Pragmatically Distributed

As I mentioned a number of times, Mueller had nothing on Paul Manafort except alleged tax and regulatory violations – arguably based on flimsy evidence –  that preceded Manafort joining the Trump campaign.

Disappointed in the Manafort indictment, the Left’s hope for collusion evidence quickly turned to a former campaign adviser, George Papadopoulus.  Whatever information Mueller got from Papadopoulus may be assumed to be inadequate to prove collusion with Russia, even if he wore a wire from July of this year to October:  By July every Trump advisor was advised by both the White House and their own personal attorneys not to discuss the case with outside sources.  If any useful information was provided by Papadopoulus, Mueller would certainly have included that evidence as part of his Manafort indictment.

Mueller’s indictments were almost certainly moved forward in small part because of last week’s breaking news about the role of Clinton-Russia collusion over uranium-for-bribes and Comey’s possibly illegal use of the Fusion GPS dossier to justify intelligence gathering on Trump’s campaign.  Uranium One particularly is a threat to Mueller because he was Director of the FBI until 2013 when the FBI was performing a bribery investigation into Russian donations to the Clinton Foundation that led to the approval of the uranium sale.

Mueller’s dirty collaboration with Hillary to keep Congress in the dark about the FBI’s Uranium One bribery investigation is sufficient grounds for his dismissal as special counsel, if not justification for a criminal investigation into Mueller himself.

Given the absurd defenses of Hillary’s role in Uranium One constructed by the Left so far, we can’t blame Mueller for moving early to distract from this news.

Because Uranium One has all the makings of a persuasion disaster for Hillary and Mueller.

Some defenses of Hillary have even downplayed the notion there is any danger at all in Putin gaining access to our uranium stockpiles.

“Objections to Uranium One are simple jingoism”, they say.

Americans may like to think American uranium is patriotic, Constitutional uranium, freedom loving & flag waving uranium, the uranium girl scout cookies are made of, the kind of uranium that stands for the national anthem at any and all sporting events.  But to collusion hallucinators, uranium is all negotiable up to the last Russian ruble.

And what does it matter that Russia has a little extra uranium anyway?  Don’t they already have many hundreds of nuclear weapons already?

Of course, this is weak persuasion and weak logic.  Selling Russia any amount of our uranium falls under the category of “not worth the risk” because –

• Uranium is a dangerous substance can be used for a variety of nefarious purposes as well as benign purposes – even if we’re not sure ahead of time what the Russians might have wanted the extra uranium for.
• IF it was necessary to have a foreign power control 20% of American uranium at all, there were and are numerous allies who we handed control over to who we could be confident would not use it for nefarious purposes.

Putin could be the using the extra uranium to cure cancer.  He might also be using it to upgrade his own nuclear weapons if there is something unsatisfactory about Russia’s native uranium stockpiles, sabotaging the American uranium he now owns so that it is not usable for our nuclear weapons, giving it to other hostile powers, or who knows what.

The potential mischief Putin could use uranium for is enough reason to not to give it to him in the first place even though it is possible he is not using it against our interests, especially when there were much more trustworthy nations to sell it to.

If someone has the option of having 20% of their stock profile controlled by financial advisers with good reputations or financial advisers who have been convicted of tax fraud one should, just on grounds of trustworthiness, always opt for advisers without criminal records.  Not because one knows in advance whether a disreputable adviser will handle one’s finances wisely or badly, but because their reputation and the fact they may cause all sorts of problems for their clients if they mishandle the money is grounds to automatically cross them off a list of potential advisers.

This is exactly the same problem of trustworthiness with handing American uranium to Russia, a problem the Left is happily willing to ignore so long as Russia is colluding with Democrats, not meeting with Republicans.

 

Just call her Radioactive Girl.

The Russia-Trump collusion story is finished now that it’s been torpedoed by the story of Russia-Clinton collusion.

