I wonder how NK will respond. With the Trump-like leader that they have, this could get ugly.
Huh, I guess diplomacy in general and UN specifically are good for something after all. I wonder what else right wing nut jobs have been telling me will turn out to be untrue.
This is very significant. And I t’s not unreasonable to think that trump’s rhetoric and military posturing was a key factor in stopping China from vetoing this.
It’s the right wing nutjobs who mediated this…
I doubt that anything Mr. Trump or Mr. Tillerson have done has triggered this.
It could, in fact be argued that Mr. Trump’s belligerence and other inappropriate behaviors have contributed to North Korea believing that it could get away with belligerence and other inappropriate behaviors of its own.
There appears to be an awareness on the part of both Russia and China, quite independent of the Trump/Tillerson stances, that matters are getting out of hand, and that North Korea needs to hear a loud and clear message to back off of its present course.
That the world responded so quickly and sharply to North Korea isn’t a demonstration of genius by “the master of the deal”. It wasn’t brinkmanship. There was nothing thoughtful or considered in bullying North Korea into speeding up their nuclear program.
It was idiocy. The world shouldn’t have to save everybody from Donald Trump’s narcissism.
Maybe it was the several visits from scary looking Dennis Rodman that put fear of being toasted to death into Kim Jong-un.
@tiowally I hope I’ve spelled everything right.
Nothing in your comment makes any sense. The world has not responded quickly to NK.
I agree - Rodman was pretty much Obama’s most significant foreign policy move on NK; we should give him due credit.
It wasn’t fear of what Dennis might have said as a lone wolf visiting NK because he’s usually incoherent, like you, but how he looked that scared the fat thing.
So, which part of Russia do you hail from?
Nice try. The UN Security Council increased sanctions four times against North Korea during the Obama administration, and President Obama signed further US sanctions into law in 2016.
Trump is a douchebag. I know, the sun sets in the West and all that but he made it sound like he would make short work of NK. Everything he’s done others tried, with no success. The one thing he tried others had not was insults and threats, that made them kick their missile program into high gear with help from unknown friends coughPUTINcough.
The Chinese control trade along the border. What good are sanctions if they ignore smuggling? The Chinese benefit from the status quo. Stop making the status quo an option. Tell the Chinese we will give the SK Government Missiles and Nukes along with the technology to produce them. That will scare them into action. If that action is war with us then so be it, better that than having our nation run by Republican traitors.
Trump, like Bush, is incompetent. He will try to deflect from his problems at home with action here and get millions killed.
Ukkie doesn’t talk about it much, but he hails from St Pete (not the one by Tampa though) - same as Vlad the Poisoner.
Well, yeah, sure but those are just the FACTS.
You haven’t taken into account the ALTERNATIVE FACTS.
Which could be literally anything!
C’mon, get with the program!
On a more serious note, I think these sanctions are an appropriate step for the UN to take.
Unfortunately, I very much doubt they will change the North’s behavior, or bring them to the bargaining table.
Not because the North Korean regime is crazy. The regime is brutal, ruthless, and despotic, and they are deeply dysfunctional and malignant, but what is driving their nuclear ambitions is not insanity, it’s fear combined with cold calculation.
The regime is afraid losing its grip on power. It’s afraid of the U.S. – still arguably the world’s leading military power – which is technically still in a state of war with them.
And I’m pretty sure that the regime noticed that giving up nuclear programs didn’t work out too well for either Saddam Hussein or Muammar Gaddafi.
So the cold calculation – and I’d argue not a crazy one at all – is that the regime is safer with a credible, deliverable nuclear deterrent than without it. And at this point they are certainly on the cusp of that, if not already there.
So I think they’re playing the long, long game here, figuring that they will have forced their way into the nuclear club, and that eventually that will be accepted as the status quo, and as long as they don’t actually attack anyone, eventually the sense of threat will diminish and the world community will move on to more urgent crises. With sanctions having failed to prevent that status quo from taking shape, and likely failing to change it once it’s in place, eventually there will be pressure to try a different approach, more carrots and less sticks.
They may be wrong about some or all of that. But they may very well be right.
None of which were remotely as dramatic as this, precisely because china would otherwise have vetoed. If obama had had the skill to get this through 8 years ago NK would not have progressed as quickly as they did.
If you don’t look to the details you’ll mislead yourself terribly.
Or the Ukraine