Will Kim Jong Un As Head Of State Move More Towards Markets? — J. Barkley Rosser

Backgrounder. 

My view is that NK likely will move toward the Chinese system of market socialism with Chinese characteristics, but in NK it will be with NK characteristics. Kim Jong Un had already liberalized quite a bit, so this would not constitute an about-face but rather a speed-up of development. Kim Jong Un seems finally to want to join the world economy, which is why he is negotiating with Trump at all, in the face of resistance from the US deep state and military trying to scuttle progress. Bolton is the point man but he is not alone in this thinking.

Econospeak
Will Kim Jong Un As Head Of State Move More Towards Markets?
J. Barkley Rosser | Professor of Economics and Business Administration James Madison University

Zero Hedge — Trump Tells Pompeo Not To Go To North Korea: "Not Making Sufficient Denuclearization Progress"

Trump then blamed China, saying that "because of our much tougher Trading stance with China, I do not believe they are helping with the process of denuclearization as they once were (despite the UN Sanctions which are in place)." This is in line with Trump's complaint from early July in which he said that with respect to the denuclearization process, China "may be exerting negative pressure on a deal because of our posture on Chinese Trade."

Learning that unlike private deals, deals on the world stage among governments are interlinked and influence each other.

Zero Hedge
Trump Tells Pompeo Not To Go To North Korea: "Not Making Sufficient Denuclearization Progress"

Tyler Durden

Andre Vltchek — Releasing My North Korean Documentary Film to My Readers

Download it before it disappears.

NEO

Releasing My North Korean Documentary Film to My Readers

Andre Vltchek

Moon of Alabama — Pyongyang Talks - How Pompeo Put The Cart Before The Horse

Good summary overall.

It is not discernible what Trump really wants. It might well be that he has not made up his mind, or that he changes his position as the days go by.

Of course, "what Trump wants" is quite discernible. He wants to win the negotiation and exactly what "winning" means is never in the interest of the negotiator to disclose. Negotiation is dialectical, involving a series of offers by the parties in a sort of ritual dance, "may the best dancer win."

Singapore got the negotiation process going. The US offer of the US would quite naturally be completely denuclearization as quickly as possible (Bolton had mentioned year). Quite obviously that would be rejected since capitulation was never on the table.

So now we will see whether the negotiation continues "in good faith," or Trump plays the "brinkmanship" card, which he is often wont to do.

Anyway the first round or actual negotiating a deal is now over, ending with "no deal."That was to be expected.

Strategically, this kind of negotiation is very different from business negotiation in that politics is involved on both sides, with both leaders having to bring along their supports and neutralizing their opposition.

For Trump, this first round was largely about neutralizing the domestic opposition by presenting a "hard line."

There are other players involved also, most importantly China, Russia and Japan, all of whom want to see the Korean peninsula denuclearized and North Korea opened up to commerce. This is Kim's goal and that of South Korean President Moon as well. This is consonant with the goal of the US.

However, the US does not want to see the Korean Peninsula become geopolitically neutral as do the other parties.  This will be the real sticking point if things get that far.

Moon of Alabama
Pyongyang Talks - How Pompeo Put The Cart Before The Horse

b

See also

Geopolitics Alert
US Feigns Shock That DPRK Expects Concessions for DisarmamentJim Carey

William Craddick — CIA Teams Up With Defense Industry To Undermine Korea Negotiations

In a new development that will shock no one, factions within the CIA attempted for the second time in just over a month to undermine President Donald Trump’s peace overtures towards North Korea by leaking information calculated to decrease confidence in Kim Jong Un’s willingness to earnestly negotiate.

On June 29, 2018, NBC News released a report quoting anonymous CIA officials who claimed that North Korea was increasing nuclear production at “secret sites” without providing any actual evidence for such claims. The report’s credibility is further weakened by the fact that it also cited reports from a think tank which has strong connections to the defense industry and other private special interests.

In disseminating their report, the CIA used NBC reporter Ken Dilanian as an outlet for leaks. As Disobedient Mediapreviously reported, Dilanian was outed by the Intercept in 2014 as a CIA asset. In the aftermath of the disclosure, Dilanian’s previous employers at the Tribune Washington and Los Angeles Times disavowed the disgraced journalist. In at least one instance, the CIA’s instructions to Dilanian appears to have led to significant changes in a story that was eventually published in the Los Angeles Times.

