Posted on 03/12/2018 5:59:51 AM PDT by Candor7
I caught this from a blog and thought I should post it here for strategic discussion purposes:
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It’s interesting to look at the play between U.S. President Donald Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong-un in light of the Art of War. At least it is to me, and I’m putting down a few observations here because, while both figures have so much of the setting sun about them, the principles of generalship apply nonetheless, and we as protectors have an opportunity to observe and learn when they are played out so starkly and with such potent potential consequences.
It seems that Kim has been acting out a long-planned and well-considered series of moves in service of a strategy. He has also managed--quite easily--to keep the initiative in his dealings with the Trump administration--from his bomb and missile testing, to his brilliant diplomatic coup during the Olympics, to his bold invitation to an off-balance, isolated and insecure U.S. president.
Kim sees a greatly weakened U.S. whose once formidable foreign policy establishment is in serious disarray and is being ignored. Along with the rest of the world, he has watched U.S. prestige being vandalized and diminished over the past year by Trump and his chaotic band of amateurs ( sic). More specifically, he sees the sidelining and departure of the State Department’s Korea hands, who at least kept him in check ( sic).
Now he ( Kim) is striking at the enemy's weakest point, its leader, having isolated him and maneuvered him into a reactive posture.
Kim is obviously well-schooled in Sun Tzu's Art of War and the exercise of real power, whereas Donald Trump is a product of dubious real estate dealing and equally dubious reality TV production--a con man who somehow, accidentally, conned his way into the world's most powerful position.
Kim has made sure it will be down to himself, his lineage and his well-aligned establishment on one side, and Donald Trump, who admires his adversary and thinks he can deal with him alone, on the other. I'm betting on the guy with the sharper haircut.
I suspect Kim’s goal with Trump is to “take him whole”--not to humiliate or provoke him but to win him over, in order to remove the U.S. as an obstacle to his ultimate aim: the reunification of Korea largely on his terms.
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Your's is an highly accurate assessment. But Kim must maintain an immaculate balance, lest he let slip the dogs of war. The tipping point will likely be in relation to required verification of Kim's alleged offer of nuclear disarmament. Former U.S. administrations have fallen for the bait of faux friendship and mollification. This may not be so much the case with President Trump, who has two American citizens now imprisoned by Kim, and one who was returned home after torture, ( Otto Warmbier: https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2017/09/26/us-student-otto-warmbier-returned-north-korea-blind-deaf-howling/ ) .
I am sure that justice for these imprisoned, tortured individuals will be a preliminary issue and an attempt to incur President Trumps gratitude.
The I-Ching indicates this hexagram:
Watch, listen, study, contemplate, then step lightly but decisively on.
56 - Fifty-Six Lu / The Wanderer
Fire on the Mountain, catastrophic to man, a passing annoyance to the Mountain: The Superior Person waits for wisdom and clarity before exacting Justice, then lets no protest sway him.
Find satisfaction in small gains. To move constantly forward is good fortune to a Wanderer.
SITUATION ANALYSIS: You are a stranger to this situation. It is your attraction to the exotic that has led you here, but you will move on to a new vista when this one has lost its mystique. Because much of this environment is foreign to you, you must exercise only the best judgement. You don't know the custom here, and it's too easy to cross a line you don't know is there. Because you are the foreigner in this setting, you have no history to acquit you.
Ping to the Eastern View of the activity of North Korea.
Something like..."free passage to China for you and 500 people you choose plus several billion dollars to divide among you....or assassins slipped into your country to kill you and everyone you've ever talked to".
Or maybe a big kinetic bomb thing that kills 200 of his nuke scientists and physically destroys his program, cracks up his mountain. That might work if tried.
Dale Carnegie trumps Sun Tsu.
Agreed. I would not hesitate even a moment to recommend Kim be rendered into dog food.
...Trump ever strike you as being,
“ an off-balance, isolated and insecure U.S. president.”?
No. Me either.
Politico-Pycho-Babble.
Of course Kim is trying to scam us.
However, he is not nearly as in control as this author thinks.
North Korea was getting substantial outside technical, hardware, materials and financial help on his weapons programs and Trump’s sanctions have substantially shut that foreign assistance down. There were just too many simultaneous breakthroughs for an in house program.
