arrive in minutes; and the level of destructiveness of nuclear, chemical and biological weapons is infinitely greater than that of the steamship Caroline’s weapons cargo.

Those drums of war are getting extremely loud now.  It may be only a matter of time.  Exactly who would alter Trump's course on this?  Where's Defense Secretary Mattis?

Why, Mad Dog is busy clearing the decks and removing the people who might stop Trump's war.. National Security Adviser H.R. McMaster is now leaving this mess behind and not of his own volition.

The White House is preparing to replace H.R. McMaster as national security adviser as early as next month in a move orchestrated by chief of staff John Kelly and Defense Secretary James Mattis, according to five people familiar with the discussions. 

The move would be the latest in a long string of staff shakeups at the White House over the past year and comes after months of strained relations between the president and McMaster. 

A leading candidate to become President Donald Trump’s third national security adviser is the auto industry executive Stephen Biegun, according to the officials.

Whoever they are, I hope they save us, but it's not looking good.  Bolton's Mustache is also reportedly in the running for McMaster's job, and if that happens, the odds of a military conflict with North Korea moves well above 50%.

Millions will die, and that's just the opening few stanzas of this blood-soaked epic.  It's a race now between Mueller and the military.

The Drums Of War, Con't

The Trump regime continues to indicate that war with North Korea is coming, and soon.

The White House has grown frustrated in recent weeks by what it considers the Pentagon’s reluctance to provide President Trump with options for a military strike against North Korea, according to officials, the latest sign of a deepening split in the administration over how to confront the nuclear-armed regime of Kim Jong-un. 

The national security adviser, Lt. Gen. H. R. McMaster, believes that for Mr. Trump’s warnings to North Korea to be credible, the United States must have well-developed military plans, according to those officials. 

But the Pentagon, they say, is worried that the White House is moving too hastily toward military action on the Korean Peninsula that could escalate catastrophically. Giving the president too many options, the officials said, could increase the odds that he will act. 

Just so everyone understands what's going on here, our military leaders are convinced that if they work up more tactical plans for striking North Korea, Trump will use one of them, because the outcome will be the strategic mistake of a shooting war with North Korea that will kill millions on the Korean peninsula and will almost certainly threaten Japan, and draw China in as well.

The tensions bubbled to the surface this week with the disclosure that the White House had abandoned plans to nominate a prominent Korea expert, Victor D. Cha, as ambassador to South Korea. Mr. Cha suggested that he was sidelined because he warned administration officials against a “preventive” military strike, which, he later wrote, could spiral “into a war that would likely kill tens, if not hundreds, of thousands of Americans.”

But the divisions go back months, officials said. When North Korea tested an intercontinental ballistic missile in July that experts concluded was capable of reaching the West Coast of the United States, the National Security Council convened a conference call that included Secretary of Defense Jim Mattis and Secretary of State Rex W. Tillerson.

After General McMaster left the room, Mr. Mattis and Mr. Tillerson continued to speak, not realizing that other participants were still on the line. The officials familiar with the matter overheard them complaining about a series of meetings that the National Security Council had set up to consider options for North Korea — signs, Mr. Tillerson said, that it was becoming overly aggressive. 

For now, the frustration at the White House appears to be limited to senior officials rather than Mr. Trump himself. But the president has shown impatience with his military leaders on other issues, notably the debate over whether to deploy additional American troops to Afghanistan.

Trump is a raging child with nuclear weapons.  The Pentagon doesn't want to give him any more access to their toys, because they're afraid he'll order their use.

But before you feel sorry for the men and women in uniform fielding Trump's questions, remember this country has been giving our military roughly half-trillion dollars every year for decades, all while American conservatives kept saying we're broke.

Meanwhile, if this report from South Korean news outlet Hankyoreh is to be believed, we're already deep into "wag the dog" territory.  Josh Marshall:

I’d say we need to know more about. Quickly.

From a South Korean paper, flagged on Twitter by The Washington Post’s Tokyo Bureau Chief …

Indeed, White House National Security Council senior director for Asian affairs Matthew Pottinger was reported as saying in a recent closed-door meeting with US experts on Korean Peninsula issues that a limited strike on the North “might help in the midterm elections.”
The Post’s Anna Fifield identifies the paper Hankyoreh as “left-wing” and that it is the only paper currently reporting it. I don’t know more about the source. But this sounds like something we need to know more about very quickly. The report suggests Trump may see such a move not simply in the context of the standard efforts to help in a midterm election but to ward offer facing the prospect of impeachment or actual investigations under a Democratic congress.

I mean it's so obviously knuckle-headedly belligerent that it strains credibility that the Trumpies would actually say this, but at this point maybe this is the kind of thing they do say, and this is a diplomatic leak to try to get the people of South Korea some help before a couple million of them get shelled into oblivion.

Hell, maybe the quote is manufactured completely, but the fact is it's not implausible that this administration has diplomats and advisers who would say this, and this is a last-ditch effort to try to get somebody to put the brakes on the Tangerine Tyrant before the butcher's bill comes in at seven figures.  I'm not sure which is more terrifying, that this actually happened, or that South Korea is scared enough to make this up.

Either way, we need to have a serious discussion about what's coming down the pike here.

The Drums of War, Con't

Vox's Zach Beauchamp sounds the alarm that Trump taking the time in his State of the Union speech to blast North Korea as a deeply evil, deeply anti-Christian regime that cannot be allowed to obtain nuclear weapons capability is the biggest tell yet that preemptive military action against Pyongyang is coming.  After all, we've seen this before sixteen years ago with Iraq.

