Jeremy Taylor wrote:

I doubt Trump will achieve anything on North Korea. Without Chinese help, and unless he is willing to risk hundreds of thousands of casualties in the South, there is next to nothing that can be done. His capitulation to the neo-con line here, and on Iran and Russia/the Ukraine, is one of the many disappointments about him (though disappointments should have been expected). Pat Buchanan he ain't.

He already is making progress. The Administration did a good job at the UN and getting UNSC resolutions and sanctions passed against NK that are pretty serious and will have dramatic impact on NK's economy. To be sure, that can be circumvented to an extent perhaps by the PRC but that is a dangerous game for them to play.
Regardless, the reports that have come out about what America is doing in the region to minimize NK as a threat also show that things are being done to weaken the NK's military threat to e.g. Japan, though of course NK remains existentially dangerous especially against SK.

Further, people I think should not brush off the trade and economic options that Trump has opened up in this equation vis-a-vis the PRC. While it has been carefully controlled by the regime in Beijing (and this also actually poses a serious potential national security risk), the PRC's burgeoning business class has a lot of stake in Western and the American economy now.  This could potentially be a way to drive a wedge between the PRC and NK: is NK really worth it? Can a situation be engineered where the PRC stands more to gain by abandoning NK or where support for NK is so costly it weakens their geopolitical situation and therefore is no longer again worth supporting?

Finally, the PRC has not done itself any favors lately in terms of its human rights policies. The recent unprecedented crack down and persecution of Christians and Christianity within the PRC echoes back to almost Maoist policies: this will put pressure on all Christian countries to be much firmer with the PRC geopolitically and especially economically. It should also be remembered that the PRC is quite suspicious of and harsh even on Islam within its borders: alienating predominantly Christian and Muslim countries doesn't leave you with many countries to work with if their governments are under pressure from their populations particularly; and if memory serves, India - while willing to work with the PRC for mutual and economic and perhaps geopolitical advantage - does notwithstanding see the PRC as a dangerous potential adversary and threat.

When you take all of this into account there is definite possibility for a changed situation in the region.

Last edited by Timocrates (1/02/2018 5:35 pm)

seigneur wrote:

Timocrates wrote:

Are you actually implying Obama wasn't the clown? Or that Trump didn't win the normal American vote? Do you think California in any way represents normal people in America as an average? Or the truly mile high state of Colorado? You realize a lot of normal people leave those states to places like Arizona?

Oh, so only Arizona has normal people these days. Good to know.

Timocrates wrote:

For a clown Trump is doing an excellent job improving the economy, defeating ISIS and putting North Korea back into its place. He has increased international stability that will have positive effects not only for America but for the whole world...

And from this I can tell you are not in or from Arizona. American Messianic Exceptionalism causes usually lots of damage. Sometimes also a little good, but then all the more collateral damage.

Also, all countries and peoples tend to perceive themselves as being exceptional. But what I find ridiculously naive and ignorant about your claim is that you absurdly imagine that American secularists and so-called Progressives aren't exceptionalists: Obama was in doctrine and practice an overt American exceptionalist, he just saw America as being a purely secular and "progressive" ground for exceptionalism and vehicle for spreading American Progressivism, which is qualitatively and in terms of real and actual human rights extremely and far more dangerous than its Christian counterpart as it promotes totalitarian government and control. For Obama, America didn't need anyone's permission to spread - peacefully or even violently, legally or illegaly, overtly or covertly - the American Progressive ideal: he didn't believe, for example, he needed anyone's permission (whether the UN or Congress) to take action to help his "friends" (a very small group they proved to be - I mean the ones that weren't really just jihadis and terrorists only pretending to be something like liberal democrats) in Syria.

American leftists actually attach rank violations of people's human rights as a condition for, e.g., humanitarian aid and relief and other material assistance, like e.g. requiring the legalization of abortion and increasingly dictating how countries should treat or deal with, e.g., homosexuality (sometimes quite legitimately of course but other times obviously trying to impose a purely ideological belief about homosexuality that goes way beyond and even contradicts established human rights). They did this to a disgusting extent in Africa but also in Latin America.

So Obama was an American exceptionalist too. But Hillary Clinton on live televisiion during one of the most watched debates in history explicitly said she would have imposed a no-fly zone over Syria even as everyone knew Russian aircraft were operating there; of course, she could hardly have done this with the help of the UNSC as at least they were able to do to provide some legal cover for NATO action in Libya; and even though she denies it as she always refuses to take any personal responsibility for her amazing failure, this statement of hers cost her a lot of support and coupled with a few other whoppers (like supporting even third term abortion right up to and before even child birth itself) no doubt cost her the election and only further unified the right.

Last edited by Timocrates (1/02/2018 5:58 pm)