This fight is being called on simple persuasion points:  Whatever criminal collusion may have actually occurred between Russia and Trump is buried under a mountain of nebulous links and tangential connections to Russia that are either not criminal (e.g. Don Jr’s. meeting with a Russian lobbyist) or have little or nothing to do with actions that implicate Trump (e.g. Paul Manafort’s revenue he collected from Russia and Ukraine prior to the start of Trump’s campaign in mid-2015).

To the extent connections such as these can be argued to qualify as “collusion” their context and connections are far too complex for most voters – who by now are exhausted with the story – to make sense of.

Not so with America’s Madame Uranium.

The undisputed facts about her latest scandal are all too easy for voters to understand and for Trump to joyously spin.

Those undisputed facts are:  The Clinton’s were paid hundreds of millions of dollars by Russia.  Afterwards then Secretary of State Hillary Clinton approved selling control of 20% of America’s uranium stockpile to Russia.

This is all to easy for Trump to, approximately, frame as – In exchange for more a than $100 million donation, Russia bribed Hillary Clinton to approve the sale of our uranium to Vladimir Putin’s government.

The most skilled persuader would be hard pressed to convincingly spin this transaction as innocent even if it was completely innocent in nature.

What innocent explanation is there for why Russia would want our uranium but for the most nefarious purposes?  Merely having “American uranium” and “Russia” in the same sentence is a persuasion nightmare for Clinton Inc, or any spindoctor .  Those scare words automatically invite voters to speculate that our nuclear weapons (uranium) have been compromised by our oldest, most legendary, nuclear foe (Russia).

If sifting through Russia-Trump collusion is murky and tiresome; Russia-Clinton is crystal clear and easy to explain in the worst possible context.

Dossiergate enhances this same dynamic:  It simultaneously makes connecting Russia-Trump more confusing by discrediting the dossier itself and the FBI because both are now clearly linked to Clinton opposition research tricks.

Both scandals put the media in a hopeless position if it wants to keep pursuing Trump-Russia.

The more they talk up Trump-Russia the more they confuse the voters with the case’s ever increasing complexity.  Meanwhile, in the process of incoherently connecting Trump to Russia, they risk further clarifying the much easier to understand links between Clinton and Russia.  By extension, linking Clinton more deeply with Russia increasingly can only do damage to the Democrats as a whole given that the Democratic Party has long been integrated deeply with the ambitions of the Clinton family.

Trump couldn’t have asked for better scandals to persuade with.

In May of this year I theorized that James Comey was using the investigation into supposed collusion between Russia and the Trump campaign as a springboard for a Presidential campaign –

What I believe is that Comey had it in the back of his mind that his provoking Trump could open a realistic path to the Presidency.

If you find this analysis of electoral ambitions too speculative for your own taste, I concede this is an educated guess about his real motives.

However, even if we assume he would not run under any circumstances whatsoever, it is a fact the opportunity for Comey to run would emerge if Trump was left mired in an obstruction of justice scandal carefully engineered by Comey.

At a minimum he would enjoy the ego boost for decades.

This gambit may still seem like a stretch (it may seem tempting to use it to speculate his ambitions are why he sandbagged Hillary in the last week of the campaign), but Trump had far worse odds when he announced his candidacy in the middle of 2015.

On his Twitter account, Comey gave the game away, conceding I was right:  His interest in 2020 is demonstrated by appearing in Iowa wearing running shoes:

 

A picture is worth a million hypothesis tests.

In the entire country there is no source of information that will keep you ahead of the curve like Pragmatically Distributed does aside from Scott Adams, Der Führer, and the Lion.

If you read anything else, you are reading grossly inferior political analysis.

Only the Grandmaster, Prince Metternich, had greater foresight.

An unmatched vignette of Metternich’s from 1820 –

Is it necessary to give a proof of this last fact ? We think we have furnished it in remarking that one of the sentiments most natural to man, that of nationality, is erased from the Liberal catechism, and that where the word is still employed, it is used by the heads of the party as a pretext to enchain Governments, or as a lever to bring about destruction. The real aim of the idealists of the party is religious and political fusion, and this being analysed is nothing else but creating in favour of each individual an existence entirely independent of all authority, or of any other will than his own, an idea absurd and contrary to the nature of man, and incompatible with the needs of human society.