Since that time, Dilanian has persisted in pushing articles written by former CIA officials who continue to perpetuate the “Trump-Russia” collusion narrative without any regard to facts, such as Steven Hall’s Washington Post article titled: “I was in the CIA. We wouldn’t trust a country whose leader did what Trump did.”…

Are people still falling for this stuff?

Disobedient Media
CIA Teams Up With Defense Industry To Undermine Korea Negotiations

William Craddick

David William Pear — Why North Korea Can Never Trust the U.S.

It's not so much that the US is "agreement incapable" as that the US has no intention of keeping its agreements, as the historical record shows. They are just a matter of temporary convenience subject to overall national policy, strategy and tactics.

Pear relates a sad story that starts with treaties with Native Americans, leading to the expression, "White man speaks with forked tongue."

Naked Capitalism
Why North Korea Can Never Trust the U.S.
David William Pear

See also

Medium
It’s Time To Start Getting Enraged At What Western Imperialists Have Done To Syria

Caitlin Johnstone | Rogue journalist. Bogan socialist. Anarcho-psychonaut. Guerilla poet. Utopia prepper

See also

The US president's opponents in the the upper chamber aim to overturn his carefully constructed compromise with Beijing over the Chinese telecom giant ZTE

China is undoubtedly livid over this instance of the US being agreement-incapable, even before the ink was dry. Why bother negotiating?

Asia Times
A neocon Senate coup against Trump’s foreign policy?

See also

When you don't get your way. I won't be surprised if the US eventually withdraws from the UN entirely.

Reuters
U.S. to pull out of U.N. human rights body: source

Lesley Wroughton, Steve Holland

Moon of Alabama — The Real Results Of The Trump-Kim Summit - Freeze For Freeze (And Some Amusement)

Rational assessment of the lead in to the summit, the summit, the outcome, and the aftermath.

Moon of Alabama
The Real Results Of The Trump-Kim Summit - Freeze For Freeze (And Some Amusement)

b

Moon of Alabama — First Thoughts On The Kim Trump Photo-Op Summit

There's a huge amount of stuff appearing on the Trump-Kim meeting, most of it fictive emotive babbling.

MoA presents a brief and balanced summary of the key aspects.

The losers, for now, are the hawks in Japan, South Korea and Washington who tried their best to prevent this to happen. The winners are the people of Korea, Kim Jong-un and Donald Trump. Special prizes go to President Moon Jae-in of South Korea and to Dennis Rodman who did their best to make this happen.

Moon of Alabama
First Thoughts On The Kim Trump Photo-Op Summit

b

Maximilian C. Forte — “One Day This Door is Going to Open”: A Review of “Dennis Rodman’s Big Bang in Pyongyang” (Documentary)

Great backgrounder.

Apparently, Dennis Rodman was a lot more important in bringing the Trump-Kim summit about that most people realize or the media and establishment are willing to admit. The article also provides an inside view of North Korea that gives the lie to Western propaganda, as well as exposing the US media attempt to destroy Rodman personally.

Zero Anthropology
“One Day This Door is Going to Open”: A Review of “Dennis Rodman’s Big Bang in Pyongyang” (Documentary)

Maximilian C. Forte | Professor of Anthropology and Sociology at Concordia University in Montréal, Québec

See also

Russian and Eurasian Politics
Russian Soft Power on Display
Gordon M. Hahn, analyst and Advisory Board member at Geostrategic Forecasting Corporation, member of the Executive Advisory Board at the American Institute of Geostrategy, a contributing expert for Russia Direct, a senior researcher at the Center for Terrorism and Intelligence Studies, Akribis Group, and; and an analyst and consultant for Russia – Other Points of View

Ramesh Thakur — What Sank the Kim-Trump Summit?

Good summary with timeline.

Project Syndicate
What Sank the Kim-Trump Summit?
Ramesh Thakur, a former assistant secretary-general of the United Nations, is emeritus professor at the Crawford School of Public Policy, Australian National University, and co-convenor of the Asia-Pacific Leadership Network for Nuclear Non-Proliferation and Disarmament

Mike Whitney — Foreign Policy Insiders Try to Scuttle Trump-Kim Nukes Deal

Good points. The best part is in the final several paragraphs.

The Unz Review

Foreign Policy Insiders Try to Scuttle Trump-Kim Nukes Deal

Mike Whitney

China Daily — Xi backs DPRK development

Shot across the bow of US?