“North Korea’s reckless pursuit of nuclear missiles could very soon threaten our homeland,” Trump said. “We need only look at the depraved character of the North Korean regime to understand the nature of the nuclear threat it could pose to America and to our allies.”

If this all sounds familiar, it should. In 2002, President George W. Bush gave what’s now the most infamous State of the Union in modern memory. The speech described Iraq, Iran, and North Korea as an “axis of evil” — states that supported terrorists and thus posed a fundamental threat to the United States. We now know that this speech was designed to sell the war in Iraq, to paint Saddam Hussein’s government as an intolerable threat to the United States.

What’s really striking is looking back on the language that Bush used in that speech to discuss Iraq. He made the exact same rhetorical move that Trump did in his story about Ji — painting Saddam’s abuses of his own people as proof that the regime might well turn its fire on innocent Americans:

Iraq continues to flaunt its hostility toward America and to support terror. The Iraqi regime has plotted to develop anthrax and nerve gas and nuclear weapons for over a decade. This is a regime that has already used poison gas to murder thousands of its own citizens, leaving the bodies of mothers huddled over their dead children. This is a regime that agreed to international inspections then kicked out the inspectors. This is a regime that has something to hide from the civilized world.

Trump discussing North Korea in the same way that Bush discussed Saddam is a troubling warning sign. This is how American presidents sell wars absent an imminent threat. They paint the prospective enemy as evil, an enemy of civilization, something that must be defeated both to preserve our own safety and to secure the future of humanity.

You would think that in a case like this we'd want a competent ambassador on the ground with our ally South Korea, something the incompetent Trump still has failed to do for a year, and completely on purpose.  If there was still any doubt over what's coming in 2018, ponder the fact that Trump just got rid of the best choice for Ambassador to South Korea.

Just before Trump’s ominous speech, we learned that Victor Cha, a highly respected North Korea scholar at Georgetown University, had been dismissed from consideration as a possible ambassador to South Korea (a currently unfilled post). This is highly unusual at this stage — Cha had already gone through security checks and been approved by the South Korean government.

The reason, according to reports in the Washington Post and the Financial Times, is that Cha had criticized the administration’s proposed plans for a strike on North Korea in private. Shortly after the news broke, Cha published an op-ed in the Post attacking the proposed plan as too dangerous and unlikely to work.

“I empathize with the hope, espoused by some Trump officials, that a military strike would shock Pyongyang into appreciating U.S. strength, after years of inaction, and force the regime to the denuclearization negotiating table,” Cha wrote. “Yet, there is a point at which hope must give in to logic.”

Cha, it seems, is worried about the Trump administration actually starting a war with North Korea. The State of the Union showed that we should be too.

The main goal of Trump's speech last night was to sell a war with North Korea to the American people.  Expect a lot of this during the upcoming Winter Olympics in South Korea in a couple weeks.  After the games are over, all bets are off.

Oh, and as an aside, Trump openly called for Congress to give his Cabinet the power to fire federal employees at will last night.

Have a nice day.

Last Call For Sitting This One Out

Neither China nor Russia will attend a Vancouver diplomatic meeting this week of major world powers on North Korean sanctions and nuclear proliferation, meaning the conference is basically nothing but show.

Foreign ministers from around 20 nations gather on Tuesday to discuss how to curb North Korea’s nuclear ambitions through diplomatic and financial pressure, but China, seen as a key player in any long-term solution, will be absent.

The Vancouver meeting, co-hosted by Canada and the United States, comes amid signs that tensions on the peninsula have eased, at least temporarily. North and South Korea held talks for the first time in two years last week and Pyongyang says it will send athletes across the border to the Pyeongchang Winter Olympics.

But the United States and others say the international community must look at ways of expanding a broad range of sanctions aimed at North Korea’s nuclear program.

“There is growing evidence that our maximum pressure campaign is being felt in North Korea. They are feeling the strain,” said Brian Hook, the State Department’s director of policy planning.

Hook told a briefing in Washington that participants, including U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, would examine how to boost maritime security around North Korea to intercept ships trying to defy sanctions as well as “disrupting funding and disrupting resources.” 

The 17-nation Proliferation Security Initiative, which aims to prevent the trafficking of weapons of mass destruction, on Friday said “it is imperative for us to redouble our efforts to put maximum pressure on North Korea”.

But North Korean leader Kim Jong Un has shown no sign of willingness to give in to U.S. demands and negotiate away a weapons program he sees as vital to his survival.
Another challenge in Vancouver will be the absence of China, which has significant influence in North Korea. Beijing is Pyongyang’s only ally and its chief trading partner. 

The meeting primarily groups those nations that sent troops to the Korean war of 1950-53, when China fought alongside the North. Beijing condemned the gathering. 

“Holding this kind of meeting that doesn’t include important parties to the Korean peninsula nuclear issue actually cannot help in advancing an appropriate resolution to the issue,” foreign ministry spokesman Lu Kang told a regular briefing.

China doesn't want to lower the boom on Pyongyang, not with tens of thousands of US troops nearby in South Korea.  It's not like they trust Trump, either...or Russia for that matter.  People keep forgetting that Russia shares 2,600 miles of border with China and that Putin's power grabs in Europe don't exactly endear him to Beijing.

The US wants China to do the heavy lifting on reining in Kim Jong Un and his nuclear ambitions and they don't want any part of it, not yet anyway.  The two Koreas may be making nice for the Winter Games next month, but after that who knows.  It's a mess.

Certainly Trump won't make things better.