 

Jimmy Comey has a long road ahead of him:  The marathon race to the White House is the most grueling, absurd ordeal ever devised by mankind.

Now that Jimmy has flagged his Presidential intentions we thought it appropriate – courtesy of Mark Steyn – to salute his ambitions with a taste of some the rough patches he needs to smooth over as concerns about the criminal collusion between a certain 2016 Presidential candidate, Vladimir Putin, and what the FBI knew and when it knew it, are inevitably brought up –

Only at the FBI could you investigate the Clinton uranium deal for over six years – until Hillary is too far advanced on her path to the Democrat nomination for it to be politically feasible to stop her. Fifty per cent of America remains committed to not noticing the stench of the Clinton “Foundation” …and not seeing any – what’s the word? – collusion between Bill and Hill’s hundred mil and Vladimir Putin’s mountain of uranium. Here’s more from that Hugh Hewitt interview:

It turns out that, while we were all worrying about the mullahs’ nuclear program, the Clintons’ nuclear program was going gangbusters. Kazakhquiddick dominated the conversation on my weekly chat with Hugh Hewitt:

HUGH HEWITT: I’m looking at an extraordinary article – Cash Flowed To Clinton Foundation As Russians Press For Control Of Uranium Company. It’s by Jo Becker and Mike McIntire from today’s New York Times. It’s almost unfathomable that Hillary Clinton would consider running for president after this article comes out, but what say you, Mark Steyn?

MARK STEYN: Yes, I agree. And I like Elizabeth Warren, and I want her to run. And when I say ‘like’, don’t get me wrong – I think she would be a disastrous president for this country, and she would want to turn it into a socialist basket case. But she believes in something, and she wants to do something. And Hillary Clinton is an entirely hollow creation. She is basically just an empty vessel in which the dodgiest characters on the planet pour money in return for favors. And I regret to say her daughter is becoming much the same kind of thing, too. Her daughter’s joined the family on stage with this Kazakh oligarch and all the rest of it. In fairness to Bill Clinton, he likes chasing nymphettes – he’s the only Clinton with a human characteristic…

HH: Now I don’t want to overstate the complexity, but in a nutshell, Russia has cornered the world uranium market.

MS: Right.

HH: They have done so through acquiring huge uranium resources in Canada and the United State subject to review by the State Department was given, and Bill Clinton pocketed a half million along the way, and the foundation picked up two and a half million bucks from interested parties…

In lawmaking understanding which Branch of government has the burden to act is a fine art that often determines whether legislation will pass or fail and who ends up with the political advantage.  There are many instances where one chamber of Congress will publicly apply pressure on the other chamber to pass or reject legislation.  Often this pressure to make someone else act is as much about shifting blame if something goes wrong as much as it is about legislating:  The House, for example, may ask the Senate to pass a bill everyone privately knows the Senate cannot pass in order to save the House grief for inaction.

On the other side of the coin, kicking the ball into someone else’s court at the right time in the legislative process is a great way, if done properly, to break Congressional deadlock.

This type of parliamentary maneuvering is something Trump is becoming better at as his knowledge of the Congressional system expands.

To break the Congressional deadlock on Trump’s immigration and health care policies, Trump has followed our advice which called for him to force Democrats to deal on both topics by cancelling DACA and Obama’s illegal health care subsidies.

Continue reading “Immigration & Obamacare Subsidies – Trump Learns Legislative Persuasion through Burden to Act”

 

The number of reasons why the altright failed completely at everything it attempted are many.

To a site such as this one which makes formulating correct definitions a top priority one reason for their failure stands out especially – its incompatibility with America as a political system.

A political system is defined as –

• A structure of incentives that strongly encourages political actors to consistently, and for extended periods of time, act in ways agreeable to the political system regardless of which particular individuals are in power.