Ecns
Xi backs DPRK development

China Daily

North Korea

Well North Korea keeps saying "denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula" instead of "North Korea," and that has a specific meaning in North Korean parlance. That is dislodging the US nuclear [extended] deterrence from the region.

So, we are not talking about the denuclearization of North Korea per se, but disarmament or dislodging the US presence from the region. These are two very different conceptual definitions.... 

Sputnik International

Kim Worked Assiduously to Develop Nukes, He's Unlikely to Give Them Up – Prof.

Radio Sputnik interviews Lee Sung-yoon, a Korea expert at Tufts University

See also

Bolton has reiterated this position.

Bolton, a hawk who Trump named on Thursday to replace H.R. McMaster in the key security role, told Radio Free Asia on Monday that discussions at the proposed summit with Kim Jong Un should be similar to those that led to components of Libya’s nuclear program being shipped to the United States in 2004.

“Let’s have this conversation by May, or even before that, and let’s see how serious North Korea really is,” Bolton said, according to a transcript of his remarks posted on the RFA website on Friday.

“If they’re not prepared to have that kind of serious discussion, it could actually be a very short meeting.”...

Reuters (23 March 2018)

Trump should insist on Libya-style denuclearization for North Korea: Bolton

see also

This Can't Be Happening
What Does ‘Denuclearization’ Mean in the Negotiations for an End to the Korean War?

Dave Lindorff

Related

Dilbert Blog
My North Korea Blog Posts – Indexed for Historians

Scott Adams

Xuan Loc Doan — Beijing’s ‘win-win’ Korean Peninsula scenario

Diplomatic ping-pong.

China seeks a "win-win," while Washington regards geopolitics as a zero-sum game.

Asia Times
Beijing’s ‘win-win’ Korean Peninsula scenario

Xuan Loc Doan

See also

Not only Turkey.

Geopolitics Alert
Turkey Breaks with NATO, Refuses to Expel Russians
Jim Carey

Konstantin Asmolov — Will China Give North Korea Up?

Backgrounder.

NEO
Will China Give North Korea Up?

Konstantin Asmolov, leading researcher at the Centre for Korean Studies at the Institute of the Far East RAS

Kori Schake — The North Korea Debate Sounds Eerily Familiar

Trump’s national-security officials are making many of the same arguments Bush’s did in 2003....

When you lose The Atlantic....

The Atlantic
The North Korea Debate Sounds Eerily Familiar
Kori Schake, fellow at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University

also

The Trump administration is preparing to roll out its new National Security Strategy, a document meant to guide its national security policies. Yet a Trump administration staffer who reviewed a draft of the document—and shared key excerpts with me—describes it as “divorced from the reality” of Trump’s presidency. (This person requested anonymity because he was not authorized to speak publicly about the document before its release.) A few classically Trumpian themes are there—the wall, concern over trade imbalances—but much of the document reflects the values and priorities of the president’s predecessors….

Trump's National Security Strategy is Decidedly Non-Trumpian

Kate Brannen | Deputy Managing Editor of Just Security, Nonresident Senior Fellow at the Brent Scowcroft Center on International Security at the Atlantic Council, Former Senior Reporter covering the Pentagon for Foreign Policy

The Saker — How the DPRK riddle is freaking out the US establishment

What's happening behind the scenes.

The Vineyard of the Saker
How the DPRK riddle is freaking out the US establishment
The Saker

Asia Unhedged — Trump doesn’t need congressional approval to attack North Korea: Mattis

The US Constitution stipulates that only Congress has the authority to declare war. But Article II of the same document also says the President has the power to unilaterally order military action when he determines that a foreign political entity poses a clear and present danger to the safety and security of the US.

Secretary of State Rex Tillerson said at the same hearing of Trump’s powers, “I think it would have to be fact-based and given consideration as to the circumstances around an imminent threat.”….

Asia Times

Trump doesn’t need congressional approval to attack North Korea: Mattis

Asia Unhedged

Sdd also

Drunk with power.

Astute News
Is It Insanity, Evil, or Both That Has the Western World in Its Grip?
Asif Aziz

LARRY WILKERSON: I think the AUMF and its perpetuity almost, 16+ years now, I guess 16 years, a month, and several days, is a very dangerous thing. As James Madison said, the surest way to tyranny is through the War Power. The military's understandable. Mattis, Kelly, McMaster, all those guys. They're understandable, 'cause the military never wants any inhibitions in its way when it feels like its at war.

