Story Why Trump Cancelled Korea Summit

 

The story we hear from most news organizations is that President Trump is thinking like a small time real estate broker where walking away from a deal is part of the negotiation tactic. They claim he is trying to look big and tough and out man Kim Jong-un and in the process is becoming even more of a clown. They claim he has now brought the Korean Peninsula and the world to the brink of Armageddon. The accusations don’t stop there. He has been said to be acting like a schoolyard bully throwing a tantrum just to get more attention. What has been amusing about this last accusation, and to some extent most of the others, is that it more accurately describes the actions of Kim Jong-un and the entirety of the North Korean power structure including, or maybe especially, the military.

 

Let us put this as plainly as we know how, or at least try. Let’s pretend we are the President of the United States. We have appeared to have pressured the leader of North Korea, Kim Jong-un into agreeing to the complete denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula and to end any ballistic missile tests and nuclear tests. The North Korean strongman also has agreed to forgo the normal protestations of upcoming already known and planned joint South Korean-American military maneuvers. There has been a date set to meet in Singapore. Then when administration personnel sent to Singapore to work out the logistics of the summit attempt to contact North Korea to engage them in the planning and set up formalities, the North Koreans completely shut them out refusing to allow any communications. An administration senior official connected to the planned talks said, “The summit was halted because we couldn’t get them (North Korea) to pick up the phone. There was radio silence.” In other words, it was impossible to even set up the seating or achieve any of the necessities when the other side is refusing to even confirm who will be attending from their side, when anyone will be arriving, or even if they actually expect there to be talks. The North Korean actions were an initial signal that they were backing out of the talks.

 

This was accompanied during the same time-frame by two broken promises, two breaches of their former agreements. The North Koreans issued a major objection to legal military exercises between the South Koreans and Americans which they had stated they would accept without protest. Then they refused to denuclearize in a complete manner or to permit their denuclearization to be verifiable in any way. They basically were hedging away from everything they had stated in order to have the meeting such that they were now to use these items as bargaining chips in an effort, most likely, to gain economic relief, sanctions relief and some form of aid package which would include large amounts of food and energy to be given over by the United States in order to have a second meeting and for them to make these same promises a second time. They would demand these relief packages in aid and sanctions relief almost immediately for a meeting later. They would then renege on further discussions and return to their former habits of ballistic missile tests and nuclear research and bomb tests along with intermittent bluster about destroying Guam or possibly upping the ante to Hawaii. This was the exact same actions that previous meetings with North Korea had taken and probably should have been expected, and might have been expected, by the White House and administration members.

 

But even this was not the straw that broke the Trump’s back; there was one last insult which sent everything over the edge. North Korean Vice Minister Choe Son Hui, in addition to officials from North Korea calling Vice President Mike Pence a “dummy,” threatened, “Whether the United States will meet us at a meeting room or encounter us at nuclear-to-nuclear showdown is entirely dependent upon the decision and behavior of the United States.” This is old school communist bluster of meet our demands or face complete and total annihilation. This did not work with President Reagan and it will work even less with President Trump. If there is one thing President Trump knows, it is mindless bluster and extreme hot air, both of which he has proven countless times to the media’s delight. President Trump knows that Kim Jong-un, despite being as unbalanced as he has shown, is not near stupid enough to trigger a nuclear exchange with the United States. That is especially true with President Trump in the White House being advised by former CIA Chief Mike Pompeo as Secretary of State, former Marine four-star General as Secretary of Defense, Jim Mattis, whose nickname was “Mad dog,” and former United Nations Ambassador John Bolton as National Security Advisor who more than once claimed, “The Secretariat building in New York has thirty-eight stories. If it lost ten stories, it wouldn’t make a bit of difference.” With this group around President Trump, how can anybody claim that Trump is the least sane person in the room?

 

Still, threaten President Trump with a nuclear stand-off was exactly the path that the North Korean’s decided was in their best interests and the disloyal opposition exploded at President Trump having the audacity to be offended and cancelling the summit. They honestly are advising that the United States should walk into a room and negotiate with a group which broke every previous agreement ever made with almost every former President for the past quarter century and who had just broken every agreed condition for the meeting and threatened to start a nuclear exchange. How much weaker a position would they prefer and how could one imagine one short of sending an aid package as a concession to get them to the table. Wait, that is the exact position every President has taken with Israel since President Jimmy Carter, both Democrat and Republican, when they demanded that Israel sacrifice land, release terrorists, eventually even terrorists with blood soaked hands, and sometimes both land and release terrorists. Thankfully, President Trump has taken a different track here as well and especially with his moving the Embassy to Jerusalem, many thanks for this.