In post-New Deal America there have been two, very powerful, political systems running in parallel to each other while also being in direct conflict with each other –

• On the Left, the Modern Structure of FDR’s Progressive New Deal from 1932 to present.
• On the Right, the Old Structure of Lincoln’s Hamiltonian Capitalist Old Deal from 1865 to 1932.

The Progressive Structure is an entirely different, extensive, topic that is out of scope for this article.  For now, we remark only that the altright is, of course, not compatible with this structure.  Nor should it be.

Where the altright has failed inexcusably is in its fanatical rejection of Lincoln’s Structure.

Put simply, there is no room on the American rightwing for anything except Lincolnism because the Hamiltonian Nationalism saved by Lincoln and which then ran almost unopposed during America’s Golden Age retains – as a political system – dominance over all of the incentive structures influencing the American right wing:

Throughout the 19th century and the early 20th century Hamilton’s National System of fostering a business environment favorable to industrial expansion; infrastructure development; trade protectionism; solid credit conditions; the hefty Continental peace dividend enjoyed by America after the threat once feared by Hamilton of a European military presence in North America became negligible; mercantilistic domination of Latin America; the establishment of an Army and Navy capable of defending both American territory as well as America’s overseas economic interests; the settlement of the Western frontier up to the Pacific; testing the waters of the Pacific with gunboat diplomacy; large scale immigration of European migrants to staff booming factories; these led to the industrial might upholding America’s military industrial complex.

Aside from slavery which Hamilton addressed only in the most narrow of legal contexts, everything Lincoln politically stood for Hamilton stood for.  And what Hamilton stood for constitutes the most dominant type of Nationalism ever seen in the West.

Hamilton’s Nationalism has over two centuries integrated an enduring set of incentive structures that are almost impossible for anyone on the Right to oppose without sidelining oneself into irrelevance as the altright has done to itself.

As proof this Hamiltonian incentive structure is an inescapable reality for serious American Conservatives (not joke Conservatives be they mainstream or fringe) there is the example of the great systems learner: President Donald Trump.

Continue reading “Trump Wields The Arsenal of Capitalism for Fun & Corporate Profiteering”

Metternich, Volume IV page 54

March 23, 1823 . — Now, to recognise a Government one must know first of all know what it is; and to enter into negotiations with it one must have recognised it. It is, therefore, necessary that we should know first of all what the Government will be.

Not all of you can investigate those details, especially Americans.  Here we are home to the dumbest, most thoroughly incompetent “nationalists” in all the West.

Such woeful circumstances force us to import illegal British immigrant labor to do the job the American paleocon/altright/whatever are incapable of doing.  For today’s purposes that job is making a coherent argument that America is an informal empire.

Responding to our article on Regionalism, Imperial Energy has made as good an argument as can be found for America running an “informal empire”.

One should probably look at it as an adaptive feature – a camouflage. It avoids all the usual signs (on the surface) of being an empire, yet it is one.

Following Moldbug’s “Modern Structure” we can talk of the “Global Structure” which is a a maze of bureaucracies, NGO’s, charities, media, corporations, trade agreements and “international law”.

Central organisations would be the UN, World Bank, IMF and NATO. Then you have such thing as “Bilderburg” or the “tri-lateral commission.”

The three key organizing principles of the Empire is 1: Security organised, directed and carried out by the American military. 2: Dollar as a world reserve currency. 3: Progressive values and “international law”.

From Brezenski to Kissinger to Obama, their goal is to create these “international institutions” that transcend the nation-state or ethnic-groups or a particular religion.

They claim to be “Universalist” but what they do not, or do not appear, to acknowledge is that these things are “parochial.”

Things like “human rights” and the “responsibility to protect” are rejections of the “Westphalian” order where nations do not interfere in the internal affairs of other nations. These doctrines allow America and its allies to judge and interfere in any country for pretty much any reason.

But of course, it does not look like straight-up imperialism of yore – because of the informal, hidden, bureaucratic nature of the thing.

America, in short, is an empire without any emperor. Kissenger once joked that “who do we call in Europe?” But the same thing can now be said of America. This is not the same with Russia (Putin) or with China (Xi).

