re: Surprise! Donald Trump is terrible at diplomacy. - WaPo - Update: FT Still Right

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FT Still Right

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Absolutely

So this is the hill that FT has decided to die on?

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Barack Obama got eleven back, and I was pleased we got the hostages back under both.

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In return for releasing terrorists back into terrorist hotbeds to return to their terrorist ways against us. Then he decided to unilaterally give Iran billions in multiple currencies in the middle of the night. Trump used the worlds most powerful military and comparable rhetoric to the hostage holder and low and behold they were returned without a single dollar or a single terrorist.

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The problem is that he made a show of it; you don’t make a show of saving hostages or prisoners because it incentivizes taking them. European nations pay ransoms. The US doesn’t. There’s varying arguments there; you save your people when you pay, but at a cost to other people who may be taken prisoner. The US doesn’t, but a US hostage being beheaded on TV or sent back on his deathbed is a win for you if you’re ISIS or North Korea. There’s nuance here, and the way Trump went about this was hamfisted and weak.

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Obama paid Iran. And then there’s the spectacle Obama made of Bowe Bergdhal in the rose Garden. Man you people are thick.

First rule of holes: Don’t dig pointless ones. Digging a hole is how you get a well.

No. Those terrorists are in prison elsewhere as opposed to here.

And there is a substantive difference between recovering a soldier and a civilian. If Trump gets back the POW/MIA soldiers from the Korean War, I’ll be pleased with that. My grandfather was stationed in Japan during the Korean War; he’d want that, and so do I.

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If Trump gets back the POW/MIA soldiers from the Korean War, I’ll be pleased with that.

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We will restart the repatriations that lapsed in the recent past.

You know you are on the wrong side of an issue when Toddy shows up to back you up

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Absolutely

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Easy. Sorry if I didn’t reply earlier.

A win, in this case, is threefold.

1) Go heavily into the TPP, alienating China from their neighbors and making the United States the preferred trading partner in the region. This limits China’s ability to pressure North Korea or make overtures to other nations.

2) Once the nations in the region and our partners recognize that the United States is the trading partner to have, over China, you demand that North Korea cease testing of missiles and allow inspectors in. You offer a carrot; a way to be closer to the United States and South Korea than they are to China. You make moves with private companies to open factories and farms in North Korea. If they slip up, the people have gotten a taste of a market they’ve never seen. It destabilizes North Korea, and incentivizes real inspections and transparency, lest Kim lose his hold on the nation and his godlike status with the people.

3) When the above have been done, you’ve shattered the status quo. The people will have had access to the West in a way that always works. We win consistently when the people are eating at McDonald’s, wearing Levis, and fed up with how things used to be. He’s faced with a situation that requires winning a civil war, or at least massive unrest, or capitulation.

What we did instead:

1) Have a meeting with no preconditions.

2) Cancel military exercises.

3) Legitimize Kim in the eyes of his people, with nothing to show for it. Even the haters and losers are arguing that this is only the beginning. It is the beginning, and we began by giving away very valuable propaganda and military preparedness in exchange for a promise North Korea always gives and has never followed through with.

I was making fun of this guy at like 2 in the morning and he's still at it.