 

President Trump and Kim Jong-un in Missile Face-off

 

President Trump knows as a businessman that one does not walk into a meeting in a position of surrender; you do not start any negotiations by surrender before even sitting down. President Trump was possibly going to let some of Kim Jong-un’s antics fall to the wayside and see what could be achieved at least through meeting head to head and actually talking. The problem was that Kim Jong-un heaped insult of refusal to even talk upon backtracking on every point and every other general insult he could find and then threatened war if President Trump did not do his bidding at the talks, it became obvious that Kim Jong-un was not taking President Trump seriously and was going to keep upping the level to see where he would balk and if President Trump meekly met him despite the ever rising levels of insult, then he had a measure of Trump as somebody he could walk right over. Now Kim Jong-un is very probably going to get an entirely different measure of President Trump as it is likely that President Trump will grant Kim Jong-un a brief amount of time to be the meek one and try to undo the damage he has wrought before upping the ante from the White House either through China or simply tightening the sanctions further. Now Kim Jong-un has been informed that this is a different President who is willing to only negotiate as equals and if you refuse that, then he will insist on negotiating with you once you surrender all but unconditionally and maybe even that.

 

As for the immediate future, it is in the better interest of Kim Jong-un if he finds the better judgement and comes to President Trump offering peace and honesty and forgets the one-upmanship. It will also be better for the people of North Korea for their “furious leader” to step off his high horse and find some means of joining the rest of the world striving for peace and not world conquest or even peninsula conquest. Unfortunately for the people of North Korea, Kim Jong-un is not all that concerned with their welfare but rather more concerned with appearing like a giant on the world’s stage. Kim Jong-un needs to learn that he is nowhere near a giant even on his peninsula as the South Korean economy and standard of living is so far and above that of North Korea that there is no comparison. Of course, it is that wealth which Kim Jong-un strives to take in order to steal everything from them as well and use their economic engine and manufacturing to bolster his military and forge greater nuclear research for better and more deadly nuclear warheads. There is a great amount of parallel between North Korea and Iran as there is between Kim Jong-un and Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei. Both of these leaders believe they are a god or are in direct communication with their god. Both leaders are more interested in building their militaries and nuclear weapons capabilities and missile delivery systems than the welfare of their people. The main difference is that Kim Jong-un rules a bankrupt nation with an economy on life support and even that is failing while the other has economic problems but with excessively large infusions of cash over the past decade is now capable of causing great disturbances over the entirety of the Middle East. By cancelling the meeting with Kim Jong-un, President Trump has placed the gauntlet down gently in a controlled and nonthreatening manner in what we see as an attempt to settle this amicably without any threats or actual violence but firmly enough to send the message that unless Kim Jong-un capitulates and returns to civil behavior, then things will become more agitated and worse for the North Korean leader. Perhaps a shot directly at Kim Jong-un and placing an embargo on caviar, French champagne and fine cigars will hit him hard enough to make him see that President Trump is no fool and can directly strike at Kim Jong-un’s lifestyle.

 

Beyond the Cusp

 

Obama Forbid It Ever Coming to That

 

Since the results of the Israeli elections were announced, the rumors coming out of Washington D.C. have been troubling to say the least. The singular item which has been part and parcel of every set of rumors has been the threat to no longer act in defense of Israel at the United Nations. As the United States can only veto resolutions effectively in the Security Council and Israel has effectively mostly ignored nonbinding resolutions while occasionally acting hurt or surprised, probably to amuse and entertain those who follow such events, the threats can only be about certain Security Council resolutions. This makes the question very simply, is President Obama intending to only permit Chapter 6 resolutions or has President Obama been driven so beyond the cusp that he intends to also stand aside or even support Chapter 7 binding and backed by military intervention resolutions, more often than not United States military force. It would be a very sad day that when the first combat troops from the United States deployed to Israel would be fighting against Israel in efforts to set borders establishing an Arab Palestinian state including cutting Jerusalem in half and setting up denial of rights for Jews to the majority of the ancient Jewish and Hebrew holy sites just as it was when Jordan occupied the heartlands of ancient Israel and Judea. This being done in the name of the American people, probably some of the greatest friends and supporters of Israel, is one of the most upsetting of ideas that before the current American leadership would have been unthinkable. There have been times when relations were tested such as when President Reagan did refuse to prevent the United Nations condemnation of Israel over their bombing of the Osirak reactor in Iraq before it was put online and producing bomb material for Saddam Hussein, something Israel was later thanked for when the United States was facing an Iraq without nuclear weapons. With the Iranian nuclear negotiations and the related fiasco, the whole reaction to the elections and Prime Minister Netanyahu’s address to Congress accepting Speaker of the House Boehner’s invitation has all been more of a panic over lost prestige than reasoned exception of intended slights.

