>The only significant thing to change was American policy.

The North Korean government has a small but credible nuclear deterrent in the form of a warhead stockpile + ICBMs. That's only happened in the last year or two.

But they’ve had warheads and “scuds” (with conv explosives) for decades. Their man bargaining chips were SK and JP populations.

My take is Am pressure on China turned China against supporting NK antics, in combination with the new Am admin to willingness to engage (diplomatically and otherwise) resulted in NK feeling alone and unprotected and thus willing to cut a deal for peace. Time will tell.

North Korea's first nuclear test was only a little over ten years ago, and it's likely to only be in the last couple of years they've neared any sort of miniaturization sufficient to fit one onto a missile.

Fair enough. Yet they’ve had Katyusha style launchers pointing at Seoul for decades capable of destroying it (also assuring they get destroyed in retaliation by Am troops).

So, the threat of millions of lives has existed since the detente. The main thing changing is the willingness of Am to apply true pressure and pass that pressure on to “friends” of NK as well as engage diplomatically. NK has not suffered from not having a credible MAD option.

But it’s not a done deal. It’ll take time.

It seems in these comments people are resistant to credit Ams because that would admit the current admin’s strategy is better than the prev admin’s failed strategy and people are loath to do that for political reasons.

I don't think the NK desire for nuclear deterrence has ever been about deterring SK - as you note, they've already got plenty of conventional deterrence there - but SK's US allies.

"If you hit our leadership with a bunker buster we'll wipe out LA" is something new for them to be able to credibly claim, and likely makes them feel quite a bit more comfortable.

> It seems in these comments people are resistant to credit Ams because that would admit the current admin’s strategy is better than the prev admin’s failed strategy and people are loath to do that for political reasons.

It may be a better strategy, but I think we'll only know that years from now. Lots of potential potholes lie ahead.

Hey have a hell of a lot of artillery pointing south too.

Obviously there are many factors that brought this about, but even South Korea's foreign minister specifically said Trump gets the credit for this:

https://www.cnn.com/2018/04/26/world/korea-summit-kang-kyung...

That foreign leaders have figured out praising Trump for things is a useful tactic isn't shocking.

edit: Downvote all you like. If you don't think foreign leaders interacting with the US have a "praise Trump for something" note on their briefings these days, I dunno what to tell you. Especially when you're as closely allied with the US as SK is. Playing to his ego is going to be a common tactic for anyone who wants something from the US.

We do know some one in US put a lot of effort, esp. was behind sending three aircraft carriers into the region. Has done enough posturing but had incredibly held back so the situation does not escalate and talked with Chinese to impose and/or stick with sanctions. I do not know who it was, its most likely a huge team of people. All this happened after the State department was purged of his high level officials.

What I know is this, there is a huge team of American civilian and military that worked hard to tackle the DPRK problem and have achieved or at least partially achieved their objective. At the very top level these men and women are lead by one guy, Donald J Trump.

If the objective is "have a flashy headline", yes.

If the objective is a lasting peace on the Korean peninsula, I'm not so sure.

Here's why: https://twitter.com/QiZHAI/status/989795774975242241

Do you think it is possible for Trump to achieve anything, or is literally everything he comes near doomed to failure? Serious question, since it isn't clear from what you've written.

Trump has already achieved plenty domestically (tax bill, successful supreme court appointment, disrupting regulation efforts at the EPA and FCC etc) but I can't say I see much evidence that this development can be attributed to Trump. Of course, nothing happens on the geopolitical stage without some influence from the U.S, but the evidence I do see suggests that this is mostly a combination of factors having to do with South Korean leadership and other recent positive developments between SK and NK during the Olympics. If it comes out that Trump had a specific role in these negotiations then I think he deserves recognition for that, but as of now I haven't seen any indication of that.

I absolutely believe it's possible for Trump to achieve things. (Good, and bad.)

I'll believe North Korea's promises when they're fulfilled. This isn't the first time relations have thawed or they've promised to get rid of their nuclear program, after all.

Your words that foreign leaders are being dishonest - is that speculation, or a statement of fact? It's not entirely clear from your words, but the context suggests you believe it is a statement of fact. I would think would be considered proper to make it clear.

Trying to be as objective as I can be, it's just hard to see a path (let alone follow it, and think it's reasonable) from Trump to this apparent detente. To be honest the things that Trump did cited in that CNN article are laughable...

Seems to me that, if this normalization is for real, Kim Jong-un deserves the overwhelming amount of credit, despite obviously being the head of a horrific regime.

EDIT: Downvotes but no responses, lovely.

I agree, Kim is the puppet master here. Everyone else is just an actor. My opinion is he wants to start mining and selling its huge amount of rare earth minerals with the sanctions lifted. I'm not sure at all he's really interested in reunification. Something like the current Chinese model would fit perfectly his ambitions. And keep him in power for long time.

Reunification certainly seems farfetched.

Generally I think people in the US just are oblivious to the shift in the power dynamic, and the position that Kim has successfully put himself in.

> The only significant thing to change was American policy.

Sure, if you ignore the fact that South Korea had a massive political scandal resulting in impeachment of the President and switch in ruling party.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Impeachment_of_Park_Geun-hye

SK has ongoing scandals, every admin. Their foreign minister, I imagine, knows SK politics, they are crediting the American administration for having this happen.

