N Korea and the Donald

Well . . . maybe . . . if by sleep you mean like Rip Van Winkle.

I view the event as a positive, in that the attack Trump seemed to have planned was dropped. N Korea played him perfectly, which banished those war plans for now. If they can keep extending the state of affairs the peace may last beyond Trump's time in office. A different president is an unknown quantity. Hopefully, the shooting will not start.

I am not convinced Trump's bloody nose attack would have triggered a resumption of all out war, but who wants to take that chance?

I think it is unlikely that Trump was planning any attack other than being prepared for a defense of South Korea after North Korea attacked them first.

But if it turns out that Trump was taken advantage of and truly gets nothing from this deal, he'll probably start planning an attack as soon as that becomes clear to him.

Looking at this politically, unfortunately, Nate Silver seems to think it is a win for Trump as it wipes out his failure G7 summit and he actually thinks it might keep things on an even level with Kim not starting a nuclear war.

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I can see it as a loss for leftist to keep going on negatively about it, we will just look partisan. Better to let intellectuals or some hard nose republicans with nothing to lose say we actually got little other than a chance Kim won't start a nuclear war if Trump and Kim are cosy.

I think Trump gets a short term boost from the base and fence sitters. After that, I prefer to wait on developments.

I confess to not having paid much attention to the G7 thing, but I'm not aware of any failure on Trump's part.

Not having a nuclear war is a big positive in my book.

Although, if it turns out that Trump does get nothing from negotiating with North Korea, that outcome may well lead directly to war.

You wouldn't believe how close we came to the end in 1983:
http://www.economist.com/news/books-and-arts/21741529-new-history-terrifyingly-close-shave-nuclear-armageddon-world-almost-ended

The Cuban Missile Crisis was nothing. Russia had about 40 ICBM warheads aimed at us at the time.

There were 6,000 ICBM warheads (all half-megaton or greater) aimed at us in 1983.

It's a positive so far, to me, despite Herculean efforts of partisans in the press to frame it negatively.

The 'optics' (god, I hate that word) and post-meeting rhetoric of the G7 was pretty awful, but I haven't really examined wtf actually happened. I don't know the text of the agreement Don refused to sign. So much happening recently: so much reading piling up.

That's always convenient. You sound like politicians who claim to not know anything about negative stuff but will be quick to praise anything positive.

I have too much interesting stuff to pay attention to. Why would I pay attention to boring nonsense?

I just saw a story claiming Kim brought his own toilet, because he did not want anybody getting his stool to analyze it.

apparently he forgot to mention it to the Pentagon as well and they're trying to make it right with South Korea

literally the gang that couldn't shoot straight

During one of his speeches Kim offered to host a Summit between the US and the EU. I thought that was pretty funny.

One of the few Americans who can speak with authority on North Korea’s calculus regarding nuclear weapons is Joel S. Wit, who was senior adviser to the U.S. negotiator with North Korea, Ambassador Robert L. Gallucci, from 1993 to 1995, and who from 1995 to 1999 was coordinator for the 1994 “Agreed Framework” with North Korea. More importantly, Wit also participated in a series of informal meetings with North Korean officials in 2013 about North Korea’s thinking on its nuclear weapons.

At a briefing on the Trump-Kim summit last week sponsored by the website 38 North, which he started and still manages, Wit made it clear that this dismissal of North Korea’s willingness to agree to denuclearization is misguided. “Everyone underestimates the momentum behind what North Korea is doing,” he said. “It’s not a charm offensive or a tactical trick.”

Wit revealed in an article last month that the North Koreans had informed the American participants in those 2013 meetings that Kim was already anticipating negotiations with the United States in which North Korea would agree to give up nuclear weapons in return for steps by the United States that removed its threatening posture toward North Korea. Wit said his North Korean interlocutors had pointed to a June 2013 statement by the National Defense Commission of North Korea—the nation’s highest policymaking body—which they stated emphatically had been ordered by Kim himself to indicate a readiness to negotiate with the United States on denuclearization. The statement declared, “The denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula is the behest of our leader” and “must be carried out . . . without fail.” And it went on to urge “high-level talks between the DPRK [North Korea] and the U.S. authorities to . . . establish peace and security in the region.”

The statement came a few months after Kim had resumed nuclear testing in an intensive effort to establish a credible nuclear deterrent. In part that was because of the young Kim’s conviction that the United States believed it could “bully” his regime in the transition after Kim father, Kim Jong Il, died in December 2011, according to Wit’s North Korean interlocutors.

But those same North Korean officials also told Wit that the new buildup would be of limited duration—only until it became possible to improve relations with the United States. That explanation suggested that Kim was pursuing a military capability primarily to serve as an incentive for Washington to come to the negotiating table and as a set of bargaining chips to obtain what it really wanted—an end to the hostile policy toward the regime by the United States.