 

There have been editorials claiming that the reaction by the President is exactly the kind of reaction a narcissist who also has fears and self-doubts and takes things so personally as if everything revolves around him and also any act is intentionally committed to affect him personally would react. Unfortunately for President Obama, I can honestly lay his concerns aside as neither my wife nor I had him in mind when we voted this past week. We apologize for not taking President Obama’s feelings into consideration but maybe he can take some solace in the fact that neither of us voted for Likud though we did support parties considered even more Zionist than Likud and have probably more hesitations and greater degrees of trepidation of a government led by Netanyahu as he has already proven that he cannot be trusted to keep a promise for more than a few days before wilting before the hurt feelings of President Obama. I realize that President Obama really wanted the next Israeli Prime Minister to be somebody other than Bibi, which meant Tzipi Livni and or Yitzhak Hertzog, because they would have consulted with President Obama before ordering their lunches for the day, let alone anything truly important. The truth is that President Obama is going to have to actually work at getting the Israeli Prime Minister to dance to his tune if Netanyahu manages to cobble together a coalition without breaking too many rules. The good news is that with the right threats combined with some heart felt anger mixed with a dash of well-stated demands and finally a no small amount of pleading, the next Israeli Prime Minister might act or at least appear to act just as President Obama desires.

 

Somehow I doubt that suggestion would sit too well with President Obama, so why not give him some sagely advice which might actually make things better rather than making fun of the situation. Here is an idea which nobody has ever attempted whose time may be due. Why not try to have Mahmoud Abbas present an actual written presentation of what he would accept as a solution and then ask the Israeli leader, once you have said document in hand, if he would make a counter proposal or possibly even accept the proposed solution as presented. I bet if you could get Mahmoud Abbas to actually tell the world exactly what he would accept and allow, then everybody could to see for themselves exactly what would be considered acceptable to the Palestinians. Thus far the Palestinian leadership from Yasser Arafat to Mahmoud Abbas and everybody accompanying this parade of malcontents has only had to say “no” to every offer from Israel and the entire world then demanded Israel surrender a little more. Then when that was also rejected the world pushed Israel again to surrender a little more. In the twenty years since Oslo Israel has been backed into a corner where there is no more to give and still survive. Israel cannot survive allowing the Palestinians to possess the Judean Hills overlooking Tel Aviv and the heart of modern Israel. Israel has played this game for too long. President Obama, have somebody read the San Remo Conference treaty to you and realize that is the International Law which defined Israeli borders. Those are the borders the world guaranteed Israel including the United States back in 1920, long before the Holocaust or anything else everybody loves to present as facts today. So, read that treaty to Mahmoud Abbas and tell him that should he make a reasonable demand of Israel in this his one opening to actually get his own state as long as he will be reasonable and considers the reality of the San Remo Conference and how that changes the hype around the Palestinians. This also affects the Palestinians going to the ICC; as if Israel is dragged to the ICC, they will simply lay a copy of the San Remo Conference treaty on the Judges’ tables and quietly await their decision as they interpret International Law in light of a treaty which had as signatories every member of the League of Nations even including Persia; you might know them better by their adopted name relating their presumed Aryan supremacy, Iran.