Moldbug was always at his weakest when he didn’t break from paleocon orthodoxy and this is a textbook example of one of those mistakes by him.

Facts are facts, and when we look at them in detail we find neither formal nor informal empire.  Sometimes a spotted owl is really a camouflaged Bilderburg spy satellite; other times a spotted owl is simply a spotted owl.

To figure out what kind of bird we have in hand we have to deep dive into the gears of its machinery, whether those gears be mechanical or biological.

Viewing the mechanics of American foreign policy and how past empires worked, what we see is why the latter insisted on strict, overt measures of colonial management:  Informal empire doesn’t exist anymore than “partial pregnancy”.

Empire is all holding direct military control over the conquered territory or it is not empire at all.

Continue reading “Still a Republic If You Look at the Details”

 

Only a Hamiltonian Republican can fully appreciate how right Coolidge was in saying the business of America is business: Like all other forms of American business, the foreign policy of America always has been and always will be at its finest when it too is the policy of business.

It is only too appropriate that the Capitalistic economics of Alexander Hamilton, which then turned America into the greatest world power in history, should serve as the longterm foundation of American foreign policy Nationalism.

Throughout the 19th century and the early 20th century Hamilton’s National System of fostering a business environment favorable to industrial expansion; infrastructure development; trade protectionism; solid credit conditions; the hefty Continental peace dividend enjoyed by America after the threat once feared by Hamilton of a European military presence in North America became negligible; mercantilistic domination of Latin America; the establishment of an Army and Navy capable of defending both American territory as well as America’s overseas economic interests; the settlement of the Western frontier up to the Pacific; testing the waters of the Pacific with gunboat diplomacy; large scale immigration of European migrants to staff booming factories; these led to the industrial might upholding America’s military industrial complex.

The main competitor to the American military industrial complex, Prussian Nationalism, was crushed in two direct tests of strength.

While the usefulness of industrial might in war needs no further explanation, the post-WWII period of Cold War diplomacy does.

It was during the Cold War when the different elements of Hamiltonian foreign policy were refined. Those elements included offshore balancing, deterrence both conventional and nuclear, allying with tyrannical governments or even installing tyrants that agreed not to interfere with American geostrategic objectives in exchange for our ignoring their “human rights” abuses, supporting indirect proxy wars, indirectly propping up American client states with financial and diplomatic support, directly propping up wherever necessary American proxy states with US military power, carving out spheres of influence, preemptive warfare, and maintaining a broad alliance system with the major Capitalistic powers.

These characteristics of Cold War Republican international relations are known collectively as Realist foreign policy. Since Alexander Hamilton is the founder of American foreign policy realism these characteristics must remain the governing post-Cold War principles of American Nationalism.

But Realism’s various attributes and their relationships have never been formally developed into an overarching theory of foreign policy. Normally the best terminology that can be found is worthless, meaningless jargon; e.g. “American Exceptionalism”.

This incompleteness will be amended with a formal diplomatic theory of Realism – Capitalistic Regionalism, or, Regionalism for short.

Regionalism is a Capitalistic variant of offshore balancing practiced for centuries by the British Empire.

Traditional offshore balancing is defined as –

• A Realist strategy where a great power uses regional alliances to check a hostile power.

Capitalistic Regionalism is –

• A Realist strategy where a great Capitalistic power uses regional alliances with other Capitalistic states to check any threat from a hostile power to either the physical security or commercial interests of the allied Capitalists. Minor powers  have the option of being part of this alliance, neutral outside of it, or hostile. Regardless whether minor powers join or not, the great power is able to exercise this strategy so long as other advanced powers agreed to the system.

Hamiltonian Regionalism is given its name to contrast it with Hamiltonian Realism’s doctrinal archenemy,Wilsonian Globalism (the latter of which will be discussed further at the end of this article). Globalism justifies its claim to interfere in every corner of the planet by assuming the modern world is so interconnected that it would be irresponsible for leaders not to take a Globalist approach to international affairs.

