While on Tuesday I was frankly much more interested in hearing what Mike Love and Bruce Johnston of the Beach Boys had to say about their collaboration with the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, the anchorman had to politely caution them they may need to switch at short notice to a news announcement.
The reason for this was after a on-off-on series of behind the scenes diplomatic activity President Trump of the United States of America and his opposite number Kim Jong-un of North Korea the two leaders met in Singapore, South-east Asia which was the first time a serving U.S. President has ever met his North Korean counterpart in over sixty years.
Being of the generation brought up in the "Cold War" we learned and lived with the history of the Korean War of 1950-53,Eisenhower's doctrine of the "Domino Effect" of how one country would fall to "Red China" the whole of the region would get into communist hands which was our moral mission to prevent leading to involvement in Indo-China and Vietnam specifically.
Whatever our reservations may be other how that panned out and the rapprochement with China in recent decades, that left the states of North and South Korea technically at war each backed by China and the U.S. respectively subject to periodic tensions and missile threats apart from leaving families split and gross human rights violations in the North.
Indeed the worrying back drop to this was the frankly childish even for seven year olds playground spat between these two grown men trading insults and threats of mass destruction that scared South Korea and other neighbouring states.
After all this both men (and I'd like to think they had "Grown up") agreed to look at denuclearization of whole Korean peninsula, working on economic reform and development, human rights and a end to hostilities.
While critics can rightly point out there's not much meat on the bones here and may question if giving up rather than suspending training exercises with South Korea temporarily, the preparedness to at least start the process of tidying up the Cold War mess in a way that respects the legitimate concerns of both Korea's and de-esculates tensions I feel has to be seen as a good thing.
1 comment:
Ms. Chan, while I will agree with you that this whole thing does seem a bit childish, when dealing with bullies such as Kim Jong Un, you approach them the same way you might with a Black Widow Spider, or a King Cobra snake . . . very carefully. What our President did was a coddle a very fragile ego. Sometimes you have to do that, and seem weak when indeed you are holding a Royal Flush in your hand. We could easily destroy North Korea in a matter of hours, but why do that if you can make peace instead. President Reagan used the term 'Trust, but verify' to end the Cold War, but that took months and even years working with Gorbachev to accomplish that. People are nominating President Trump for the Nobel Peace Prize, and I think it's rather premature. Understand, I voted for him, I'm a conservative Christian, and I think he's going a great job, but he is handling a very delicate situation that the last five sitting Presidents were afraid to touch.
He's not going to let this get out of control, because when it moves towards that, he'll have armed forces back in South Korea overnight, sanctions will begin again, and Kim Jong Un will be in a worse position than he is now.
Truly, we can only wait and see.
One other thing, many of the Conservatives here in the U.S. are alarmed at the number of violent knife attacks in the U.K., and I know many of us would like to see the UK reinstate firearm rights back to the citizens to protect themselves. Doubt it would happen, but for me, and all of your friends, please be very careful when you are out and about.
Gennie
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