North Korea

[think positive]

Well hello there! Now all we need is tannin and R2D2 to pop in!

[pietillidie]

^Haha, I hope you're well. I was just pondering NK today, and Nick's is still the go-to outlet!

Looking forward to ANZAC Day!

[think positive]

[swoop42]

North Korea's primary objective in developing nuclear weapons was never about developing one that could travel all across the ocean on an ICBM to the United States.

The primary objective was safe guarding itself from the perceived threat of invasion by the United States and by developing a nuclear capability it has achieved what it set out to do, has a nuclear arsenal capable of destroying Seoul or Tokyo and believes that is enough of a deterrent for the West.

While any progress in the cooling of tensions with North Korea is welcomed I dare say the only real benefit Trump might have delivered is halting the ability or desire of the North to deliver a nuclear strike on his shores.

In reality though North Korea has already won the battle, wont be giving up their nukes you don't feel, so all the West can do now is placate them and contain the threat.

[David]

[Mugwump]

[David]

[David]

[stui magpie]

The matter probably isn't helped bu suspicions that North Korea is covertly providing weapons to Russia.

https://www.reuters.com/world/white-hou ... 022-11-02/

[David]

So are Iran and Syria. Many countries including Australia are funnelling weapons to Ukraine. It's hardly a justification for stepping up existing tensions.

[What'sinaname]

Trump was a credible threat, and these nutters just waited until a weak President was in office.

[watt price tully]

Nonsense and an utter misreading of the situation. Trump didn’t make America great again. Trump made Russia, China and North Korea “great again”. Trump backed Putin saying how he admired him. He wanted Ukraine to submit. Still don’t trouble yourself with facts.

[What'sinaname]

^ Funny how all three of China, Russia and now North Korea start engaging in aggressive tactics once Sleepy Biden took office.

[David]

Trump made Russia, China and North Korea “great again”.

I don't think this is true, except in the sense that you could argue that his America-first policy and bickering with NATO states weakened the collective position of "the West". But it remains the case that Putin did not seek to capitalise on this disarray at the time but waited until Biden was president and something like the geopolitical status quo under Obama had resumed.

Personally, I think we're giving America a little too much credit by putting them too much at the centre of these things, whether it be as hero or villain. While we can only guess at whether Putin would have been reluctant to jeopardise his relatively friendly relations with Trump and invade Ukraine while he was in office (and it has occurred to me that the invasion might have happened earlier if Clinton had won in 2016), I suspect that ultimately the timeline had nothing to do with who was the American president and everything to do with the lack of a resolution in the Donbas conflict and, in particular, Russian domestic politics.

Otherwise, these countries progress mostly along the same trajectory they've been following in the last couple of decades: China as rising superpower; Russia as economically struggling, authoritarian kleptocracy with a penchant for bullying its neighbours; North Korea as impoverished rogue state. Their situation didn't meaningfully improve between 2016 and 2020 and few of the approaches pursued by the US during that period remain in place. So not only didn't Trump make those countries "great" (or any greater than they already were), I suspect he'll prove to have been mostly a blip in their respective histories. It's in US domestic politics where he's left the most profound damage behind (in terms of his Supreme Court nominations, his massive tax cuts for the wealthy, and his shifting of the Republican Party even further away from reality and democracy).

[What'sinaname]

Looks like KJU is MIA again.