The Drums Of War

Over in Foreign Policy, Ed Luttwak calls for bombing North Korea, openly saying that the deaths of tens of millions on the Korean Peninsula should not and cannot stop Trump from acting.

Nothing can be known about this week’s talks between North and South Korea other than their likely outcome. As in every previous encounter, South Korea will almost certainly reward North Korea’s outrageous misconduct by handing over substantial sums of money, thus negating long-overdue sanctions recently imposed by the United Nations Security Council. Meanwhile, the North will continue to make progress toward its goal of deploying several nuclear-armed, mobile intercontinental ballistic missiles, having already tested nuclear-explosive devices in October 2006, May 2009, February 2013, January 2016, September 2016, and September 2017

Each test would have been an excellent occasion for the United States to finally decide to do to North Korea what Israel did to Iraq in 1981, and to Syria in 2007 — namely, use well-aimed conventional weapons to deny nuclear weapons to regimes that shouldn’t have firearms, let alone weapons of mass destruction. Fortunately, there is still time for Washington to launch such an attack to destroy North Korea’s nuclear arsenal. It should be earnestly considered rather than rejected out of hand.

Of course, there are reasons not to act against North Korea. But the most commonly cited ones are far weaker than generally acknowledged.

One mistaken reason to avoid attacking North Korea is the fear of direct retaliation. The U.S. intelligence community has reportedly claimed that North Korea already has ballistic missiles with nuclear warheads that can reach as far as the United States. But this is almost certainly an exaggeration, or rather an anticipation of a future that could still be averted by prompt action. The first North Korean nuclear device that could potentially be miniaturized into a warhead for a long-range ballistic missile was tested on September 3, 2017, while its first full-scale ICBM was only tested on November 28, 2017. If the North Koreans have managed to complete the full-scale engineering development and initial production of operational ballistic missiles with nuclear warheads in the short time since then — and on their tiny total budget — then their mastery of science and engineering would be entirely unprecedented and utterly phenomenal. It is altogether more likely that they have yet to match warheads and missiles into an operational weapon.

It’s true that North Korea could retaliate for any attack by using its conventional rocket artillery against the South Korean capital of Seoul and its surroundings, where almost 20 million inhabitants live within 35 miles of the armistice line. U.S. military officers have cited the fear of a “sea of fire” to justify inaction. But this vulnerability should not paralyze U.S. policy for one simple reason: It is very largely self-inflicted.

When then-U.S. President Jimmy Carter decided to withdraw all U.S. Army troops from South Korea 40 years ago (ultimately a division was left behind), the defense advisors brought in to help — including myself — urged the Korean government to move its ministries and bureaucrats well away from the country’s northern border and to give strong relocation incentives to private companies. South Korea was also told to mandate proper shelters, as in Zurich for example, where every new building must have its own (under bombardment, casualties increase dramatically if people leave their homes to seek shelter). In recent years, moreover, South Korea has had the option of importing, at moderate cost, Iron Dome batteries, which are produced by both Israel and the United States, that would be capable of intercepting 95 percent of North Korean rockets headed to inhabited structures.

But over these past four decades, South Korean governments have done practically nothing along these lines. The 3,257 officially listed “shelters” in the Seoul area are nothing more than underground shopping malls, subway stations, and hotel parking lots without any stocks of food or water, medical kits or gas masks. As for importing Iron Dome batteries, the South Koreans have preferred to spend their money on developing a bomber aimed at Japan.

In other words, Ed Luttwak is saying that the coming loss of life from Pyongyang's inevitable retaliation of a decapitation strike against the Kim regime is going to be South Korea's fault, so f'ck em if they die, we've got Evil™ to bomb.

EUUU ESSSS AYYYY!
EUUU ESSSS AYYYY!
EUUU ESSSS AYYYY!

Which, coincidentally, is exactly what the Trump Regime is apparently planning.

The Trump administration is debating a "bloody nose" attack on North Korea, recent reports say, with the president's inner circle split and apparently teetering between endorsing a strike and holding out hope for diplomacy.

Both The Telegraph and The Wall Street Journal have portrayed Secretary of State Rex Tillerson and Secretary of Defense James Mattis as trying to caution President Donald Trump against a strike, and the national security adviser, H.R. McMaster, as advocating it.

The reports come after months of mixed messages and dozens of shifts in the US's stance on North Korea.

The bloody-nose strategy, which calls for a sharp, violent response to some North Korean provocation, puts a lot of weight on the US's properly calibrating an attack on North Korea and Pyongyang's reading the limited strike as anything other than the opening salvo of an all-out war.

For that reason, even the limited strike envisioned by North Korea hawks carries a tremendous risk of global — and possibly nuclear — catastrophe.

No big deal.  I'm sure the Trump regime's experts will thread the needle and see the world through this mess safely.

Right?

New Year, Same Dear Leader

So good news and bad news on North Korea as we begin the new year. The good news is that Kim Jong Un seemed pretty eager to talk to South Korea as the 2018 Winter Games in Pyeongchang are only six weeks away and the Olympics seems to be a good excuse to get together and talk stability on the peninsula.  The bad news is Kim's bragging about the new "nuclear button" installed on his desk at work.

Kim Jong Un on Monday warned the United States that he has a “nuclear button” on his desk ready for use if North Korea is threatened, but offered an olive branch to South Korea, saying he was “open to dialogue” with Seoul.
After a year dominated by fiery rhetoric and escalating tensions over North Korea’s nuclear weapons program, Kim used his televised New Year’s Day speech to declare North Korea “a peace-loving and responsible nuclear power” and call for lower military tensions on the Korean peninsula and improved ties with the South.

