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A comment on Two Koreas Agree to End War This Year, Pursue Denuclearization. Parent comment

Re:Two Koreas Agree to End War This Year, Pursue Denucleariz... by jonathanyc on Friday April 27, 2018 @01:11PM (#16942425)
Two main things. First, North Korea can now semi-credibly threaten to nuke the US, which makes invading them tantamount to political suicide in the US. It’s likely their nuke would fail or miss or be intercepted, but no President wants to be the guy that got Hawaii or San Francisco nuked.

This has always been the end-game for rogue states, and means Kim Jong-Un is basically home free. If we wanted to get rid of him we missed that opportunity when we let them get nukes.

Second, South Korea elected a liberal president as a reaction to the previous conservative president who was involved in a giant scandal. He had a strong mandate to negotiate.

Trump played a part as well, but it’s not immediately clear how much of an effect his policies had. On the other hand the first two things I mentioned are unambiguously big.

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Re:Two Koreas Agree to End War This Year, Pursue Denucleariz... by drak0n1c on Friday April 27, 2018 @01:21PM (#16942501)
On the US side there was a shift in policy under Trump toward sanctioning and freezing specific Russian and Chinese companies and individuals who were enabling loopholes for the North Korean elite around the general sanctions. Previous US policy avoided targeting smugglers for whatever reason - possibly due to fear of North Korean retaliation if their elite were cut off.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/us-sa...

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