In contrast to this, Regionalism acknowledges that isolationism is impractical due to greater interconnectedness. However, only particular regions of the world are strategically important enough to merit the attention and resources of America.

Just as America’s geographic scope must be selective, so too must be our strategic scope: The primary strategic objective of American diplomacy after the Cold War is to protect and serve Capitalistic relations within the First World. All other considerations aside from this – such as “human rights”, “democracy”, and the actions of lesser powers – must be demoted down to distant priorities.

To appreciate the virtues of Regionalism today, we will first explore the history of its predecessor strategy, offshore balancing.

Continue reading “Alexander Hamilton’s Arsenal of Capitalism – Regionalism as American Grande Strategy”

Trump, the Systems Learner, Learns How to Manipulate Congress

Watching a persuasion genius in action makes it a true privilege to be a Trump political apparatchik.

Trump’s difficulty persuading Congress to act on his agenda has on the surface seemed like a failure.  But because Trump is a systems learner what was appeared to be failure was primarily Trump learning how to persuade Congress.

Two examples from this week show Trump is quickly mastering the art of manipulating Congress as a system:  The budget deal with the Democrats and the wind down of DACA.

The budget deal in many ways strengthens Trump’s hands with the Republican Congress and to the public which still has doubts about Trump’s competence.

The deal makes Trump look strong to the public because it was swift action on legislation related to a national emergency.  The administration’s response to the hurricane has already boosted Trump’s approval ratings.  By kicking a do nothing Republican Congress to the curb to get disaster relief ready for his signature Trump now looks more and more like the man the public expects Congress to report to on critical issues.

It also weakens Ryan and McConnell in the eyes of their Republican colleagues by making them both seem like spectators to a theater directed by Trump.  By weakening them, Trump gains more leverage over Congress yearning for guidance and puts Congressional leadership on notice that his agenda takes priority.

The psychological effect of making Trump look like the ultimate power broker feeds perceptions to Republican Congressmen that he is the ultimate power broker, and it is this perception that will incline them to actually treating Trump like he is the ultimate power broker.  This perception is especially useful to Trump as Congress heads to work on tax cuts and infrastructure.

Then there is the fact the deal is a warning shot to Republican legislators who now have to worry that if they do not please Trump quickly enough he may walk on their priorities to work with Pelosi and Schumer.  That element of fear will probably bend GOP attitudes in a more cooperative direction when legislation comes up.

Trump’s move on DACA is a great example of setting oneself up to win no matter what happens.

If Trump had defended DACA’s very weak legal case in court – where it was expected to eventually lose – his opponents would have put the blame for any setbacks in court against this Obama initiative on Trump.   Meanwhile his base would have viewed a defense as a breach of a campaign promise without winning enough Democrat support to make angering Trump’s base worth it.

But by announcing a deadline for phasing out DACA the burden of action has – going forward – shifted from Trump to Congress; the media’s anti-Trump hysteria of this week over DACA notwithstanding.

Soon enough the public will forget Trump ended DACA this week.  What they will remember is that Congress needs to act.  And if Congress does not pass a legislative replacement, Trump can blame Congressional Democrats for not living up to their campaign promises to pass a Dream Act thus angering the Democrat base ahead of the midterms.  If Democrats do try to pass it they will need to negotiate with Republicans and Trump to get something done.  And for that to happen the Democrats will need to offer something to the other side in return whether their trade is funding for the border wall, or some other restrictionist measure.  If they play hardball and demand only a pure Dream Act, Trump has the option of rejecting their offers, allowing DACA to expire without a replacement, and set the Democrats up for blame.

 

When it came to North Korea their motto for years was always tomorrow is another day.  Well, tomorrow has finally arrived, and the grim prospect of a Kim armed with ICBMs looms just over the horizon thanks to the universe of mainstream foreign policy “experts” who spent the entirety of the post-Cold War era losing the initiative to North Korea.

As always, the establishment has learned nothing from total failure yet expects deference to its vast “wisdom”.

They claim military options against Kim are unpleasant?