“When it comes to North-South relations, we should lower the military tensions on the Korean Peninsula to create a peaceful environment,” Kim said. “Both the North and the South should make efforts.”

Kim said he will consider sending a delegation to the Winter Olympics Games to be held in Pyeongchang, South Korea, in February.

“North Korea’s participation in the Winter Games will be a good opportunity to showcase the national pride and we wish the Games will be a success. Officials from the two Koreas may urgently meet to discuss the possibility,” Kim said.

South Korea said it welcomed Kim’s offer to send a delegation to the Pyeongchang Games and hold talks with the South to discuss possible participation.

“We have always stated our willingness to talk with North Korea any time and anywhere if that would help restore inter-Korean relations and lead to peace on the Korean peninsula,” a spokesman for the presidential Blue House said.

“We hope the two Koreas will sit down and find a solution to lower tensions and establish peace on the Korean peninsula.”

Lee Hee-beom, president of the Pyeongchang Organizing Committee, said the organization welcomed participation by the North Koreans.

“The (organizing committee) will discuss relevant matters with the South Korean government as well as the International Olympic Committee,” he said in a statement.

South Korean President Moon Jae-in has said North Korea’s participation will ensure safety of the Pyeongchang Olympics and proposed last month that Seoul and Washington postpone large military drills that the North denounces as a rehearsal for war until after the Games.

At least it's something.  Lord knows South Korea can't count on the US anymore, so I'm sure they're eager to take full advantage of Pyongyang's overtures on this.  Hell, if I were Kim, I'd rather talk to Seoul than Washington anyway.  Maybe this will end up a good thing in the long run.

We'll see where this goes.

Olympic Levels Of Trolling

I'm sure there's still readers out there who still don't believe that the Trump regime is taking orders from the Russians, but I'm going to make another case for that here: this week the Russians were kicked out of the 2018 Pyeongchang Winter Games in South Korea in February as the International Olympic Committee dropped the hammer on Putin and Russian sports doping in Sochi in 2014. The Atlantic's Julia Ioffe:

In rigging the Olympics, Putin got what he wanted—a successful event and a winning medal count—but the conspiracy that Russia needed to get there inevitably surfaced, and now 11 of those 33 medalists have been stripped of their prizes. Others will be given medals in their stead at Pyeongchang Olympics. Russian sport officials, like Mutko, are now banned from the Olympics for life. Russian athletes won’t be able to compete in Winter Olympics under their flag—athletes proven to be clean can compete under a neutral flag. In fact, neither the Russian anthem nor the Russian flag will appear in Pyeongchang.

In October, Putin, anticipating the IOC’s decision, said that this would be “a humiliation for the country.” Humiliation, a word echoed by many Russians when the punishment was handed down on Tuesday, the same word in the mouths of so many Russians in the wake of the Vancouver flop. Humiliation is a particular obsession for Putin, the fear of it informing his posturing at home and abroad. Before Americans spoke of making America great again, Russians spoke of Putin raising Russia up off its knees, a two-decade exercise of expunging the humiliation of the Soviet collapse. Sochi and the elaborate doping scheme used there was intended to do just that, to erase the humiliation of Vancouver, to show that Russia had restored its historic glory, to end the international mockery and disdain. Instead, like so many of Russia’s moves under Putin, it achieved the opposite. Yet again, the glitz turned out to be a sloppy front for the rot.

It may have been an impressive, FSB-orchestrated operation, but what did it get them? After Vancouver, Russia may have been smarting with the perceived humiliation of performing below their own expectations—but after Sochi, the Russian flag won’t fly at the next Olympics at all. Russian officials are busy denouncing this kind of Olympic Games as hopelessly “hobbled” and “not even the Olympics,” while others call for a full boycott by the clean Russian athletes. This wasn’t what Sochi was supposed to achieve. This is a humiliation far worse than Vancouver’s; this is pariah status. Except that Russia was already a pariah for its actions in Ukraine and for meddling in America’s 2016 presidential election, both of which made Russia’s position in the world more complicated, not less. If Putin is the omniscient mastermind many Americans imagine him to be, surely he would have anticipated this?

When I was last in Moscow, a military analyst told me that, after two decades of post-Soviet Western mockery, Russia had decided that, since no one in the West was going to love it, at least they’d fear it. But what comes after that, when the consequences set in and the fear turns to loathing condescension? Isn’t that … humiliating?

So where am I going with this?  The Olympic world humiliated Putin, so now Putin will do everything he can to turn the 2018 Winter Games into an international joke.  That apparently starts with the US suddenly floating the idea to drop out of the Olympiad.

Whether US athletes will be able to attend the 2018 Winter Olympics in South Korea remains an "open question," US Ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley said Wednesday night. 

The Winter Olympics are set to be held Feb. 9-25 in Pyeongchang, South Korea. The situation with neighboring North Korea, which has grown increasingly hostile while pursuing its nuclear ambitions, is "changing by the day," Haley said on Fox News, making the security of US athletes uncertain. 

Still, Haley said she believes President Donald Trump's administration will work to "find out the best way" to make sure the athletes are protected. 

"I think those are conversations we are going to have to have, but what have we always said? We don't ever fear anything, we live our lives," Haley said. "And certainly that is a perfect opportunity for all of them to go and do something they have worked so hard for. What we will do is, we will make sure that we're taking every precaution possible to make sure that they're safe and to know everything that's going on around them." 