 

But instead of threatening the Israeli people and subjecting the world to an almost guaranteed conflagration which will most certainly follow any rocket barrage striking the greater Tel Aviv megalopolis, especially if any of downtown Tel Aviv and its skyscrapers in its central district were to be struck, causing thousands of deaths similar to the World Trade Center’s destruction in scope and numbers as any such assault would entail hundreds rockets in the initial few hours before Israel could respond adequately to end the attack. So, just a suggestion that for a change it be attempted to have the Palestinians present an actual proposal, I bet it will not be as easy as everyone claims. I know what the knee-jerk response will be, “Everybody already knows the Palestinians only want what is rightfully theirs.” Well, apparently President Clinton did not know what they wanted as he extracted what he thought was exactly what the Palestinians wanted and the result was Yasser Arafat bolting from the room in Paris and returning to his bunker and starting the Second Intifada as had been his plan from even before the negotiations had begun. So, just to satisfy the world’s curiosity as I am sure everybody would claim that this idea would be almost a no brainer as the Palestinians would be able to put their idea of a fair treaty down on paper and allow it to be presented to the Israelis with the understanding that if the Israelis accepted it then there would be an agreement and a signing within a week and if the Israelis did not agree at least the differences would finally be presented and the world can work with both parties from that point and reconcile any differences. But for nothing more than a change of agendas and demanding Israel make the offer, allow the Palestinians to start the ball rolling, we’ve rolled it far enough. We will wait for your answer and the presentation of the demands the Palestinians requested you make in their name, oh, and be just as demanding that they be fair and making an honestly presentable proposal and not just demand that they be given all of Judea and Samaria and East Jerusalem and that Israel accept the right of return of five million Arabs as we all know that is a nonstarter. Then once you have a reasonable proposal from Abbas, call us, we’ll leave the line open for you.

 

Beyond the Cusp

 

Netanyahu Invite by Congress May End the World

 

If one listens to the Liberal, Progressive, Socialist political fronts from both sides if the American-Israeli divide one might get the opinion that a great transgression had occurred as the Republican Speaker of the House John Boehner invited Israeli Prime Minister Benyamin Netanyahu to appear before the United States Congress. The hue and cry from these corners over the timing of the invitation claiming that it is a sneaky ploy by Netanyahu to appear on the world stage to make points immediately before the coming election might originate from an actual and very valid complaint providing there is proof that Prime Minister Netanyahu actually had a hand in arranging this invitation. There have been calls from both nations for an invitation to also be extended to the Labor Party leader Yitzhak Herzog to speak before the United States Congress. This manufactured end of the world scenario, if one is to believe the claims that there are some underhanded maneuvers arranging a stage to exhibit Netanyahu before the world leading into the coming elections. The problem is that there is another reason for the invitation and its timing which explains everything, makes perfect sense and provides the reason that only Prime Minister Netanyahu received this invitation. Unfortunately, it is not exactly simple.

 

The Democrat leadership of Senator Harry Reid and former Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi echoes the complaints from some of the Labor Party ministers in Israel decrying this supposedly blatant misuse of their power by the Republicans inviting the Israeli leader this close to the Israeli elections. But what if the reasoning behind inviting Prime Minister Netanyahu has nothing to do with the Israeli elections and would have been extended even if there were no Israeli elections on the horizon. The reason behind the invitation of Prime Minister Netanyahu is due to the intransigence promised by United States President Obama. The reason for this invitation is to be given a second and opposing opinion on Iran and their nuclear weapons programs along with any pertinent information and developments in the Iranian missile and ICBM development programs such that any steps the Congress might wish to press forward with they would have the necessary details which thus far have not been forthcoming from the White House, State Department or the Pentagon as all are keeping to the pretense that all is just fine following the President’s lead. The person who has been most vocal on the world’s stage and has challenged President Obama’s position is Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu. One reason for not also inviting Labor leader Yitzhak Herzog is that his position has been consistently to claim that Netanyahu has alienated the American President and that Herzog’s claim is that he will repair the relations with President Obama and stand with the President particularly in reaching a peace with the Mahmoud Abbas and also back the President in his wise course in negotiating with Iran as Herzog claims to have complete faith that President Obama knows exactly what he is doing and is the sole best hope for preventing Iran from developing nuclear weapons. Prime Minister Netanyahu has been invited more for holding question and answer sessions with the key people as well as before various Congressional committees and as many Representatives and Senators as time permits. Most of the work which will be accomplished at this set of meetings will be done in private beyond the bright lights of the cameras and beyond the hearing ears of the media and will be more of a planning and working session for a bipartisan approach to Iran armed with the information which Prime Minister Netanyahu can provide.

