Episode 67 - North Korea Walks From Negotiating Table. Who Saw That Coming?

Date: 2018-06-16 | Duration: 12:50

Topics

Why did Kim walk from negotiating table? U.S. and South Korean military exercises at border His request is justified Easy for U.S. to resolve the disputed point A good “walk away” by Kim

Transcript

[0:08]

Pom, pom, pom, pom, poms! Breaking news! Breaking news! Pom, pom, pom, pom, pom, pom! So many of you will remember, and I see it in the comments already, one of my predictions was that there would be a walk away from the negotiating table on this North Korea business—either U.S. or them, maybe both—but there would certainly be at least one walk away. Today we have it. Now, it’s more of a threatened walk away because the meeting’s June 12th. What’s the difference between threatening to walk away and walking away? Because you could always change your mind, so those things get a little conflated. But North Korea’s walked away. The topic that seems to be a Bugaboo is that there are ongoing military exercises on their border with South Korea.

[1:10]

The United States and South Korea—they’re saying, “What the hell? We’re here negotiating for peace and you’re on our border getting ready to attack.” Now, of course we say these are defensive exercises, but I don’t know how much of a difference there is between offense and defense in this situation, meaning that the stuff on the border would probably be in defense mode whereas the attack would come from a different way. But we don’t have any plans of attacking him, so that’s irrelevant. Now somebody’s saying, “But it didn’t bother him before. Why is it suddenly an issue?” Well, let me suggest a reason. He’s negotiating in front of the entire world. The whole world’s watching, and what the press is reporting so far is that Kim has caved in.

[2:11]

Kim has caved in his nuclear weapons program. Kim has negotiated away his mountain that he tests the nukes in. The news is suggesting that everything is going Trump’s way and nothing is going Kim’s way. That’s not really a comfortable situation. Your best deals are when both people are feeling a little bit of pain, but in this case, the U.S. and South Korea have their dominant military position, so we’re reluctant to do any kind of trade until we absolutely have to. Now, it’s very interesting that Kim is getting tough on this point. What is interesting about the issue that he’s decided to make a stand on? Let me put it to you: what is unique

[3:12]

about the issue that Kim is making a stand on and walking away from negotiation from? The very first comment had it. The very first comment was, and then another comment—actually the two of them together: it’s justified. It’s justified. It’s a reasonable thing to ask. And number two: it’s easy to fix. So he’s asking for probably the one easiest thing to fix, because you only have to fix it between now and June 12th. It makes no difference to the U.S. readiness. It makes no difference to the actual military capability. No difference. And Kim is saying, “What the hell? I’m doing these things which also maybe

[4:14]

are no difference.” You’re getting rid of a test site—well, you could build another one. So nothing is permanent. Everything that he’s agreed on or is talking about are things that are fairly reasonable. And so he’s saying, “Look, I’m doing all these fairly reasonable things. Short of the final deal, what are you doing? Name one thing. Name one thing you’ve done, United States and South Korea, to build our confidence that we’re good players—trustworthy players working toward a common solution.” Now, I’m not close to the negotiations, and I don’t know if we’ll stop doing what we’re doing. We might just let them run their course. If there’s a week left, maybe we just wait a week and then just say, “All right, we’re done for now.” So there are a number of ways we could play this. But does it make sense

[5:16]

for Kim to walk away from the table on this issue? Kind of does. Kind of does. Remember, Rodman gave him the book, “The Art of the Deal,” and a central premise is you’ve got to be able to walk away from the deal you don’t like. If he doesn’t like this part of the deal and he thinks there’s some flexibility, it’s a good walk away. Now, there are two ways that Kim can win, and this is also right out of the Trump playbook. Two ways that Kim can win: Number one, we say, “Good point. We’ll wind down the exercises. We agree with you. You’ve done some stuff for us; we’ll do some stuff for you.” It doesn’t really change our military capabilities in any real way, but it’s symbolic. So you did some symbolic stuff,

[6:17]

we’ll do a symbolic thing back. Let’s get back to the table. That’s one way it could go. Probably not. Probably not. Another way it could go is that the exercises will just finish. Maybe finish a little earlier than normal. Maybe we say, “This normally would take two weeks, but we’ll wrap it up in one week because it’s hard to unwind it so quickly. But you make a good point. Instead of doing this for two more weeks, we’ll just limit it to a week. You win. Let’s get back to the table.” There are plenty of ways we can go in which Kim can rack up a win. Should the United States give him a win if it doesn’t cost us anything? Sometimes. Not every time, but in the right situation—and I don’t know if we’re in that situation—there might be a

[7:18]

reason to do that because, remember, it’s not really giving up anything. It’s giving up the impression of something. Exactly what he gave us—he gave up the impression of something. So we’ve got plenty of room to work here. It was completely rational for Kim to walk away. Don’t know how it will be solved, but it’s easy to solve, so it will be solved. I think we can confidently say that unless there are other issues, this part will probably get a solution. This is actually good news sort of disguised as bad news. Remember that I predicted that we would see this. Maybe a month ago or so I said you should look for at least one walk away from the table, and here it is. Or at least the first one. There might be more. There might be a point where Trump walks

[8:20]

away, we don’t know, but it shows that North Korea is both serious about making a deal and it understands deal-making. What could be better news? You just heard the best news you’ve heard in a year. North Korea does seem to want a real deal and they know how to make a deal. That’s it. He’s not crazy.

The news will make a big thing of this. We’re already seeing the people who used to think they were smart, who have been wrong about everything for two years. They’re coming out of the woodwork today and they’re saying, “Uh-huh, I told you North Korea cannot be trusted to get rid of their nuclear weapons. Can’t trust them. I’ve been telling you this for a year and now you see they walked away.” So they’re going to have a lot of fun for however long it takes to get back to the

[9:26]

table, but I think we’re fine. Let’s not worry about it. That’s all I had to say. Oh, just one more thing—somebody made a comment about CNN. I was watching CNN today and this is sort of a game I play where I switch between Fox and CNN and I see how often this pattern recurs. On Fox, they mostly talk about something called the news—things that are actually happening, like a real person did a real thing today. Also known as the news. You switch to CNN and it’s just gossip. It’s pure gossip. It’s like, “Wow, we think he lied about a mistress,” and the other imaginary part is, “We think that something terrible could go wrong. We think that somebody did a thing, but we can’t find the evidence.” So they’ve got imaginary past news with

[10:28]

insufficient evidence or no evidence, and they have projections of future things which probably won’t happen because they’re not often right. Then the things that are happening today are just gossip. They’re not even news, unless you call gossip news. It’s pretty fascinating to watch.

I’m having a hilarious time watching all of the Trump critics trying desperately to coax a public apology from the staffer who said something bad about McCain. I tweeted today that people are criticizing President Trump for insulting people in the context of an insult competition, which is what politics

[11:30]

is. They insult him; he insults his critics. It’s sort of a competition to reframe the critic badly, to brand yourself positively, but it’s all an insult competition. If there’s somebody in the insult competition who is insulting, that’s not news. That’s just saying that there is an insult competition. It’s sort of like saying, as I said in my tweet, it’s like accusing somebody of bowling during a bowling tournament. “You bowled! My God, what are you doing? I demand an apology for your bowling!” And then you say, “I’m in a bowling tournament,” and they say, “Nice try, apologist. Try explaining that to your children.” And he did the bit for that.

[12:39]

That’s it for now. If there’s any more breaking news, I might break back in here and talk about it, but for now, don’t feel too worried about the walk away from North Korea. All right on schedule.