Korean summit? It’s all about the ‘spin’

U.S. and Korean leaders will try to talk...

Assuming someone doesn’t say or do something stupid in the next few hours that causes somebody to go storming out of the room and bringing the summit between the United States and North Korea to an end – this is the week that the two sides will talk.

The nations that were at war back in the early 1950s and which ended in a stalemate that for decades has created the potential for the shooting to start up again are going to have their leaders try to talk out their differences.

... about peaceful relations in coming days

WHAT WILL COME out of all this? Who’s to say!

If anything, it doesn’t matter one iota what is actually done or said by officials of either side.

This truly will be an event about the political spin. Both sides are going to be looking for some sort of occurrence that they can distort into a story putting themselves in the best light.

When it comes to the officials from North Korea, I’m sure they want something to happen that they can claim to be the end of the war – with the North prevailing. It won’t matter that nothing will actually change. They want to be able to say they defeated the attempt of capitalism and Western imperialism to chase them out of power.

AND IF NOTHING truly occurs along those lines, they’ll want to be able to say it does.

Meanwhile, U.S. officials have their own agenda going into this gathering (which will take place in the early hours of Tuesday – our time). It may be over and done by the time we wake up Tuesday morning.

Or maybe the sides will talk late into the night (which will be about lunchtime, our time, on Tuesday)?

Remember how the 'Laverne & Shirley' stars both used to claim top billing because of how their names were positioned? This weekend will be filled with lots of equally ridiculous rhetoric by both Trump and Kim

What President Donald Trump wants to gain out of all this is something that he will be able to spin into stories of what a high-and-mighty, all-powerful negotiator he truly is.

TRUMP WANTS US to think that he’s the guy who was able to sit down face-to-face with North Korea leader Kim Jong-Un and knuckle under to his almighty aura.

On the surface, Trump says he wants to get North Korea officials to abandon the arsenal they have built up throughout the years of nuclear weapons – which, quite frankly, are the only reason anybody pays attention to the impoverished Asian nation whose attempt at Communism is so isolationist that there’s really no reason any other part of the world would want to be bothered with it.

Yes, it really is about his ego and that Nobel Prize – he will forevermore be bitter that his predecessor, Barack Obama, received the prize for his efforts to try to bring peace to the Middle East. I’m sure if it were possible, Trump would order the prize’s revocation from Obama.

Since that’s not possible, he’s out to get his own. His backers already are proclaiming him the man who “ended” the Korean War, and I’m sure the ideologues here will be more than willing to distort whatever actually happens into a story that backs their pre-summit rhetoric.

IN ALL HONESTY, I’m skeptical that anything of significance will happen as a result of the talks taking place in Singapore in coming days. Even Trump himself has made statements warning that long-term change will take years to achieve.

The kind of image Trump dreams he can make a part of the past in Pyongyang

Meaning we can’t proclaim him the ultimate failure if nothing has changed by Friday. Although nothing will stop the smarty-pants-types amongst us from pondering which of the two world leaders has the most ridiculous hairstyle.

This week’s activity is about talk. And talk is good. It’s better than isolationism keeping the sides apart to the point where our ignorance of each other results in somebody doing something stupid (always risky when nuclear warheads are involved).

And if it really is nothing but talk, I can’t help but remember the old cliché; “Talk is cheap!”

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Trump has long way to go before we ought to think of him as Nobel winner

Reading through all the rhetoric being spewed in recent days with regards to the Koreas, one has to wonder how delusional the conservative ideologues amongst us truly are.

Lots of ritual in last week's meeting of the 2 Koreas leaders. Any substance?

Either that, or just how insecure are they in the degree to which they will say anything intended to try to legitimize this Age of Trump that our society is now in.

IT WAS REGARDED as a significant event last week when the leaders of the two Koreas – Moon Jae-in of the South and Kim Jong Un of the North – actually met, engaged in a lot of ceremonial ritual, talked for about 30 minutes, then signed off on an agreement that technically ends the Korean War of the 1950s.

Or at least says that neither North nor South Korea regarded the war as ongoing,

As far as any gunfire or bloodshed is involved, that conflict between the two Koreas (with the sides propped up by the United States and China) ended with a cease-fire in July 1953.

The fact that there was never a formal agreement signed has always been regarded as more of a quirk of history, rather than one of significance. Although for those who cite the instability of Kim and his relatives who have governed North Korea for decades, it has had some fear that a moment of stupidity on someone’s part could resurrect that Cold War-motivated military conflict.

BUT INSOFAR AS our own political scene is concerned, there are those who are seriously suggesting that the headline ought to have been, “Trump Ends Korean War.”

Many of them also are suggesting that the U.S. president ought to receive credit for bringing the two sides together and ought to get a Nobel Peace Prize.

They think history ought to be crediting Donald J. for bringing an end to a conflict that I honestly suspect most people today only think of as the motivation for the M*A*S*H film and television series. Actor Jamie Farr’s “Corporal Klinger” in drag might be the war’s lasting image.

TRUMP: He really believes it's all about him

If you get the impression I think President Trump is spewing a whole lot of nonsense on this issue, you’d be correct.

IT SEEMS THAT the ideologues remain seriously miffed that the Nobel Committee back in 2009 gave their Peace Prize to then-President Barack Obama. Perhaps they think it’s a matter of “equal time” that their guy get the same prize as well.