 

The real reason is the promise from the White House to veto any and every bill which reaches the President’s desk which includes placing stronger sanctions on Iran even if the sanctions are scheduled for after the current deadline for an agreement to be negotiated between the P5+1 and Iran whether that turns out to be March 1, 2015 or July 1, 2015. One of the people who most likely played a large role in pushing for the meetings with Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu was New Jersey Democrat Senator Robert Menendez who has authored legislation which would reapply many of the sanctions that he and others believe were prematurely lifted by the White House and has stated in the legislation that the reapplication of those sanctions would only take place were there no progress in the negotiations with Iran on their nuclear weapons program. There will also be many members of Congress who will want to know what the Israelis know about the newest rocket which Iran has on the launch pad outside of Tehran which was just pictured by an Israeli intelligence satellite. The fact that this was set up out on a launch pad just as an Israeli intelligence satellite passed overhead allowing it to be pictured implies that the Iranians desired to make this new rocket known without necessarily having to launch it such that it would have delivered a payload somewhere in the Atlantic or Pacific spending the rocket in the process. This way the Iranians have left the properties such as range and payload up to those people assigned to make such assessments for the military by the Israeli government. There will probably also be questions seeking Israeli insights on the new Saudi Arabian King Salman, age seventy-nine and also not in the best of health. King Salman has promised a smooth transference of power and a continuation of King Abdullah’s reign for the immediate future. Additionally, the events in Yemen will likely be another front where Iran will have extended reach and should the Houthis be capable of ousting al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP), things will worsen as this would place Iran perched over the straight named Bab el Mandeb which basically grants control over sea lanes passing from the Red Sea including to and from the Suez Canal and from the Israeli port of Eilat, to and from the Arabian Sea, Indian Ocean and beyond.

 

There are quite a few questions on events, predictions, assessments and pure conjecture which the members of Congress could desire to pry from Benyamin Netanyahu as well as promising him their support should anything fester and explode into any manner of a war. There are currently threats being made by Hezballah which are rather doubtful unless demanded of them by Iran, Syria which has at the least the two reasons they could use to launch an attack on Israel with the recent airstrike which killed a number of Hezballah fighters as well as some five Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) troops with one senior Hezballah officer and an Iranian General, and, of course, there is the threat from Iran who has threatened to strike Israel with lightning bolts unlike anything Israel has ever experienced and will be completely defenseless against such an attack. The Congressional leadership and many members will vie for some personal time with Prime Minister seeking more information than the time will allow even should they manage some one-on-one.

 

If anything, this working visit with the members of the two houses of Congress and meeting those willing from both parties will prove to be more of an anti-campaign event than it would prove as a positive part of his campaign. Already President Obama has stated that neither he nor any member of his administration will be meeting with the Israeli Prime Minister and has threatened that the Israeli leader will be made to pay dearly for this visit and his not clearing the visit with the President before accepting the invitation from Speaker Boehner. The fact that President Obama is targeting the Israeli Prime Minister and not targeting the Republican Speaker of the House for not informing the President of his plans to invite a foreign dignitary to speak before Congress means he believes the Israeli Prime Minister is cowed as he has likely misinterpreted Netanyahu’s civility in the past for timidity, a view which is about to be corrected. The refusal of President Obama to meet with a visiting head of state says more about the American President than it does Prime Minister Netanyahu. President Obama could have made more points with the liberal socialist progressives from the Israeli Labor Party and his fellow democrats as by simply inviting Yitzhak Herzog along with Hatnua Party head Tzipi Livni who would share the Prime Minister position should their combined ticket allow for them to be chosen and succeed in forming a ruling coalition. Instead the President simply acted almost childishly doing virtually the same thing as stomping one’s feet and threatening to hold one’s breath until they turn purple. It will be interesting for all to see how this melodrama plays out though I doubt seriously it will have any bearing on the election. What may have an unimaginable effect on the election would be an attack by Syria, Hezballah, Iran or any of the Iranian proxies on Israel. I can only hope and pray that there not be any kind of assault on Israel, both in Israel or outside her borders. If I were a supporter of the Prime Minister I would also hope that President Obama would do everything within his powers to resist and fight Netanyahu while he is present in the United States making as big a scene as possible as these activities would only serve to press Israelis to vote for Netanyahu.

 

Beyond the Cusp