While war is never as comfortable as a game of cricket in a leafy New England town the options are more unpleasant than they needed to be because our mighty North Korea “experts” took preemptive action off the table for decades:  Just because they did next to nothing to prevent them from developing nuclear weapons, applauded Obama for cutting missile defense funding and cancelling the F-22, and assured us the 6-party talks would lead to peace is no reason to doubt that their containment strategy for a North Korea armed to the teeth with hundreds of ICBMs is anything less than the wisdom of the ages.

They also assure us Trump is a fool for even contemplating military action they deem “unthinkable”.  Because their track record is just that good!

Certainly, a conflict will be very difficult and dangerous; but, ultimately, Trump does have vastly superior firepower at his command.  Even if Trump has to fight to the last South Korean the outcome is still assured.

The establishment reacted with surprise at how quickly the North’s program is moving.  It would only be surprising if the establishment correctly estimated the North’s progress since all of America’s intelligence resources are devoted to helping Robert Mueller finger Miss Universe in his quest for the article’s of impeachment.

America’s foreign policy establishment are not the only ones who are going to find there isn’t enough road left to kick the can much further.

As war draws closer here, in no particular order, are some unpleasant decisions awaiting other procrastinating actors in this drama.

China

The days when China thought it wise to form a mutual protection pact with the Kim dynasty ended with Mao.  In the Deng model of governance the Chinese enjoy crony Capitalism too much to risk their wealth in a diplomatic marriage with their Stalinist neighbor because the Chinese aren’t sure if their erratic neighbor might drag them into a conflict that commercial interests would argue against.

If the Chinese wisely don’t want to tie their wastes with rope to a North Korea that’s always joyfully dancing on the cliff’s edge, neither have they wanted the regime to collapse.  North Korea does keep the American military distracted and provide a buffer between China and a Democratic Korean Peninsula.

But if it looks like North Korea’s arrogance will finally send it down in flames, what will the Chinese do?  War on Kim’s behalf is highly unlikely given their economy’s dependence on peace in Northeast Asia.  Will they cutoff the oil supplies the North depends on?  That might be helping America and its allies too much.  It is more likely they will wait for the smoke to clear from a neutral vantage point though this too brings risks since they would be cut out of any peace settlement and could be flooded with refugees.

South Korea

South Korea’s Leftist government has realized that the Sunshine Policy was just a stalling tactic for the North to buy deadlier armaments.  But at least their Left has woken up: South Korea is now actively practicing bombing runs and missile launches against Kim’s forces.  If only it were as easy for Western Liberals to get a clue.

North Korea’s Generals

Kim has boxed himself into a position from which retreat is difficult.  In his line of work any about-face may easily be interpreted as a show of weakness that ends with being thrown out a window à la Ceausescu.

But his generals still have time for a coup.  A coup is not without great risks; Kim’s eagerness to assassinate his own family members and publicly execute commanders with artillery has understandably put his generals in a state of perpetual fear.

But many North Korean generals face death if they follow him into war against the United States, South Korea, and Japan.

Do they fear war more than Kim?

We are about to find out because they are also nearly out of road to kick the can down.

North Korea’s Missile Test Over Japan

Kim’s latest test is more confirmation North Korea and the United States are, as predicted here, still heading for open conflict despite Kim’s cancellation of a missile test near Guam because their respective goals are unacceptable to the other side.

The North’s goal is to finish its ICBM work by deterring America from military action while their project is ongoing; America’s goal is to eliminate that program by diplomacy preferably but by force if necessary.

Any diplomatic solution is looking more remote by the moment  – the North continues to refuse to so much as open talks on limiting their nuclear program and it’s nearly impossible to imagine them cooperating honestly with any negotiated disarmament program rigorous enough to satisfy Trump who this week authorized American planes to join South Korean jets in dropping bombs near the DMZ.

With neither side backing down from their ultimate goals, and with North Korea making rapid advances the time is approaching when Trump will have to use force to destroy the North’s nascent ICBM project.

Continue reading “The End of Week Circulars for September 03, 2017”