On Twitter, I’ve been discussing my post from the other day with experts on North Korea. A significant number of them think I’m right: North Korea’s statement about a possible attack on Guam, prefaced by a statement of concern about flights over South Korea by US B-1B bombers based in Guam, is an offer to negotiate.
North Korea has followed up that statement with another that says that Kim Jong Un has reviewed the plan and has decided to wait for a US move before putting it into action.
There may be an opening to dial the rhetoric back and to avoid the nuclear war that Donald Trump threatened and the attack on Guam that Kim threatens. It’s our move: propose negotiations.
Nobody outside of our group of experts seems to see this. The media are reporting as if the North Korean statements about the overflights don’t exist and the threat against Guam came out of nowhere. They see Kim’s review of the plans and putting them aside as knuckling under to Secretary of Defense James Mattis’s strong statements.
Let me be very clear on this. The opening may be illusory. Negotiations may not work. Nobody who was discussing the issue with me last night thinks we should give up anything; just that we should test that opening.
There is no indication that the administration has picked up on the opening to negotiate. Continuing on the current path risks war, and both sides have threatened it will be nuclear.
Chris
Sorry to derail already, but an interesting news tidbit from the Axis of Evil files: Rouhani is saying that Iran could abandon the 2015 nuclear deal, if the U.S. keeps imposing new sanctions.
MomSense
Sometimes the incompetence of the trump administration works in our favor. This is not one of those times. It’s like this administration has an aversion to hiring any serious diplomats with expertise.
And the media are hopeless. They allowed GOP talking heads to spout the complete nonsense of “strength” as an actual strategy on foreign policy. I hate them all.
Jinchi
Unfortunately, this president and his Secretary of State seem to think that threatening war exhausts the list of diplomatic options.
It’s all dominance politics and Trump isn’t past using the US military to win any argument.
MomSense
@Chris:
This is why you don’t put the nihilists in charge of the government. Fuck.
Cheryl Rofer
That is actually of the same cloth as the North Korean situation. Threats are being tossed back and forth. It’s not clear negotiations would help in the case of Iran. But attacking North Korea would send a message to Iran that the Trump administration cannot be trusted, and its signals that it wants to break the nuclear agreement should be taken seriously and literally.
Cheryl Rofer
@MomSense: I suspect that if I could figure this out, some people in the State Department have figured it out. Whether Rex Tillerson talks to them and whether he would pass that on to Trump seem doubtful.
Jeffro
Perhaps you and the experts you’ve been talking to could dial up some reporters, offer a little guidance?
Another Scott
Too much of the DPRK reporting has conflated missiles with nuclear weapons, test explosions with deployable miniature warheads, and their statement about sending missiles within 30 km (IIRC) of Guam as being a threatened nuclear attack on Guam and the USA, and all the rest. Last week there was someone on “1A” on NPR saying that if there are any hostilities at all then it’s “obvious” that we would have to incinerate the DPRK because otherwise we risk being wiped out (or something). Nobody disagreed with her.
Too many in the press (or being reported by the press as some sort of expert) want a war and they slant everything they report to try to increase the likelihood.
It’s dangerous, and it needs to stop.
:-(
Thanks for pushing back against this stuff. It’s important.
Cheers,
Scott.
Jinchi
@Cheryl Rofer: I’m not familiar enough with the details of the Iran deal. Does the US imposing sanctions imply we’ve already abandoned it?
sharl
I strongly suspect that older media people – so often the people occupying senior editorial and managerial positions – will have a very rigid mindset on anything having to do with North Korea, which is very unfortunate, especially given our current leadership. The young lefties I see on social media will likely be more receptive to this thinking, for whatever that’s worth. It was encouraging to see your compatriot Jeffrey Lewis get some air time, at least with nontraditional media (like This American Life), so hopefully there will be more of that.
Cheryl Rofer
@Jeffro: We all have reporters following us, and some have retweeted some of our stuff. We’ll see if it shows up in their reporting.
Matt McIrvin
@Another Scott: That is what’s bothering me. North Korea basically threatened to shoot missiles into the water near Guam. This is the kind of blustering provocative thing they like to do, but it’s not nuking Guam–and they announced it in advance, which you don’t do if you’re actually trying for a preemptive strike. It’s theater.