Admittedly, that prize to Obama was one that has questionable merit. Obama had engaged in significant rhetoric about nuclear nonproliferation and the merits of peace between the Western world and the Muslim world. It had been hoped that giving Obama the prize would add credibility to his talk.

Although what happened was the distaste ideologues had for Obama meant they became openly hostile to the idea (just like they despised everything he proposed), and little of lasting value came out of that era.

But anybody who’s serious (which the ideologues amongst us rarely are) has to admit Trump has had very little to do with any lasting peace in that region of the world. If anything, his trash talk about North Korea has escalated tensions, and his general attitude toward the rest of the world may be what keeps any lasting peace from being achieved.

KEEP IN MIND that the agreement formally ending the Korean War would still have to be approved by U.S. and China officials. It could take months, if not years, before the Korean conflict (1950-53) is officially over.

There’s also the fact that the Koreas agreement does not include a resolution of one long-significant issue – the degree to which the North ought to have its own arsenal of nuclear weapons. Although the Washington Post reported Sunday that the North said it would dismantle its main nuclear test site sometime next month. Whether that can be settled in the yet-to-be scheduled talks that Trump hints he’ll have with Kim.

Sad that some may think this is real

So while the ideologues amongst us are writing chapters celebrating Trump in history and trying to strongarm people into giving him the Nobel Peace prize, I think the head of North Korea’s national intelligence service may have a more accurate perspective.

While acknowledging “changing norms,” Kim Yong Chol said, “It feels embarrassing to be applauded just for shaking hands.”

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Wishing we, the people, could pick up a history book every now and then

I don’t doubt that North Korea leader Kim Jong-un has a screw or two loose in his

Wishing this were just a debate ...

mindset – he may very well believe his place in history is to be the guy who gives the “go” order that unleashes a nuclear weapon on a city or two within the United States.

Although when I hear our nation’s president, Donald J. Trump, spew out rhetoric about “fire and fury” being unleashed against North Korea, it makes me wonder which world leader’s instability is more likely to cause the problem?

 

... over who has the sillier haircut?

AND I DON’T particularly care if such rhetoric plays well with the 46 percent of the U.S electorate that actually voted for Trump to be president. That only proves our overall ignorance of history and world events.

For all I know, Trump may well want to give the order to unleash an attack on some part of the world so as to enhance his credentials as a world leader in the same way that Kim thinks he’s appeasing the rest of the world by saying he’d only consider use of nuclear weapons on the United States.

I also don’t doubt that Trump’s rhetoric is being played in such a way that Kim is making sure everybody currently trapped into living within North Korea thinks that Trump is the ultimate demon who is threatening to annihilate their country.

Similar to how Fidel Castro had a generation of Cubans thinking the reason their nation had become so impoverished was because of generations of U.S. presidents imposing imperialist policies through the trade embargo that in the end wound up depriving our nation of economic opportunities more than it hurt Cuba.

Kim trying to top Fidel on crazy scale? Image provided by Library of Congress collection

YES, I’M VIEWING this whole situation developing between the United States and the nation with which we technically have been at war with for nearly seven decades with some trepidation. Although the broadcast pundits who now are spewing cheap talk that we’re approaching a sequel to the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962 may be overstating it.

We’re not there, yet. Although I’m wondering if the cooler heads who need to prevail for such a situation to never develop will wind up being drowned out by the nonsense talk of Trump and Kim.

I heard one such pundit make a comment Wednesday about how it is possible that U.S. military interests could “take” North Korea in a fight. It’s just a matter of how much carnage we’re willing to put up with, and how much we’re willing to sacrifice South Korea (our ally and a nation in which we have a military presence) in the process.

I think too many people are willing to ignore that last aspect, even though they shouldn’t.

BECAUSE IF WE want to be realistic, we would have “taken” North Korea a long time ago if it were at all practical. But the fact that China would not want to see a reunified Korea if it means that the part of it historically allied with itself were seen as the “loser.”

And I definitely don’t want to see a situation where we have a U.S./China conflict provoked by a long-forgotten military conflict of the early 1950s. Cold War politicking has the potential to create too many headaches.

Yes, I use the phrase “long-forgotten” to describe the Korean conflict because I really don’t believe most people have a clue about it. They either get it confused with the later actions in Vietnam, or they think it’s something about hospitals and “M*A*S*H” on television.

NOT what Korea was about!

Which means they’re dredging up comical images of actor Jamie Farr in his Scarlet O’Hara dress or swinging a purse while carrying a rifle on guard duty.

CERTAINLY NOT AN image with any bearing in reality. And certainly not one that should be taken into account by anybody with a hand in setting our public policy.

Which is why I do take some comfort in the comments of people like Defense Secretary Jim Mattis who says North Korea needs to “stand down” in its desire to get a usable nuclear weapon. We can only hope that such sensibilities prevail, and that fantasies of South Korean military troops marching in to Pyongyang to occupy the capital of the North do not.

It reminds me of a professor I had in college who liked to say of Harry Truman’s use of atomic weapons to end the Second World War that it was “Harry Truman 2, Rest of the World 0.”

I’d hate to think that we’re headed for a day when his line will have to be amended to read “Truman 2, Kim 1 and Trump 1.”

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