North Korea was never going to give up nuclear weapons. Period. I have explained that repeatedly, as have many others, with the only real difference being that I add the observation that dictators like Kim need to worry about internal revolt as well as external threats, and Kim's ability to keep the military in line is dependent on their perception that he knows how to keep us out of North Korea. Nuclear weapons play to his domestic audience too.
Anyone who didn't understand his need to keep his nukes was an idiot. So, the demand that Kim give up his nukes at the summit? There was no point. That brings me to how I concluded the "Political science & craziness" series, which I wrote back in 2016, before Trump was elected. I keep referring back to it because I think it is an important tool for assessing Trump's "tactics," such as they are.
Full links to the series are below so that you don't have to go digging, but I concluded the series in Part V by pointing out the distinction between the bargaining advantages that seemingly crazy people can have, and the worst case scenarios. A seemingly crazy person can get a bargaining advantage by making a loony threat that no sane person would make, and have it seem credible. What happens, though, if you have a truly crazy person, and the person on the other end of the threat isn't capable of giving the looney-tune what he wants? As I said in Part V, if a crazy guy demands my watch or he'll detonate a grenade, I'll give him my watch. If he demands my whole arm, the problem is that I don't know how to detach that. Have you read Thomas Schelling yet? C'mon... Trump was never going to get a Nobel, but Schelling got a real one, and yes, the Economics prize is a real one.*
What if Trump really had said, gimme your nukes or you go boom?
Boom.
And there still might be an earth-shattering kaboom, giving Marvin his unobstructed view of Venus.
What do we take from this? Well, here's an interesting observation that conflicts with something I said repeatedly in that series. Trump backs down. A lot. As President, dude's a fuckin' coward. He's even backing down on his trade war. He's letting everyone push him around like the novice idiot that he is because he is more concerned with the bluster than the action.
It means that at some point soon, I'm going to revisit this, because I think I got a lot wrong here. There was some basic political science here, all based on Schelling, which everyone should read. It's a great book. However, Trump as President? Right now, I'm thinking I misread him. He's a coward and a pathetic weakling, as all bullies truly are when pushed, and I didn't factor that into my observations sufficiently.
And that's way better than many of my concerns.
Anyway, for those who want to go back and don't feel like digging, here are the links to the "Political Science & Craziness" series. At some point in the not-too-distant future, this will get revisited as, "Trump's a cowardly, blustering idiot rather than a kamikaze maniac," or something like that. I dunno. Stay tuned. Maybe Putin blackmailed him into calming the fuck down! If so, thanks, Vlady!
Anyway, links:
Part I
Part II
Part III
Part IV
Part V
*Let's not argue about the history of the Nobels and the later addition of the Economics prize.