Matt McIrvin
Also, a talking point seems to have really taken hold in the conservative echo chamber that this is all Bill Clinton’s fault, rather than George W. Bush’s. I suppose if you believe that any cooperation is Danegeld and maximum saber-rattling is strength, this makes sense.
Chris
@Cheryl Rofer:
Yarp. He’s working hard to make it clear that negotiating with America is a fool’s errand.
@Cheryl Rofer:
Pretty sure anyone who brings up the “it’s really an offer to negotiate” to Tillerson and Trump will simply be laughed out of the room, an example of stupid naive and optimistic diplomats who keep thinking that even something as blatant as North Korean nuclear intimidation is really a secret offer to negotiate, whereas anybody with the common sense to call a spade a spade knows it’s just a threat that we can’t back down from.
Cheryl Rofer
@Jinchi: No. the Iran deal was specifically aimed at limiting Iran’s nuclear program. The sanctions relating to the nuclear program were removed, but the agreement itself says that sanctions relating to human rights and missile testing will remain. The latest sanctions were imposed because of missile testing. That’s not entirely a bad idea, but combined with Trump’s constantly saying he wants to rip up the deal, they give Iran some leverage to complain.
The greatest negotiator of all time keeps giving his adversaries leverage. The North Korean statements are carefully crafted and give North Korea the opportunity to present themselves to China as the reasonable party.
stinger
This guy’s conception of the presidency was/is standing before crowds accepting their adulation and being addressed as Mr. President. He has never understood the job, and the subtleties of appreciating other cultures and modifying his communication style accordingly are simply beyond his capabilities. Hopefully the State Dept still has some people who understand what’s going on — certainly, Cheryl, your take on the NK situation seems highly plausible. I hope you and the experts you know can get the ear of national media and help our country avoid this unnecessary conflict.
japa21
Cheryl, there are others who see it the way you do. Most here do, I am sure. People who can get beyond irrational fears, which are fed by the GOP and particularly Trump, and can look at everything in a sane manner can see what you see. Unfortunately, those people are in the minority.
In a similar way, a lot of people look at Iran and see a country which could actually, in the long term, become our ally in the ME. But, again, those people are in the minority and for the same reasons.
Cheryl Rofer
@Matt McIrvin: Because they prefaced that threat with comments about US B-1B flights, it’s an opening for negotiations.
It is indeed the kind of thing Kim loves to do: threaten and bluster. That makes it harder for the threateners and blusterers on our side to see through it. He’s speaking their language and pressing their buttons (forgive that metaphor!). It also makes any reasonable response feel like a concession, even for people like me. But if you’re serious about wanting something other than war, you swallow that pride and do what will bring about your objective.
Jinchi
@Cheryl Rofer: I’ve seen a number of American pundits put Tillerson among the “grown-ups” of Trump’s cabinet. Where does his reputation come from?
He seems absent most of the time, appears to have a limited set of interests involving Russia and a few oil States, and infamously gave Syria encouragement to launch an attack with chemical weapons. His only accomplishment has been removing human rights and democracy promotion from the mission of the State Department and he’s actively enabling Trump’s plan to gut the agency.
japa21
@Matt McIrvin: I originally read Danegeld as Dangerfield. Of course, that also applies if you realize that the concept of cooperation and negotiation in these matters gets no respect.
Tom Levenson
There’s a long history of US policy makers and strategists confronting an NK that exists in their imagination, with US capabilities that derive from extreme optimism about what it is the American military can actually do in the real circumstances on the ground. The Korean War didn’t just explode out of the thin air of a surprise attack on 25 June 1950, and the miscalculations that preceded that war and persisted during it (thanks, MacArthur!) are a miserable backdrop to the nuclear games now under way.
Also: NK nukes pale as a problem to me to an Iran break out. Not because Iran is more irrational or less subject to deterrence than Kim and friends (or Putin, etc.), but because of the wave of crazy that will release here and abroad.
japa21
@Tom Levenson:
And that would be mostly here and less abroad, except for Israel.
Hoodie
@MomSense: To borrow from Holmes, a president needs a first class intellect or a first class temperament, and Trump has neither. At least Nixon was smart enough to negotiate with adversaries and Reagan was open enough to do the same.