In fact, NK may have been little more than a cut out and final assembly job shop to facilitate nuclear proliferation to terror states
His burst of missile and bomb tests may have depleted his inventory enough to hobble his program due to shortages in critical components
There are indications that Kim has restarted the reactors that provide the nuclear materials for bombs, which tends to confirm both outside supply of materials and low inventory requiring time to step back and resupply.
Sanctions are also really squeezing the life out of the already weak NK economy. Soon North Korea will be facing a bankruptcy in the foreign hard currency that floats his regime and keeps his army functional
If his plan was to try to extort another in a long series of bailouts he may succeed ( under a Trumps terms) but his larger plans to become a nuclear power are fading fast and he is not in control.
Kim almost certainly has some delusional and desperate backup plan by which he remains in power and eventually gains control of a unified South Korea by political means after Trump has left office but his military capability is currently being strangled and it’s hard to see a negotiated future that leaves Kim and the North as a military power. This is more terms of surrender
The whole North Korean nuclear bomb and missile testing may have been a coordinated effort in a larger and increasingly failing effort to remove Trump from office
In fact, if there is any game playing involved, it may be to try to lure Trump into negotiating and then trying to embarrass him before the 2018 elections in hopes of engineering a Democrat sweep favorable to NK
“ an off-balance, isolated and insecure U.S. president.”?
It’s also not smart to underestimate your opponent. Trump benefits from all those who think he CAN’T POSSIBLY...whatever.
Musings from a trump hater.
When the author has to use subjective opinion, misinterpretations, and lies of omission about Trump and the USA to make his point, his point isn’t worth making.
Who wrote this?
Nancy Pelosi’s Japanese gardener, or Chuck U. Schumer’s favorite New York Chinatown takeout chef?
You know it royally pi$$es me off to see these little minded Academics think tank bitches predicate their view of US strategy on the alleged weakness of President Trump.
President Trump is one of the strongest presidents we have ever elected to office. Liberal fascists like Bill the Shill Clinton and the Magic Negro were profoundly weak. Kim played them like fiddles. Not the case with President Trump.
I am tired of the agit-propaganda that goes on without cessation. Soon we should just be administering large quantities of laxative and boring them new a$$holes.
“Kim is obviously well-schooled in Sun Tzu’s Art of War and the exercise of real power, whereas Donald Trump is a product of dubious real estate dealing and equally dubious reality TV production—a con man who somehow, accidentally, conned his way into the world’s most powerful position.”
IOW, Rocket Boy is erudite, educated, and a brilliant tactician. Trump is a big dufus. I am tired of this leftist crap.
Yes
Nuclear testing site go boom
Radiation leaking from cracks in brokeback mountain is “ inevitable” per Chinese
What is it going to take to protect North Korea and the region from the results?
Meanwhile Jong Un is looking puffy and weak
Making Hillary look like athlete
Reported health problems
Sends message via South Korean president to our President that talks are intended to “ denuclearize” the peninsula and establish agreement with US that accepts present regime ( Jong Un sister) to remain in power with treaty assuring US will not attack
Of course talks will go on “understanding” that ROK-US war exercises in March must continue ( when was the last time the world EVER heard anything that conciliatory from NK about US-ROK military exercise?)
Oh by the way
They want a US Embassy in Pyongyang ( “ bilateral talks’ become a daily routine not a maneuver executed for “concessions”)
And Jong might release those 3 Americans as a “ gift”
Yes- Kim sure has Trump on the ropes / sarc
An alternative theory of what occurs when the “ Art of War” meets the “ Art of the Deal”
Something or some combination of things has “ rocked” Jong’s world
Something that even our US State Department did not know about until after the announcement
Something that suggests the outcome of this meeting is already known
Something that suggests the US-NK rubicon was already crossed - in great secrecy at the highest levels
Something has South Korea praising Trump but Russia and China silent about praising Jong
Something suggests it is Trump who is “ building a golden bridge” for his opponent to retreat across
Not Kim Jong Un
IOW, Rocket Boy is erudite, educated, and a brilliant tactician. Trump is a big dufus. I am tired of this leftist crap.>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
Me too, in spades. We need to figure out a way to make them look like the unpatriotic a44hats they truly are. Shaming them doesn’t work. We need to hit them hard where it matters, in the pocket book, or right in the pork barrels of their constituencies, which pork should be cut off.
Art of War meets Art of the Deal. My money is on the latter; even though they share many of the same principles.
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