Labels

Saturday, June 16, 2018

The Unfreezing of Korea Begins | Gold Goats 'n Guns - TOM LUONGO


Now that we’ve had a few days to let the war-mongers and Democrats (or do I repeat myself) fulminate over the summit between Donald Trump and Kim Jong-un it’s important to look at what actually happened and where we’re going next.
For a good analysis of what was actually accomplished, read this excellent post over at Moon of Alabama.
… the ‘freeze for freeze’ North Korea had offered [Obama previously in 2015 and 2016] and China promoted. The U.S. stops the large “strategic” maneuvers involving nuclear capable bombers flying from Guam, aircraft carriers and the like, while North Korea stops testing nukes and missiles. North Korea achieved its first aim. It can now lower its miliary posture and develop its economy.
The situation is still somewhat unstable as both freeze steps are reversible.
The ‘freeze for freeze’ is, as the Chinese Foreign Minister envisioned, a starting point for a long series of talks which may finally lead to a peace agreement and some nuclear disarmament. Now comes the “dual-track approach” of a peace agreement in exchange for some disarmament “in a synchronized and reciprocal manner”. This will be a “step-by-step” process which will take years or even decades.
Russia was promoting this same strategy publicly during the worst of the tensions between Trump and Kim last year. Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov spoke of the ‘double freeze’ repeatedly.
And it was always going to end this way because, as I’ve been saying all along, North Korea has a nuclear weapon and the U.S. will only come to the bargaining table when it has lost significant leverage.
And a nuclear deterrent is a major bit of leverage.
So, the “Freeze for Freeze” is now in effect.   The war games are a direct economic benefit to North Korea as MoA points out at length.  And Trump gets the win by spinning it as a cost-cutting measure.
The imperial sycophants and quislings are crying in their lattes over this and defense stocks have taken it on the chin.  All of this is to the good of mankind.
All. of. it.
Rejoice in this, unless you believe in creating a world safe for George Soros’s Open Society and continued serfdom at the hands of the Globalist elites.  And, as I said the other day, their response to these very tentative steps towards delineates who is working for peace and who is working for chaos.
The bigger question is the one Pat Buchanan is asking and it sits at the heart of the criticism Trump is getting from the chattering class, cynically using this to paint him as weak and an enabler of ‘brutal dictators.’
Why should Kim give up his nuclear weapons when they are the only thing that got Trump to show up in Singapore in the first place?
The clear answer is that he won’t until much, much later in the process.  Because, in truth, just as we’ve seen with Trump abandoning the JCPOA and Bush the Lesser abrogating the NPT treaty in 2003, U.S. policy can change with the change of leadership, and usually for the worse for the other signatory.
Therefore, if Kim has truly played Trump the way the Never-Trumpers and liberal interventionists are portraying him then they are showing us their cards as to their true intentions, which is to continue the Korean conflict as frozen in the 1950’s for as long as possible, serving their goals and not those of anyone else.
It is not in Americans best interest to continue this charade of a conflict in Korea.  It never was.  It was always about feathering the nests of the massive political and corporate rentierclass of the Globalist oligarchy.
So, anything that breaks down that conflict, unfreezing it by freezing aberrant and dangerous behavior like further development of nuclear weapons and redundant ‘war games’ to disrupt North Korea’s rice harvest is an unqualified good thing.
Beyond that, this ‘freeze for freeze’ which unfreezes some of the sanctions on North Korea allows for the very best outcomes to begin, the development of North Korea’s basic first world infrastructure.
Russian state news agency TASS reported yesterday that talks between South Korea and Russian state gas giant Gazprom have resumed over a natural gas pipeline.  The project was shelved in 2012 because of a lack of trust between North and South Korea to make the project viable economically.
Today that distrust has thawed considerably and now the pipeline that makes the most sense for everyone, bringing it across the North Korean/Russian border near Vladivostok and over-land into Seoul, can be negotiated.
And this is just the beginning of the benefits for Kim’s walk in from the political winter cold.  He made that walk across the DMZ to meet with his South Korean counterpart, Moon Jae-in for all the right reasons.
And this announcement by Gazprom is the next step in obviating Kim’s need to further develop nuclear weapons.  Never forget that all nuclear development has a power generation angle to it.  By bringing in cheap Russian gas and allowing Gazprom, most likely, to build the associated electricity plants this lessens the need for any further nuclear shenanigans.
That should make everyone except the Usual Suspects very happy and help grease the skids for the stages of negotiations to end this shameful period of history.  The ghosts of WWII need to be buried once and for all.
And if a couple of gas pipelines and some troops withdrawal are the result, then that, to me is a very small price for an Empire in the early stages of decline to pay.