Cheryl Rofer
@Jinchi: Tillerson is a complete mystery to me. I have some friends in the oil business who thought he was a good choice. His actions are ignorant and dangerous. At times he seems to “get” that Trump’s bombast is dangerous. But there’s no indication he’s doing anything about it, and he is aiding and abetting the destruction of the State Department. I would love to see reporters dig into what kind of executive he was at Exxon. Right now, it looks to me like he had a bunch of competent people working for him who were able to cover for his inadequacies. And the goals of Exxon are much narrower than those of the State Department, which he seems not to understand. So even if he was an adequate executive at Exxon, he may not be able to move up to the demands of State.
a thousand flouncing lurkers (was fidelio)
My take on this is as follows:
1) The people running our media aren’t really very bright. Even if they were to begin with, years of training have resulted in their minds running in paths so deeply gouged into the dirt that they’re operating on sunken roads. I mean, I caught on to this, and I am just a person who remembers Madeleine Albright’s trips to North Korea, stroking the current dictator’s father into making a deal he really wanted but couldn’t afford to be seen begging for.
2) The press’s unwillingness to admit that Bill Clinton ever did anything right during the entire course of his presidency is preventing them from remembering any of this. The general consensus at the time was that Albright’s trips, along with Bill Richardson’s, had saved a great deal of trouble and provided essential humanitarian aid to ordinary North Koreans who were stuck dealing with their government’s inadequacies. Even if we had to hold our noses, it was worth it to not see Seoul leveled, and so on.
3) No one without a military background in this administration has a clue about foreign affairs. Tillerson is so far over his head he needs an old-school diver’s hose to bring in air. Mattis is going to stay in his lane, because generals are trained to do that. He probably already has enough on his hands with DoD anyway. McMaster is lucky if he can get the time of day. Kelly, assuming his automatic response (also a potential problem with Mattis) isn’t to prick up his ears at the thought of a war, is also up to his ass in crocodilians.
4) Tillerson has allowed himself to become alienated from the collective, institutional memory of the State Department, because none of the non-military people in this administration understand the value of a collective, institutional memory, except when it comes to cheating on their taxes and business deals.
5) Decades of work in diplomacy and international negotiation have been dismissed as irrelevant and a betrayal of our status as Number ONE!!!!!!–this has been an issue since 9/11/2001, and possibly since the end of the Gulf War and the collapse of the Soviet Union–too many people need to have an enemy they can chant “Never submit, never surrender!” towards. For these people, negotiation = surrender and submission.
Bill Arnold
@Cheryl Rofer:
This is precisely why there is a possibility that the Trump administration might see a negotiation opportunity; first, D. Trump thinks of himself as a deal-maker, and second, they (Trump admin, NK) are (well, appear to be) speaking the same language of calculated-crazy belligerent rhetoric. (Sort of rhetoric impedance matching, if you will; not sure of course.)
Cheryl Rofer
@Bill Arnold: Yes, some of my Twitter colleagues have been tweeting to Trump that here is his BIG OPPORTUNITY FOR A BIG DEAL. We’ll see if that works.
Lyrebird
VoteVets is trying to make some noise about this.
I’m concerned, too…
DPRK is smaller than Iran in some ways, but the leadership is less predictable…
Brachiator
It probably has been noted before, but I find it amazingly stupid that there is no ambassador to South Korea, gaps in State Department officials for Far East affairs, etc.
What, to people think that Trump can solve this problem based on his personal will?
trollhattan
@Cheryl Rofer:
It needs to be pointed out to our national “experts” government is nothing like business, in fact they’re essentially the inverse of one another, and the skill sets required to steer both are similarly different. C-plus Augustus was a failed experiment and now with 45 we’ve doubled down.
Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes
I see the delay as a result of concern about whether they can do what they said. If they can’t hit the shots they call, any credibility to their threats disappears, thereby weakening their negotiating stance.
Larger nations have global tracking networks for testing and a “trial by fire” history of multiple tests. NK does not have the same advantages, and I’m guessing that their engineers are being fairly blunt about the laws of physics, gravitational anomalies, imprecise curvature, etc.
Bill Arnold
@Cheryl Rofer:
Ah, VG. Was sort of stating the obvious, and am very glad you-all are working the issue diligently.