Asked if it's a "done deal" that US athletes will be able to attend the Olympics, Haley said: "There's an open question. I have not heard anything about that, but I do know in the talks that we have -- whether it's Jerusalem or North Korea -- it's about, how do we protect the US citizens in the area?"

Suddenly, a day after the Russians were banned from the 2018 games in South Korea, the security of US athletes at the games is "an open question".  And if the security of the mightiest nation on earth is in question, maybe nobody else will be safe at the games either.  If the Trump regime may not send a delegation because of "security" then what do they know is coming? Maybe that makes everyone else nervous.  Maybe they shouldn't send delegations either, it's "too risky".

And suddenly it's not Russia being punished.  It's everyone, starting with host nation South Korea.

Putin may have his revenge.  And he may very well get it now if the US drops out of the Games.  Now, it's maybe a trial balloon, but I'm betting if the IOC were to change its mind about Russia, maybe the US would decide that the Games have to go on in the Olympic Spirit.

I can't prove of course that this is what happened, that Putin picked up the phone and called Trump and said "You need to threaten to pull out of the Olympics over North Korea".

But there are never coincidences this big at this level of the game.

So Deafening, These Drums Of Bore

At this point the whole "big macho manly men want to start a war thousands of miles away and want to pay for it with our tax dollars and the blood of our sons and daughters" thing should be considered a regular feature of the Republican party, not a bug.

Rep. Duncan Hunter said that the United States needs to launch a preemptive strike against North Korea in order to prevent the rogue nation from harming the U.S. first. 

“You could assume, right now, that we have a nuclear missile aimed at the United States, and here in San Diego. Why would they not aim here, at Hawaii, Guam, our major naval bases?” Hunter, an Alpine Republican, said during an appearance on a KUSI television Thursday. 

“The question is, do you wait for one of those? Or, two? Do you preemptively strike them? And that’s what the president has to wrestle with. I would preemptively strike them. You could call it declaring war, call it whatever you want,” Hunter continued. 

Hunter, a member of a House Armed Services Committee and the subcommittee with jurisdiction over the United States’ nuclear arsenal, did not say if the military should strike North Korea with conventional or nuclear weapons.

Hunter or his spokesman could not be reached for further comment Thursday night.
His comments come after President Donald Trump, in his first address to the United Nations General Assembly, said that the U.S. is prepared to attack North Korea.

“The United States has great strength and patience, but if it is forced to defend itself or its allies, we will have no choice but to totally destroy North Korea,” Trump said. 

Hunter called the president’s remarks “great” and not “wishy-washy.” He added that North Korea should join the UN in order to bring them into dialogue with stable countries. He also said that would expose North Korea officials to New York City, the home of the UN's headquarters, and show them what the prosperity they could achieve with reforms.

The hundreds of thousands, possibly millions dead from this aren't the issue.  The issue is Duncan Hunter has a microscopic penis and a brain to go along with it, and he's going to help get a ridiculously high number of people killed in very short order.

Understand that if the US attacks Pyongyang, Seoul becomes a parking lot in 48 hours, and whether or not that parking lot is created just from the saturation of the air with conventional high-explosive artillery fire or the blackened glass of a nuclear blast or three (or both, yay!) is really the only question.

After that, well, things get kinda bad from there.

Mueller needs to move fast or there may not be much of the place left to defend the Constitution for.

Ralph's Korean Barbecue

Over at the NY Post, columnist Ralph Peters calls for the genocide of a million North Koreans.

No really guys, this isn't hyperbole or me being snarky, this is actually a published columnist in a published newspaper calling for the deaths of North Koreans in a brutal preemptive military strike.

Better a million dead North Koreans than a thousand dead Americans. The fundamental reason our government exists is to protect our people and our territory. Everything else is a grace note. And the words we never should hear in regard to North Korea’s nuclear threats are “We should’ve done something.” 

Instead, we should do something. Pyongyang’s Sunday test of a hydrogen bomb of devastating power begs for decisive action. Must we wait until Americans die?
A pre-emptive strike against Kim Jong Un’s nuclear and ballistic missile programs would be a terrible thing, demanding a vast military effort (if done properly) and leaving broad destruction in its wake. But that terrible option increasingly appears to be the least bad option. The question is whether we’ll delay action until it’s too late to save American lives. 

When we’re threatened with nuclear destruction by North Korea, a military response is not unethical. Rather, inviting a North Korean attack by hesitating endlessly — then witnessing the slaughter of tens, if not hundreds, of thousands of our citizens — would be unethical and immoral. 

We do not want war. That much could not be more obvious. But we cannot sacrifice American lives to shield the consciences of intellectual elites who, from protected positions of immense privilege, insist that all human life is precious, not just our “deplorable” American lives. 

If there is any real hope of a peaceful solution, of course that would be preferable. But we cannot rely on miracles or mirages. A generation of talks has done nothing but protect North Korea’s weapons programs. Sanctions haven’t restrained North Korea either, since China, Russia, India and other states undercut them.

Nor have our displays of force in the region done anything to deter a regime conditioned to our empty pageantry. 

North Korea doesn’t believe we will act. Because we never have acted. 

Those wildly misnamed Washington institutions labeled “think tanks” find themselves stumped: Conditioned to group-think and addicted to that supreme intellectual opiate, negotiations, we hear — even from conservative voices — that there’s no military solution, while the left repeats that “War never changes anything.” 

As to the latter claim, warfare has been humanity’s ultimate means of resolving intractable issues since the first cave-dwellers went at the gang from the cave down yonder with rocks. We may not like it — I don’t — but to insist that war isn’t humanity’s sometimes-necessary default means of survival is to ignore all of human history.