But we've used this Authorization for the Use of Military Force for 14 different countries. We've used it 37 times. Everyone knows about Iraq and Afghanistan, but they don't know about Djibouti, Yemen, the Philippines, Kenya, Eritrea, Niger, and on and on. It's about time the Congress exercised its Article 1 War Power, and took some of this back from the President. This is absurd that we can, we're looking at another 16-17 years. I mean, there's no end in sight to this.…

But we're also overplaying our hand militarily and we're really making a lot of people in the world, including our allies and friends, begin to wonder at our sanity....

The bigger issue here I think that you suggested with these three generals, I have to back up a little bit on and say earlier you may recall I was fairly optimistic that they would in fact be a check and balance, if you will, on a rather irrational and totally inexperienced President. I'm not sure of that anymore, but I did say originally, and this is part of my concern now, that all three of them, McMaster, Mattis, and Kelly, are all exponents, advocates of practitioners of the empire.

They're all military practitioners of the empire, and as such, they [believe] that the empire has to keep fighting these...on its periphery, even if it bankrupts them. I just read General Mattis' memorandum out to the troops, so to speak. I was bowled over by it. There's nothing in there about new strategic guidance, about cutting spending, about doing all the things the Defense Department really desperately needs to do. It's just more of the same. More of the maintenance of empire, especially the empire on its peripheries....

Well, we've let the military instrument get completely out of hand. Frankly, we have let it get utterly and totally out of hand. We have let the military industrial complex that Eisenhower told us about, come to fruition in a way that even Eisenhower I don't think would have predicted. When he said, "This is no way of life at all. This is under the threatening cloud of war. Humanity hanging on a cross of iron," I don't think he had any idea the cross of iron would be as tall and wide as it is today.

The people like Kelly and Mattis and McMaster, they represent that cross of iron. So no matter how rational they are, no matter how good a strategic thinker they are, no matter how professional, full of integrity, high character they are, their profession is the profession of killing people for the state. That was my profession for 31 years. That's a profession that one needs to be very careful about allowing to have so much influence on national decision-making, but we've let that happen, and that's a very dangerous situation for us to be in....

TRNN
Post 9/11 AUMF Law Gives Trump Power to Wage Perpetual War

Sharmini Peries interviews Col. Lawrence Wilkerson

Asia Unhedged — Trump: China ‘helping’ with N. Korea, has ‘exceptional relationship’ with Xi

President Donald Trump praised China for “helping” the US in the North Korean crisis in a Sunday TV interview with Fox News network and noted that he has an “exceptional relationship” with Chinese President Xi Jinping.

Trump also said on Fox’s “Sunday Morning Futures” that China has the “power to do something very significant” in the continuing face off with Pyongyang....

Asia Times

Trump: China ‘helping’ with N. Korea, has ‘exceptional relationship’ with Xi

Asia Unhedged

Asia Unhedged — War of words shakes China’s policy circles over response to possible Korean war

The CP analysis says details of the Zhu-Jia face off recently surfaced in the Singapore daily Lianhe Zaobao. The island nation’s largest Chinese-language newspaper said the pair represented two distinct schools of thought on the security implications for China stirred by the North Korea crisis.

“On one front, a conservative ‘leftist’ school sees the US and South Korea using Pyongyang’s nuclear program as a pretext to reduce China’s strategic space,” CP said in a summary of the Lianhe Zaobao piece.

“A more liberal ‘rightist’ school on the opposing front emphasizes the threat North Korea poses to China, urging closer cooperation with the international community. While neither school is unified, their views regarding the origins and consequences of North Korea’s nuclear program are starkly divided,” CP added....

The "leftist" view is based on understanding US foreign policy experts and military strategists concerning US hegemony.

The "rightist" view is about China assuming a leadership role in the international community based on "fitting into" the global order, with a view of influencing it as China grows in economic power.

In my estimation the leftists are probably being more practical here, in that the Western liberal order is used as a subterfuge for advancing Western positions, neoliberalism, neo-imperialism and neocolonialism being different facets of the same position that represents itself as being based on "Western values."

Asia Times
War of words shakes China’s policy circles over response to possible Korean war

Asia Unhedged