(And yes, I would swallow my (strong) partisanship and praise Trump if a deal was made. (Really!))
trollhattan
@Lyrebird:
Iran has an intellectual class and well-educated populace along with at least a history of being engaged internationally, NK has none of those.
Villago Delenda Est
The scum of the Village are too stupid to understand anything as subtle as what a crazy Korean kid is signalling.
Cheryl Rofer
@Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes: This is possible, but North Korea has done very well with its missile technology. However, a miss in bracketing Guam to where a missile falls on Guam would have serious consequences.
Within my framework, it shows Kim and the army carrying out their plans. The army prepares a plan, and Kim okays it but says he will execute it as he sees fit. It’s not off the table yet, although some news media are portraying it that way. They are waiting for a US response – said that explicitly in the latest statement.
The weakness of the argument that this could be Trump’s GREATEST DEAL EVER is that it will take many years to negotiate it. This article is an excellent overview of what might be expected.
MomSense
@Cheryl Rofer:
Assuming the State Dept. still has the appropriate senior people who would figure this out… Many of them left and I can’t imagine that the remaining employees feel very secure about their status there.
a thousand flouncing lurkers (was fidelio)
@Cheryl Rofer: I think, in dealing with his own base–the generals he inherited from his father and grandfather–Kim Jong-un has to negotiate that way, because this way it reads as “Our Supreme Leader forced the Americans into negotiating with us” rather than “This doofus did manage to get a deal that keeps us from being leveled, but he had to grovel to do it, what a loser.” He can’t look weak–it’s a matter of life or death to him. Saying that Kim Jong-un is crazy is incorrect–he’s a man trying to manage and operate from within a crazy system, where he’ll end up dead if he screws things up. He’s also past 30, so it might be time to stop referring to him as a kid.
MomSense
@Hoodie:
The Republican party of even those horrible presidents is long gone.
Jeffro
@Cheryl Rofer:
I don’t get the confusion – Tillerson is working for Putin and that $500B that stands to be made if/when sanctions are lifted. Everything makes sense when viewed through that lens. That’s why he is destroying State, full stop.
Robert Sneddon
@Brachiator: US Ambassadors are figureheads, golfing buddies of the President or other friends and acquaintances (the nominated ambassador to the Court of St. James i.e. the UK is the New York owner of a stickball club, some know-nothing schmuck called Woody Johnson.) The real work in an American embassy is done by the top-level staffers who have twenty years and more in the trade.
This is unusual in the world but it’s understood by the host country that the US Ambassador is someone who gets wined and dined but not briefed on anything important by the local government.
Yarrow
@Jeffro:
QFT. It’s really clear this is what’s going on.
gkoutnik
gkoutnik
Oh – that went well. Trying to post a link to a TPM article –
http://talkingpointsmemo.com/news/korean-leaders-us-willing-to-negotiate
chris
@Cheryl Rofer:
You were quoted in the Financial Times today.
Link (soft paywall)
Mike in NC
Master dealmaker Donald Trump: “Heads I win, tails you lose”
gene108
@MomSense:
Fixed that.
Every Republican slagged Obama’s Iran deal as being bad and terrible. Any of them would’ve looked for ways to undermine it.
It’s a matter of faith for Republicans that the Iran deal is terrible and needs to be ripped up, just like it’s a matter of faith tax cuts pay for themselves.
We’re seeing what happens, when a political Party takes a maxim position in opposition to all things Obama, whether or not the opposition is grounded in reality and then tries to govern based on their earlier irrational opposition.
Mart
Think if the media would spend any time discussing China’s defense treaty with North Korea – i.e. if North Korea is attacked China will defend; it might slow Trump’s let’s blow shit up rhetoric some.
Another Scott
@Mart: Last week there was a commentary in one of the Chinese papers arguing that China shouldn’t come to the DPRK’s aid if they provoke the USA. Short of an invasion of the DPRK, this person argued that China should stay out of it. Presumably that opinion has some support in the Chinese government or it wouldn’t have appeared, but I think you’re right that we shouldn’t assume that China will just sit back and do nothing if the US attacks the DPRK first.
:-(
Cheers,
Scott.
Chris
@Robert Sneddon:
Most of the time, yes.