Ahh, the same song they played in Iraq, Iran, and Syria.  Only this time the stakes are far higher and the death toll will be as many dead South Koreans as there are North Koreans when the trumpets of war sound.

Genocide is such a popular tune, isn't it?

A Fissile Missile Pissing Contest, Con't

Over at Foreign Policy, Jeffrey Lewis argues that North Korea won its game of nuclear chicken some time ago, and that the world will have little choice but to come to the negotiating table and give Kim Jong Un what he wants, no matter what Trump blusters about.

The Washington Post reported yesterday that North Korea has a large stockpile of compact nuclear weapons that can arm the country’s missiles, including its new intercontinental ballistic missiles that are capable of hitting the United States. That’s another way of saying: game over. 

Also: I told you so. 

There are really two assessments in the Post’s report. One, dated July 28, is that the intelligence community — not just the Defense Intelligence Agency, contrary to what you may have heard — “assesses North Korea has produced nuclear weapons for ballistic missile delivery, to include delivery by ICBM-class missiles.” The other assessment, published earlier in July, stated that North Korea had 60 nuclear weapons — higher than the estimates usually given in the press. Put them together, though, and its pretty clear that the window for denuclearizing North Korea, by diplomacy or by force, has closed. 

These judgments are front-page news, but only because we’ve been living in collective denial. Both intelligence assessments are consistent with what the North Koreans have been saying for some time, for reasons I outlined in a column here at Foreign Policy immediately after the September 2016 nuclear test titled, “North Korea’s Nuke Program Is Way More Sophisticated Than You Think: This is now a serious nuclear arsenal that threatens the region and, soon, the continental United States.” 

Authors rarely get to pick titles, and almost never like them, but I think the editors at FP got this one about right. It is about as subtle as a jackhammer, although even so the message didn’t seem to sink in.

The world must now deal with a nuclear North Korea, and it must deal with Pyongyang soon or risk a fatal miscalculation that could cost tens of millions of lives.

Let’s walk through the evidence. 

North Korea has conducted five nuclear tests. That is really quite a lot. Looking at other countries that have conducted five nuclear tests, our baseline expectation for North Korea should be that it has a nuclear weapon small enough to arm a ballistic missile and is well on its way toward testing a thermonuclear — yes, thermonuclear — weapon. 

A lot of people got the wrong idea after North Korea’s first nuclear test failed, and subsequent nuclear tests seemed smaller than they should be. There was a common view that the North Koreans, well, kind of sucked at making nuclear weapons. That was certainly my first impression. But there was always another possibility, one that dawned on me gradually. According to a defector account, North Korea tried to skip right toward relatively advanced nuclear weapons that were compact enough to arm ballistic missiles and made use of relatively small amounts of plutonium. That should not have been surprising; both Iraq and Pakistan similarly skipped designing and testing a more cumbersome Fat Man-style implosion device. The disappointing yields of North Korea’s first few nuclear tests were not the result of incompetence, but ambition. So, while the world was laughing at North Korea’s first few nuclear tests, they were learning — a lot. 

And then there is the issue of North Korea’s nuclear test site. North Korea tests its nuclear weapons in tunnels beneath very large mountains. When my research institute used topography data collected from space to build a 3-D model of the site, we realized that the mountains are so tall that they may be hiding how big the nuclear explosions are. Some of the “disappointments” may not have been disappointments at all, and the successes were bigger than we realized. I think the best interpretation of the available evidence is that North Korea accepted some technical risk early in its program to move more quickly toward missile-deliverable nuclear weapons. 

The fact that North Korea’s nuclear weapons used less fissile material than we expected helps explain the second judgment that North Korea has more bombs than is usually reported. The defector claimed that North Korea’s first nuclear weapon contained only 4 kilograms of the limited supply of plutonium North Korea made, and continues to make, at its reactor at Yongbyon. (For a long while, experts claimed the reactor was not operating when thermal images plainly showed that it was.) The North Koreans themselves claimed the first test used only 2 kilograms of plutonium. Those claims struck many people, including me, as implausible at first. But they were only implausible in the sense that such a device would probably fail when tested — and the first North Korean test did fail. The problem is North Korea kept trying, and its later tests succeeded. 

We also must take seriously that North Korea has perhaps stretched its supply of plutonium by integrating some high-enriched uranium into each bomb and developing all-uranium designs. North Korea has an unknown capacity to make highly enriched uranium. We’ve long noticed that the single facility that North Korea has shown off to outsiders seems smaller than North Korea’s newly renovated capacity to mine and mill uranium; we naturally wondered where all that extra uranium is going. (My research institute thinks it might be fun to estimate how much uranium North Korea enriches based on how much it mills, if you know anyone with grant money burning a hole in her pocket.) 

Unless the intelligence community knows exactly where North Korea is enriching uranium and how big each facility is, we’re just guessing how many nuclear weapons the country may have. But 60 nuclear weapons doesn’t sound absurdly high. 

The thing is, we knew all this already. Sure, sure it isn’t the same when I say it. I mean, I am just some rando living out in California. But now that someone with a tie and real job in Washington has said it, it is news. 

The big question is where to go from here. Some of my colleagues still think the United States might persuade North Korea to abandon, or at least freeze, its nuclear and missile programs. I am not so sure. I suspect we might have to settle for trying to reduce tensions so that we live long enough to figure this problem out. But there is only one way to figure out who is right: Talk to the North Koreans.

