There is no longer a Nuclear Threat from North Korea
Says Trump:
everybody can now feel much safer than the day I took office. There is no longer a Nuclear Threat from North Korea. Meeting with Kim Jong Un was an interesting and very positive experience. North Korea has great potential for the future!
Foreign Policy gives us the background:
Here are the major talks and nuclear milestones that came before Trump:
1985: North Korea acceded to the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. It did not, however, complete an International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) safeguards agreement.
1992: North and South Korea signed the Joint Declaration on the Denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula, agreeing not to test, produce, posses, or deploy nuclear weapons, and agreeing to mutual verification inspections.
In 1994…
the Clinton administration and North Korea signed the “Agreed Framework” to freeze North Korea’s nuclear program. Most experts agree this was the closest Washington came to a successful deal with North Korea: Pyongyang agreed to freeze construction of nuclear reactors and production of plutonium in exchange for aid, fuel shipments, and other economic benefits.
The closest! But then…not so much.
2002: The Agreed Framework set up under Clinton broke down. President George W. Bush, who took a harder-line stance on Pyongyang than his predecessor, accused North Korea of cheating by secretly pursuing a uranium enrichment program. North Korea accused the United States of backing out of its end of the deal.
China hosted talks. No results. North Korea said nope nope nope.
North Korea conducted its first nuclear test in 2006. Talks collapsed over the issue of allowing inspectors in. Kim Jong Il died and his son Jong Un took over.
2012: President Obama tried to push Pyongyang to the negotiating table by ratcheting up sanctions. But Kim Jong Un scuppered a final deal that would have halted North Korea’s nuclear weapons program and allowed in international inspectors in exchange for U.S. aid. (Town says it is likely because Kim had to display strength to consolidate power after his father’s death.) Meanwhile, North Korea continued to make strides in its nuclear weapons program.
But then a miracle occurred, and Donald Trump by the power of his shining presence alone terminated the Nuclear Threat from North Korea.
H/t Leigh Williams
Nuclear Threat ®. That’s why all caps, right?
Can we add the fact that, in the early 2000s, George W. Bush came up with “the Bush Doctrine”… and that day North Korea was included in the “Axis of Evil” (the other countries being Iraq, which the USA invaded again, and Iran, which they have also wanted to attack).
As far as I know, North Korea has only threatened to use nuclear weapons as a response to an attack.
anon1152 – add to that the fact that the US is the only country to ever use nuclear weapons against another country, and the cities nuked were not significant military sites. We nuked innocent civilians mostly because those cities weren’t militarily significant – that means they had not been bombed and were relatively intact at the end of a long war, so the amount of damage would be more impressive.
But we feel the need – no, the right, the obligation – to police other countries who want to defend themselves against a monstrosity created and used by us. Not to mention the huge numbers we still have, even after the various reductions.
And we are now “led” by someone who has no more impulse control than a toddler. Toddlers are cute when they run amok; 72 year old heads of nuclear powered nations are not.