Wit revealed that in the private meetings with Americans, North Korean officials presented a concrete plan for a three-phase agreement with the United States on denuclearization in which each side would undertake a set of related steps simultaneously. The American participants were told that the first stage of North Korea’s implementation would be a freeze on its nuclear weapons development, followed by disabling key facilities and finally dismantling the facilities as well the nuclear weapons. The U.S. steps would include diplomatic recognition, ending economic sanctions and removing the U.S. military threat to North Korea, in part by finally bringing the Korean War to a formal conclusion.

It was the same approach to a denuclearization agreement to which North Korea had agreed in 1994 and again in 2005 and 2007, but which had failed primarily because of the reluctance of the Clinton and Bush administrations to commit to entering into a normal political and economic relationship with North Korea.

The political context for U.S.-North Korean negotiations has changed dramatically since 2013. The most obvious change is that North Korea has an ICBM capable of reaching the United States for the first time. Although it provoked threats by the Trump administration in 2017 to attack North Korea if it completed work on the ICBM, it also has prompted the White House to consider going further than previous administrations in meeting North Korean diplomatic demands.

Furthermore, in 2013, the South Korean government was hostile to diplomacy with the North, and the Obama administration was unwilling to consider any major political or security concessions to North Korea until after it had given up its nuclear weapons. Now South Korean President Moon Jae-in has gone further than any previous government in pushing to end the 70-year military tension and formal state of war between North and South. Moon’s commitment to a Korean peace agreement appears to be the single biggest reason that Kim switched gears so dramatically in a New Year’s Day speech that presaged dramatic diplomatic moves in 2018.

Reflecting the new political-diplomatic situation, in April Kim put forward a new strategic line calling for the bulk of the state’s resources to go to economic development. That replaced the bjungjin line that Kim had introduced in March 2013 putting economic rebuilding and military needs on an equal footing.

Kim has made major adjustments in the North Korean negotiating posture that prevailed when the 2013 meetings were held with nonofficial Americans. The North Koreans had insisted then that the United States would have to remove their troops from South Korea as part of any agreement, according to Wit. But that demand has now been dropped, as Moon told Trump in mid-April.

Kim also has frozen his entire nuclear weapons and ICBM programs by suspending testing and blowing up facilities and tunnels at its nuclear test facility in front of foreign journalists in advance of negotiations with the United States. What gives the freeze far-reaching significance is the fact that North Korea still has not shown that it has mastered the reentry technology or the guidance system necessary to have a convincing deterrent capability, as Defense Secretary James Mattis observed last December. And then CIA Director Mike Pompeo agreed in January that it would take a “handful of months” for North Korea to be able to master the remaining technological challenges—but that would require additional testing. The willingness to freeze the program before it had reached its goal indicates the predominance of Kim’s diplomatic aim over North Korea’s military ambitions.

Contrary to the idea relentlessly repeated in media coverage that there is no objective basis for a denuclearization agreement, it has become clear to Pompeo that Kim is serious about reaching such an agreement. Pompeo noted in his press conference that he had spent “a great deal of time” discussing the prospective deal in two meetings with Kim himself and three meetings with Kim’s special envoy, Kim Yong-chol. And based on the many hours of discussion with them, Pompeo said he believes “they are contemplating a path forward where they can make a strategic shift, one that their country has not been prepared to make before.”

Trump and Kim will be able to agree only on a broad statement of principles that reflect Pompeo’s meetings with the North Koreans, leaving significant differences remaining to be resolved in negotiations over the coming weeks. But this summit between what is surely the oddest couple in modern diplomatic history may well launch the most serious effort yet to end the U.S.-North Korean conflict.

What have the North Koreans gotten besides a halt to military exercises that will only last for as long as it seems like they are making progress towards getting rid of their nuclear weapons?

If it were Obama many would be criticizing him for giving up ANYTHING, especially these exercises that have been such a thorn in NK's side for 50+ years and a driver of many of their provocations the last 10 years.

In regard to concessions, Kim did move first by destroying a nuclear test site in a good faith act right before Trump cancelled their planned first summit meeting. It seems the DPRK doesn't need test sites anymore because they've already developed and have produced nuclear and thermonuclear weapons, so it was an easy concession. The worst repercussion from the suspension of war games between the US and South Korea would be that they'd be a bit rusty in the case of an invasion by the DPRK. I don't see that happening.

By all accounts the nuclear test site was fairly destroyed beforehand.

That's pretty damned hilarious, I would say.

No chance that North Korea has developed thermonuclear weapons.

Boosted atomic warheads at the most.