We don't really have much of a choice right now, do we?

Of course, we don't have much of a State Department or President right now either.  Hell, we don't even have an ambassador to South Korea.

I assume China, South Korea, and Japan will need to step up and handle this mess.  America doesn't even have the people to do so right now.  Our diplomacy is nearly worthless and the rest of the world will press on in spite of our apparently uselessness in situations like these.

Take your pick as to whom the Leader of the Free World title belongs to these days.  North Korea has just proven it's no longer the United States in that chair.

Last Call For Pyongyang's Power Play

The Fourth of July fireworks today were thousands of miles away from the US as the Kim Jong Un regime has definitely upped the temperature on the Korean Peninsula by test-launching what appears to be North Korea's first ICBM. That move, combined with North Korea's previous multiple nuclear tests and very loud and pointed threats has the Trump regime calling for "global action" to be immediately taken against Pyongyang.

US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson strongly condemned North Korea's intercontinental ballistic missile launch, calling it "a new escalation of the threat to the United States, our allies and partners, the region, and the world" in a statement Tuesday. 

"Global action is required to stop a global threat," he said. "Any country that hosts North Korean guest workers, provides any economic or military benefits, or fails to fully implement UN Security Council resolutions is aiding and abetting a dangerous regime."
Tillerson also called for the denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula and stated the US "will never accept a nuclear-armed North Korea." 

North Korea claimed Wednesday that it was just that. A statement from Pyongyang's official Korean Central News Agency said Tuesday's test was of a new, nuclear-capable ICBM. 

North Korean leader Kim Jong Un called it an Independence Day present to the US, adding "we should deliver big and small presents often," KCNA said. 

Tillerson's strong statement marks a striking contrast to when North Korea conducted a test in April and Tillerson said: "North Korea launched yet another intermediate-range ballistic missile. The United States has spoken enough about North Korea. We have no further comment."

Two nuclear-armed and mostly incompetent regimes led by narcissitic madmen?  What could possibly go wrong?

The US and South Korea also announced they had conducted a joint exercise in response to North Korea's launch. A South Korean statement said the drill which was "intended as a strong warning against North Korean provocation" took place along South Korea's eastern coastline and "showcased precision targeting of the enemy's leadership in case of an emergency." 

The drill is a clear signal from the Pentagon that the US and South Korea have no intention of stopping joint military exercises in exchange for North Korea halting its missile and nuclear testing, as China and Russia earlier suggested. 

Earlier a US official told CNN that the US had "high confidence" that Monday's launch was an ICBM. 

The official said analysis suggests a second-stage booster ignited and produced 30 seconds of additional flight. 

Trump administration national security, military and diplomatic officials gathered for unexpected July 4 meetings to discuss what options might be needed, several administration officials told CNN.

We live in a world where right now China and Russia are playing the role of "voices of reason".  Meanwhile, Trump and the GOP couldn't have asked for a better "wag the dog" scenario to distract America while they make their final moves on Trumpcare.

Watch these developments closely.  Between this and Qatar's outright rejection of Saudi Arabia's demands as the blockade of Doha continues, the world just shifted into a far more dangerous place than it was a few days ago.

Meanwhile In North Korea...

So it looks like Pyongyang got its act together long enough to finally test fire a missile into the North Japan Sea, much to the consternation of pretty much everybody in the neighborhood.

North Korea fired a ballistic missile on Sunday in defiance of calls to rein in its weapons program, days after a new leader in its old rival South Korea came to power pledging to engage it in dialogue.

The U.S. Pacific Command said it was assessing the type of missile but it was "not consistent with an intercontinental ballistic missile". Japanese Defense Minister Tomomi Inada said the missile could be of a new type.

The missile flew 700 km (430 miles) and reached an altitude of more than 2,000 km (1,245 miles), according to officials in South Korea and Japan, further and higher than an intermediate-range missile North Korea successfully tested in February from the same region of Kusong, northwest of its capital, Pyongyang.

North Korea is widely believed to be developing an intercontinental missile tipped with a nuclear weapon that is capable of reaching the United States.

U.S. President Donald Trump has vowed not to let that happen.

An intercontinental ballistic missile is considered to have a range of more than 6,000 km (3,700 miles).

Experts said the altitude the missile tested on Sunday reached meant it was launched at a high trajectory, which would limit the lateral distance it traveled.

But if it was fired at a standard trajectory, it would have a range of at least 4,000 km (2,500 miles), experts said.

Kim Dong-yub, of Kyungnam University's Institute of Far Eastern Studies in Seoul, said he estimated a standard trajectory would give it a range of 6,000 km.

Japan said the missile flew for 30 minutes before dropping into the sea between North Korea's east coast and Japan. The North has consistently test-fired missiles in that direction.

"The launch may indeed represent a new missile with a long range," said Jonathan McDowell of the Harvard Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, referring to the estimated altitude of more than 2,000 km. "It is definitely concerning."

In Washington, the White House said Trump "cannot imagine Russia is pleased" with the test as the missile landed closer to Russia than to Japan.

Anything to get America off that whole Comey firing/admitting to impeachable crimes thing, huh guys?

Trump Cards, Con't

In an interview with Reuters, Donald Trump upended a number of diplomatic apple carts and warned of a possible military conflict on the Korean Peninsula if President Kim Jong Un didn't end his nuclear weapons program.

U.S. President Donald Trump said on Thursday a major conflict with North Korea is possible in the standoff over its nuclear and missile programs, but he would prefer a diplomatic outcome to the dispute.