It can happen that political appointees actually help supplement the professionals. My father was professional foreign service and is actually less down on the political cronies than I am, for reasons he illustrated by mentioning the ambassador he’d served under in Paris. The man was an international banker who’d donated a ton to Clinton’s reelection, and it was obvious that that was the main reason for his being there. But apparently, his private sector career had made him a lot of contacts in French banking circles, and some other circles connected to them – which meant he arrived at the embassy with a lot of insights and access points into French elites that career diplomats would’ve been very unlikely to make by themselves.
(There are also times when crony appointments where the president picks a personal friend of his can be a help as well. Foreign leaders or embassy personnel who need to be sure that something they’re saying is taken seriously in Washington know that it’ll be passed on by somebody the president actually trusts and has known for a long time, which carries more weight than if it were simply some report passed on by a random FSO he’s never met).
So ambassadors/political appointees can be useful. If you choose them right, if you send them to places where it actually makes sense, you can have them actually reinforce and complete the work of career professionals, rather than just spend three years playing golf and tripping up the people who know what they’re doing. The problem, of course, is that they’re very often not chosen that way, and certainly not with the current occupant of the White House.
a thousand flouncing lurkers (was fidelio)
@Robert Sneddon: This is the case in the glamor posts–but not for all ambassadorships. You can be pretty sure that the ambassador to Egypt is someone with experience in the country and region, and probably a career State Department person with significant seniority. The late ambassador to Libya, for example, was a career Foreign Service officer with previous experience in Libya. This has been the practice in the State Department for a very long time, and it’s generally worked well, even though places like France and the UK have too suck it up and hope whoever they get isn’t too horrible.
Of course, that was when we had administrations with some respect for the ways government could function to make their lives easier instead of ranting, ignorant imbeciles.
TenguPhule
So War it is then.
sharl
@a thousand flouncing lurkers (was fidelio): Yep. I just recently learned more about this sort of thing. For reasons I can no longer remember, I was following the disruptions surrounding that whole let’s-everyone-gang-up-on-Qatar business (led by the Saudis). Former U.S. Ambassador to Qatar (and career Foreign Service Officer) Dana Shell Smith must have been totally blindsided by Twitler and his crew when they came in and took sides against Qatar, where we have a large military base that supports operations in that area. State and Defense were also blindsided.
[It’s hard to say how or why this probably came about – likely multiple factors I suspect – but a deal Jared Kushner was working on with Qatar fell through in late 2016 when Qatar wouldn’t buy into it, and at this point we all know how much personal business and government business are intertwined with our new leadership. The Qatari’s are hardly saints, and had they foreseen this turn of events, it’s extremely likely they would have done a deal with Kushner.]
Anyhoo, Obama appointee Amb. Smith resigned in June – she was approaching the standard 3-year duty length for ambassadors anyway, so she had a plausible reason to resign – and there is now a Chargé d’Affaires a.i. (ad interim) there until Washington sends a new ambassador. I’ll wager people are watching that closely, with whomever gets selected being closely looked-in for clues as to whom is in charge among the White House, National Security Council, Pentagon, and State Department.
TenguPhule
@Chris:
Of course, Trump has to slash and burn down EVERY FUCKING THING PRESIDENT OBAMA DID.
Fuck Trump supporters. Fuck every single one of them with a rusty chainsaw.
TenguPhule
@MomSense:
What do you mean like?
TenguPhule
@Jinchi:
Violates the spirit of the deal. We lift sanctions, they dial back their nuclear programs.
Congress and Trump are imposing new sanctions over missile programs NOT part of the nuclear agreement.
And Trump is openly talking about falsely claiming Iran is not in compliance for the next round of verification of the deal in order to literally break the deal in the worse way possible.
Iran would have to be insane to trust the USA at this point.
Cheryl Rofer
@Jeffro: @Yarrow: It’s tempting to come to that conclusion, but I don’t see enough evidence for it. Also, working from that premise washes out a lot of detail. You may be right, but I’m not buying on yet.
@gkoutnik: Good to see Josh Marshall climbing on our little bandwagon. An important point that he makes is that South Korea is making their preferences known too. During the discussion last night, South Korean news articles started coming out saying that nothing was going to happen unless they approved, and they want negotiations. They also said some conciliating things to North Korea, like they didn’t want regime change. That’s big with North Korea.
@chris: Thanks! Some are picking up on our discussion! Nice that they gave me credit, too.
