SE Asia: Reading Tea Leaves of Defunct British Empire

Trump’s insistence that we unilaterally withdraw from the Korean peninsula

For seven decades, the United States and South Korea have been the closest of allies. Their soldiers have served together not just on the Korean Peninsula but in Vietnam, Afghanistan and Iraq. And under America’s protective umbrella, the South Korean economy has soared.

Now, as North Korea carries out a series of provocative missile and nuclear bomb tests, that alliance is straining at a time when both nations may need it more than ever.

President Trump issued a blast of antagonistic comments in the last few days that have made South Koreans doubt that they can take the alliance for granted any longer.

Continued below the fold …

On Twitter, he declared that “talking is not the answer!” in dealing with North Korea, casting aside the push by the new South Korean president, Moon Jae-in, to hold talks with the North. On Saturday, he threatened to withdraw the United States from a five-year-old free trade agreement with South Korea over what he considers its unfair protectionist policies. And on Sunday, after North Korea detonated its most powerful nuclear device yet, he essentially called the South Koreans appeasers.

“South Korea is finding, as I have told them, that their talk of appeasement with North Korea will not work, they only understand one thing!” Mr. Trump said on Twitter.

The tone of Mr. Trump’s statements stunned officials here and underscored what unlikely partners he and Mr. Moon are, at a time when their countries’ 67-year-old military alliance faces an ever-more-dangerous regime in Pyongyang.

No, it’s NOT Trump`s accomplishment, rather despite of him, his arrogance and belligerence. All credits should go to the Korea partners and the talks leading up to the Winter Olympics in Pyeongchang … yes, sometimes diplomacy does work!

○ US Military Install THAAD Missiles as South Korean Protests Erupt
○ China wins its war against South Korea’s US THAAD missile shield – without firing a shot
○ Seoul offers Kim Jong-un grand bargain to link North and South Korean economies with China

The GOP as a party and the Democrats in foreign policy have been living suspended in time and space to an era of the Cold War. No doubt about it. The rhetoric of warmongering has forever increased every year after 9/11 and the extension of the War of Terror into Iraq and later into Libya and Syria. The terror unleashed by Osama bin Laden and Al Qaeda was beyond belief, as was the creation of the Islamic State from the AQ sunni jihadists fighting the Americans in Anbar province. Using these cut throat bandits to terrorize the Syrian people in a proxy war against Assad was unforgivable and a grave war crime.

Max Blumenthal “mea-culpa”

○ Blumenthal, Norton, Khalek – The Turncoats Deliver A Poor Excuse

Osama bin-Laden tweet h/t generic