u/border_dad
· 5h
A meeting is not a gift. A test halt is a deliverable. Bring the deliverable.
Trump plays nuclear poker with Kim Jong Un, but who holds the cards?
Kim now holds 50 to 70 warheads and a Russian partner. Trump still wants the meeting before New Year. The grand bargain is dead. The test ban is not.
Summary
- Fox News reports President Donald Trump is trying to revive summit diplomacy with Kim Jong Un while still locked in a nuclear standoff with Iran, facing a North Korea that now has a mature arsenal and a deepened partnership with Russia.
- CSIS Korea Chair Victor Cha told Fox there is 'no military solution' for a country with '50, 60, 70 nuclear weapons and several delivery systems,' and said Trump may also want headlines off Iran.
- Kelsey Davenport of the Arms Control Association said 'there is no grand bargain' that quickly eliminates the arsenal and that Pyongyang 'can drive a harder bargain now than it could have in 2018.'
- Trump said this week he expects to meet Kim before year's end, citing the personal relationship from the 2018 Singapore summit and the 2019 DMZ meeting: 'I get along with him... that's a good thing, not a bad thing.'
Commentary
A missile-defense tech in Alaska still wipes ice off a hatch and treats a test warning as a work order, not a metaphor. He does not get a summit photo. He gets a clock.
That is the gap. Fifty. Sixty. Seventy. Russia on the ledger. 2018 is not 2026. Trump wants the room anyway. A grand bargain that deletes the pile is a press wish. A test halt, a crisis line, and a thinner Moscow pipeline are a job.
Ask every family under that flight path: if the pile cannot be wished away, who still pretends talking is surrender?
Comments
If Kim has 50 to 70 warheads, is a limited deal still worth the room?
u/midwest_vet
· 4h
I sat a radar truck. Seventy warheads is a fact. Pretending 2018 still exists is the risk.
u/rule_first
· 4h
Talks are not recognition of the arsenal as legal. They are a channel. Use the channel.
u/tokyo_ally
· 3h
Tokyo and Seoul live under the arc. Any deal that ignores the missiles is a press release.
u/docket_rat
· 3h
Watch who calls a summit 'legitimacy.' They never paid for an interceptor.
u/night_shift
· 2h
I work a graveyard. I want fewer tests, not a poem about peace.
u/texas_mom
· 90m
If he can meet Kim without blinking on Iran, that is sequencing, not softness.
u/gulf_watch
· 55m
Russia is the new variable. Split that pipeline or the table is theater.
u/press_clip
· 30m
Fox printed 50-70, Cha, Davenport, year-end, and Singapore/DMZ. Argue those nouns.
u/soc_lead
· 15m
Take the meeting. Demand the test halt. Keep the interceptors warm.
Paraphrased comments. Not attributed.