The scandal led to the election of a different party in South Korea, replacing the conservative militant party with one that's more conciliatory to North Korea. So yes the recent Presidential scandal definitely had an effect.

The foreign minister is likely smart enough to fluff up the leader of their most critical ally, regardless of how much they feel he contributed internally, and especially when you know that specific foreign leader responds really well to praise.

Every country has their scandals, but let's not pretend this one didn't change the political landscape a bit when the leadership swung from one party to another.

This mindset is so insane to me. You've got one of the biggest foreign policy wins in a long time staring you in the face, and you've got the Korean President, the Japanese President, and the Korean foreign minister all agreeing that the Us Government had a strong hand in making all of this happen.

Somehow that isn't good enough to admit that maybe the country with the biggest military, the largest GDP, and a president who has at least claimed committment to helping find peace in Korea could have had something to do with finding peace in Korea.

What would it take? If Kim Jong Un himself writes a book titled "It was all Trump", then every person in South Korea, China, and Japan all write personal letters to Trump and the American people thanking them, are people still going to entertain these wild conspiracy theories that somehow everybody in the world is lying, and that they have some secret knowledge on this topic?

Governments, politicians, business leaders, etc. regularly say things out loud to generate a desired perception among the public, when the real underlying reasons are actually different. This is not rare or exceptional — it's the norm. It's called PR. Every public statement is crafted this way.

Thus, every statement by an official should be looked at with a critical eye, and we the public should be analyzing the pieces on the board and the incentives at play to try to deduce the truth for ourselves. Again, this is not rare or exceptional — it's the norm, especially on Hacker News. I'm not sure what you find so insane about this.

What's insane is just believing everything at face value with no understanding of the reasoning behind it. If Yahoo announced a partnership with Facebook and talked about how great a guy Zuckerberg was, would you expect everyone on HN to roll over and say, "It must be true"? Doubtful.

"Trump helped," is not a convincing statement alone. It doesn't imply anything more than, "Trump told us to say he helped." Rather, pointing to specific differences, concessions, deals, etc. that Trump made vs his predecessors would be convincing.

>The only significant thing to change was American policy

Straw man - the above was just objecting to this characterisation of recent SK political changes as insignificant

>The foreign minister is likely smart enough to fluff up the leader of their most critical ally, regardless of how much they feel he contributed internally, and especially when you know that specific foreign leader responds really well to praise.

This is what I'm replying to.

Can you clarify what you object to in that statement?

I think we've all been in a scenario where a manager or group project member gets praised for all their hard work, when everyone in the room knows they didn't do very much.

It's entirely possible this is what South Korea is doing here. Trump's well known to be easy to negotiate with if his ego is stroked, and quick to anger if it isn't. SK risks nothing by praising him, even if it's not fully warranted... and diplomats are pretty used to mouthing bullshit.

The only significant thing to change was Chinese enforcement of US-led UN sanctions (which the US has been introducing before the UNSC for years)... And is more likely due to North Korea's overt militancy in the past year.

The South Korean attribution of credit to the US should really be seen as part of the larger goal of detente, and not an independent analysis...

The election of a new dovish South Korean president a year ago would seem to be even more significant than any change in US policy.

Trump & Kim Jung Un have the highest odds (2/1) of winning the next Nobel peace prize according to bookies:

http://sports.coral.co.uk/politics/international/internation...

I never really know how to read these betting sites, but what I see there is 4/1 for Kim Jong-Un and Moon Jae-In.

It wasn't like that two hours ago, they probably updated it due to the news.

http://news.ladbrokes.com/politics/donald-trump-at-21-to-win...

https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2018-04-27/a-nobel-p...

This is such an interesting problem. I don't see any of these people being suitable candidates, but if this detente is fully realized then you can't ignore it.

Consider for a second that Reagan wasn't given the Nobel Peace Prize (Gorbachev was) for the peaceful end of the Cold War. I find the "Reagan Victory School" argument far more compelling than any argument for Trump in this case.

It will be interesting to see what the Nobel Committee decides.

There is no way the Nobel prize people are going to hand a Nobel prize to Trump and Kim Jung Un. Trump is embarrassment to the world and Kim Jung Un literally has killed 10's of thousands of people to stay in power.

better to give the prize to someone like obama, who accomplished nothing at all to deserve it, but gave people the warm fuzzies for not being george bush

False dichotomy. It's a fair to say that Obama did nothing to deserve a peace award, but obviously Trump and Kim don't deserve one either.

Nope. What changed was Kim got his credible deterrence and the much more pragmatic Moon replaced Park. Trump helped in that he got out of the way and may have offered significant concessions under the table; with that opening everybody including China jumped on it. Sanctions are for public consumption. The realty is it's anybody's guess how this ends, but if it goes the way it appears then Kim has won strategically.

> but if it goes the way it appears then Kim has won strategically

As is probably the only pragmatic way a deal was ever going to get done. And realistically, NK is so impoverished that a big win for him, particularly image wise, is a very small price for the rest of us to pay. I'd like to see some strategic global praise (and from Trump) lavished on Kim Jong Un, highlighting the "difficult position due to no one in particular's fault" he inherited so the NK population who do have an outside window to the world can start grass roots rumors that this is the right direction for the country.