TenguPhule
@Cheryl Rofer:
May not? After everything we’ve seen so far you actually still think he might grow into the position?
TenguPhule
@Cheryl Rofer:
So they haven’t realized Trump’s mouth has no off-switch yet?
Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes
@Cheryl Rofer:
Or a miss in bracketing Guam results in a short landing OR goes clear to Antarctica. Deterrence theory would call that a disastrous result even with zero loss of life.
TenguPhule
@sharl:
And the answer is….none of them, Katie.
? ?? Goku (aka The Hope of the Universe) ? ?
If this thing goes nuclear, will Trump be impeached then?
Note: I don’t want millions to die to score some political points.
Mnemosyne
@Robert Sneddon:
Sometimes it works out — the US Ambassador to Denmark was a longtime Democratic Party donor, but he made himself hugely popular by getting involved with the country’s culture. He and his husband even got married there.
Villago Delenda Est
@TenguPhule: So long as Donald is in the Oval Office, no one on the planet should trust the United States.
Chris
@TenguPhule:
This is the most blatant thing, yes. He’s essentially putting the Iranians on notice that there is nothing they can do that would convince him not to break the deal.
And sure, it might just be empty words that’ll never be backed up. He certainly generates plenty of those. But it might not. Especially since the entire party has been screaming for Iran’s blood for years. In any case, it certainly deserves a response.
Heidi Mom
@Hoodie: And the fact that Trump has neither intellect nor temperament is especially painful given that his predecessor had both.
ruckus
@Bill Arnold:
Drumpf sees himself as a negotiator only if the deal brings him money. Anything else he has absolutely nothing.
Cheryl Rofer
There may be another way. Trump may lose interest. That would miss the opportunity to open negotiations, and there will be another North Korean missile or nuclear test that will set him off (sorry). But he does seem reluctant to actually carry out his threats.
Gravenstone
@Matt McIrvin: Maybe someone should point out that this was basically the same approach Trump used when he unleashed Tomahawkageddon against a conveniently emptied* Syrian airfield. All show, no effect.
*emptied because Trump of course gave Russia (and by proxy, Syria) a heads up about the attack
Yarrow
@Cheryl Rofer:
I appreciate your point of view. I agree that blaming everything on Russia does tend to simplify things and details can be lost. Many of these things can be both/and. In Tillerson’s case he can be compromised by Russia, thus doing Putin’s bidding, and also be a poor leader and poor choice for Secretary of State. In his case, it would be yet another example that a CEO does not make a good high level government employee. He may have been a good CEO of Exxon but those skills may not translate to a high level government job.
Yes, he is. And his actions are why I think the Russia stuff is truer than yet publicly known. He’s struggling with being caught in the bind he’s in. He knows what he’s doing is damaging the department he’s supposed to be leading and that Trump’s actions are dangerous. At times you can see him indicate that. Yet he does nothing because he can’t. If he did his secrets would be made public and he’d be ruined. He’s caught, he knows it, and he’s struggling to cope.
Yastreblyansky
@Cheryl Rofer: Yes. Trump stance, and failure to hire so many key officials including an ambassador to ROK, is really just abdicating responsibility (and trolling, scary but ineffective), and in this case it’s probably a good thing that the US will have no effect on the outcome.
Frankensteinbeck
@Chris:
A particularly appropriate saying to apply to this administration, since ‘spade’ is an ethnic slur in that phrase and it basically means ‘don’t be politically correct.’
@Cheryl Rofer:
By far the most likely result. Blustering, then doing nothing, then forgetting about it is Trump’s well established pattern.
TenguPhule
@? ?? Goku (aka The Hope of the Universe) ? ?:
Sadly, no.
Impeachment is a political process.
Chris
@Yarrow:
And in fact the latter makes the former easier. Our national elites in this day and age seem to be increasingly made up of what, if I were Kay, I might call “low-quality hires.” That not only makes them corruptible but easy to manipulate.
@Frankensteinbeck:
XD I hadn’t even thought of that, but good point.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
the MSNBC anchor just asked a foreign policy reporter if Kim had “blinked”, and the guy was like “Fuck, no”, but if trump here’s somebody on CNN say NK has backed down, he may get back to the important business of tweeting at people who quit his advisory committee.