"There is a chance that we could end up having a major, major conflict with North Korea. Absolutely," Trump told Reuters in an Oval Office interview ahead of his 100th day in office on Saturday.

Nonetheless, Trump said he wanted to peacefully resolve a crisis that has bedeviled multiple U.S. presidents, a path that he and his administration are emphasizing by preparing a variety of new economic sanctions while not taking the military option off the table.

"We'd love to solve things diplomatically but it's very difficult," he said.

In other highlights of the 42-minute interview, Trump was cool to speaking again with Taiwan's president after an earlier telephone call with her angered China.

He also said he wants South Korea to pay the cost of the U.S. THAAD anti-missile defense system, which he estimated at $1 billion, and intends to renegotiate or terminate a U.S. free trade pact with South Korea because of a deep trade deficit with Seoul.

Asked when he would announce his intention to renegotiate the pact, Trump said: “Very soon. I’m announcing it now.”

Trump also said he was considering adding stops to Israel and Saudi Arabia to a Europe trip next month, emphasizing that he wanted to see an Israeli-Palestinian peace. He complained that Saudi Arabia was not paying its fair share for U.S. defense.

Asked about the fight against Islamic State, Trump said the militant group had to be defeated.

"I have to say, there is an end. And it has to be humiliation," he said, when asked about what the endgame was for defeating Islamist violent extremism.

At this point our country is controlled by a man who will do whatever you tell him to do if you can convince him enough people will think he's awesome when he orders it done.  That's it.  It applies to both foreign and domestic policy.  Everything else is all for show.

Last Call For The Pence-ive Diplomat

For some reason, the Trump regime sent Mike Pence into the Korean DMZ to...you know, I'm not really sure.

Vice President Pence, in the midst of a 10-day Asia trip, is making an unannounced visit to the demilitarized zone between North and South Korea, according to pool reports.

At 9:30 a.m. local time, a Blackhawk helicopter carrying Pence landed at Camp Bonifas, South Korea, the gateway to the DMZ.

Pence is expected to move inside the DMZ shortly, according to the pool report.

The visit comes amid growing tensions between North Korea and the U.S.

North Korea attempted to launch a ballistic missile Sunday on its east coast but failed. That attempt came one day after North Korea held a military parade showing off its latest missiles.

Pence was briefed on the launch while on Air Force Two en route to South Korea on Saturday night. It’s the first part of his multi-nation trip to reaffirm U.S. ties to the region, officials said.

That failed missile launch seems to have taken the starch out of Kim Jong Un's pants, and I guess we're sending Pence in because he's the relatively sane one, I guess.  Who knows.

Korean-ing Off The Rails, Part 3

The UN Security Council is finally getting around to talking about the scary prospect of the resumption of hostilities between the two Koreas, and what the rest of the international community can do (IE, the US and China) to stop that from happening.  The problem is South Korea's live fire exercise drills this weekend, with North Korea promising retaliation if the South goes through with them.

As the U.N. Security Council prepared to convene Sunday morning to hold an emergency session concerning tensions on the Korean Peninsula, South Korea reiterated that it will go forward with live-fire military drills this week.

The drills will take place Monday or Tuesday in the Yellow Sea off Yeonpyeong Island, the state-run Yonhap news agency reported, citing a military official. Tensions between the two Koreas have been high since the North fired upon the island last month, killing two marines and two civilians.

"The planned firing drill is part of the usual exercises conducted by our troops based on Yeonpyeong Island. The drill can be justifiable, as it will occur within our territorial waters," the official said.

The military said Thursday that the exercises would take place in the seas southwest of the island between December 18 and 21, but adverse weather forced a delay Saturday.

North Korea has warned of serious consequences if the drill goes on as planned, but it won't deter the South Koreans, the official said. China and Russia have asked South Korea to reconsider.

"We won't take into consideration North Korean threats and diplomatic situations before holding the live-fire drill. If weather permits, it will be held as scheduled," the military official said.

In response to the South's decision, Russia called for the emergency meeting of the U.N. Security Council, set for Sunday morning. The meeting was slated to begin at 11 a.m. ET.

South Korea is definitely the aggrieved party here in this mess, and asking them to play nice isn't going to work unless they can show some sort of game face.  It's clear there's a real problem here, and North Korea isn't exactly the most stable of nations.  South Korea will go ahead, hence the meeting about what will be next.

If anyone is interested in keeping this mess from blowing up, it's China.  You'd figure they'd be taking the lead on this, but it looks like Russia and the US are the most active nations on the Korean front right now.  We'll see how it goes.

Korean-ing Off The Rails, Part 3

North Korea is still putting out quite a stink over South Korea's increase in military drills and live fire exercises.

North Korea said South Korea is raising tension on the Korean Peninsula to an “uncontrollable extreme phase” by holding military exercises with the U.S. and planning a live-firing drill today by navy ships.

The South Korean government “is so hell-bent on the moves to escalate the confrontation and start a war that it is recklessly behaving bereft of reason,” the state-run Korea Central News Agency said in a commentary yesterday. North Korea is “now maintaining a maximum self-possession and self- control,” it said.

Today’s drills will include live firing from ships into seas near Daecheong Island, South Korea’s Joint Chiefs of Staff said last week. North Korea said the exercise will result in shells landing in its territorial waters.

I'm not sure what the Korean equivalent of kabuki is, but I have a feeling we're seeing it here and with all the bells and whistles. It's only a matter of time before something particularly provocative is going to happen unless cooler heads prevail, and frankly cooler heads are nowhere to be found on the Korean Peninsula.