TenguPhule
@Frankensteinbeck:
Doing that in International Diplomacy tends to make things worse.
Just saying.
Jeffro
@Cheryl Rofer:
That’s fine. I’m working off the age-old question, “cui bono”?
If State is way, way understaffed, stops considering human rights issues when dealing with other countries, and soft-pedals its stances on Russian aggression…I think it’s pretty clear who benefits.
When the SoS is both a) a recipient of the Russian Order of Friendship and b) a former CEO of the 3rd largest petroleum company in the world, with annual revenues over $250B…I dunno, I start to see connections between those who benefit.
When the man who awarded the SoS that medal is the head of a petro-criminal enterprise masquerading as a state…and the man is also pulling the SoS’ boss’ strings…and the man desperately wants US sanctions lifted so he can make additional hundreds of billions…it really just strikes me as pointing out the obvious.
Tillerson was made SoS for no terribly good reason other than to assist Putin in multiple ways, none of which are (obviously, almost by definition) good for America.
Jeffro
@Yarrow: Seconded on all of your points.
Cheryl Rofer
@TenguPhule: But better than an immediate nuclear war.
Jeffro
@Cheryl Rofer: @Yastreblyansky: @Yarrow:
You know, it’s a bit of a bind, but Dems really could make an issue of this if they wanted to: Trumpov’s lack of nominations/position-filling is leaving our country in a real bind. No ambassadors, deputy AGs, folks at State, etc. They could point out how most of this issue is due to Trumpov never making a nomination in the first place, then go on to explain “…that’s what happens when an organization has a crappy boss and no direction…”
Wait, what am I saying – Americans don’t give a hoot if ambassador and State Dept and deputy AG positions are filled. And they already know Trumpov sucks bigly. I’d like to withdraw the motion, please…
Yarrow
@Jeffro: If the the situations were reversed, Republicans would be screaming about this and a whole bunch of other things nonstop. Dems just aren’t great at messaging and they get no assist from our lame media.
Jeffro
@Yarrow: OMG, if positions were reversed, Fox would be running nothing but “OBAMA NOMINATION LAZINESS LEAVES NATION WIDE OPEN TO ATTACK!!1!” on its chyrons 24/7/365
TenguPhule
@Cheryl Rofer:
Lots of terrible things are better then nuclear war, relatively speaking.
Jeffro
Btw while we wait on the afternoon open thread: Alex Jones says that Nazis on parade in Charlottesville were “Jewish actors”
It’s false flags, all the way down!
There isn’t an aneurysm in the world big enough to settle that guy’s karma account…
Yarrow
@Jeffro: They sure would.
chris
@Jeffro: One up: Mike Cernovich tweeted that Richard Spencer is a CIA plant.
https://twitter.com/Cernovich/status/897202503258853376
Chris
@Yarrow:
I think the latter is the more important. There’s a limit to how much messaging you can do when the media is actively behaving like an arm of the opposition.
Chris
@Jeffro:
Just for the record…
Yes, this is crazy.
It’s also exactly the same thing the White House said, only a few days earlier, about the drive-by bombing at a mosque. “Well, we’re not going to comment on it, because who’s to say it wasn’t a false flag operation? Hmm? Checkmate, libs.”
Bill Arnold
@TenguPhule:
You noticed the implied utilitarian calculations, constrained by ethics?
sharl
@chris: Bah, Cernovich is a rank opportunist who probably felt he was losing out in the intramural struggles within the alt-right for influence, so he is (apparently) trying to reinvent himself. Unfortunately he got a big helping hand from New York magazine’s Oliva Nuzzi, who gave Cerno a friendly tongue-bath in a piece last week. I hope this is a one-off for Nuzzi, who is usually better than this. Nuzzi is still getting dragged on twitter for that piece, and even her writer friends ain’t too happy with her.
chris
@sharl: The thread is there, he was replying to Nuzzi who, yes, fucked up bigly.
sharl
@chris: Ah, thanks. I hope Nuzzi appreciates becoming a key member of Cerno’s offensive line; such a reward!
chris
@sharl: Yeah, she kinda shot herself in the credibility there.
a a
@Frankensteinbeck: That’s an unusual view of Plutarch.
Cheryl Rofer
Quotes here from Vipin Narang and Adam Mount, who were part of last night’s discussion.