The Cuban Missile Crisis was defused because Khrushchev was willing to back down

[DemocratSinceBirth]

The Cuban Missile Crisis was defused because Khrushchev was willing, much to his credit, to back down rather than risk nuclear war. If you read about that era Fidel Castro was egging him on and willing to risk nuclear war rather than remove the missiles. It says a lot about the moral compasses and judgment of the two men..


Of course we promised to remove our Jupiter missiles from Turkey in return but that wasn't publicized at the time.

We will soon learn about Trump's and Kim's moral compasses.

[B2G]

1. Kim doesn't have one

Trump, we will see.

[DemocratSinceBirth]

3. Somebody had to lose face during the Cuban Missile Crisis.

The stakes for Trump aren't as dire because he had more options than Khrushchev or Kennedy.

[WhiskeyGrinder]

2. Kim is operating with one we refuse to understand; Trump is operating with one impossible to

understand.

[former9thward]

4. "we refuse to understand"?

Exactly what are we "refusing to understand"?

[WhiskeyGrinder]

5. For years, the country has threatened to develop nuclear weapons to be taken seriously.

Instead of focusing on the "be taken seriously" part, we focused on the nukes until the mid-90s and then kind of went into denial about what NK wanted or was doing. Now it has nukes and we either have to take them seriously from a position of weakness or get into a war. So many of us want to see NK as a joke, as an enslaved people that don't really believe what they're told, when the reality is much more dire, and solutions much less clear.

[former9thward]

9. NK is basically a national cult as I see it.

I do not believe they can be reasoned with. Clinton tried it. Fail. Bush tried it. Fail. Obama tried it. Fail Every agreement that was made they broke and now here we are. I don't believe the situation would be at all different if H. Clinton were president. You can't reason with someone who refuses to reason. I also don't believe China or Russia can do much about it even if they wanted to.

[WhiskeyGrinder]

14. I too believe the time of reasoning is past.

But we walked away from fragile negotiations back in the 90s, and adopted "strategic patience" in the meantime, which just kicked the issue down the road. It may not be much different if HRC were president, but she would not be accelerating the situation in such an alarming way through her words. She would know better. I do agree with you that Russia and China can't do much.

Winner: None.

[Azathoth]

21. DPRK want more than to be taken seriously

They sincerely believe they are entitled to nuclear weapons just like the US is, but more importantly they want to feel absolutely secure -- something that is fundamentally impossible in a country that has based its entire social consciousness around being at perpetual war with the West.

[Blue_true]

7. They are Afraid of us and want us to take them seriously.

I honestly think Kim and his key generals can be bought off by a promise of being financially set for life in a nice warm resort with no concerns about trial. Once he is out of NK, we keep our word to him and allow SK to reunify the country to be one again, that would be best for everyone involved.

[former9thward]

10. Maybe some generals but not KIm.

He is the cult figurehead of a cult nation. He is not going anywhere.

[Blue_true]

13. I bet he has a price.

Look at it this way, he takes the offer or he wakes up to a horses head in his bed. We need to talk directly with the guy and lay out the consequences to him. He has a child that he wants to take over after him? Won't happen if he keeps up the bullshit.

[Igel]

16. Let's assume that works.

That's the same deal that's been made for a lot of dictators.

Within a few years "advocates" for human rights get that deal undone and insist on trying the guy.

At some point some idjit doesn't step down. Thing is, even if his reason is, "You don't keep your word, and if you over here do those buggers over there certainly don't," nobody's going to allow that claim to stand. It's never the (self-professed) good guys' fault.

[Blue_true]

20. Yep.

The ugly reality of life is that sometimes you have to buy bad guys off, put them somewhere where they are safe from jail and harmless and then undo the danage they did. Sometimes the "pure" minded can't grasp that and the result is a lot of death happens.

[Blue_true]

6. North Korea.

Has been hellbent on getting nukes since they came within Harry Truman's ok to getting nuked by the USA. After Japan and seeing the aftermath, Truman was reluctant to nuke another country.

Maybe we should sit down with North Korea and agree to end the Korean War. That may just lead to agreements that over sixty years of chest thumping has not.

[Igel]

19. And part of this was Truman's doing.

After the Soviet Union invaded the Korean peninsula to drive out the Japanese as part of their Pacific Theater operations the Japanese surrounded. Would the Soviet's stop before taking the entire peninsula?

They were after territory and puppet governments.

Truman had allied forces land in the south of the peninsula and occupy it. The Soviets were blocked.

Kim was the Soviets' man in Korean, in their zone. Not many years later, Kim got help and the go ahead to drive out the American occupying forces. Which is how they still refer to S. Korea--American-occupied land. For years they've sought not to negotiate with S. Korea, the puppet government, but with the government that's really in charge, the Western imperialist occupiers. In one-to-one talks.

Such talks without S. Korea--which has usually been the American requirement, that S. Korea be included as the legitimate government of the southern portion of the peninsula--have been rejected by the US. They would pull a Yalta, decide a treaty imposed on others by the two "great" powers. It would legitimize the Kims' claims over the decades and would be a near-admission that the US was an occupying power.

[Blue_true]

22. No negotiation should happen without South Korea at the table.

Our position has been talks that also involved several others other than South Korea.

[lpbk2713]

8. Vasili Arkhipov

If not for one Russian submarine officer willing to oppose the
majority of his fellow officers WW-III would have started.

[BannonsLiver]

11. I don't think we'll learn anything we don't already know.

Whether or not that should scare the ever loving shit out of us is up to personal interpretation.

[underpants]

12. Yes and they talked

JFK and Khrushchev were able to get letters to each other. Both faced near coups. Your assessment is correct.

[VMA131Marine]

15. There was also a quid pro quo

The US promised to take obsolete Jupiter missiles out of Turkey and not replace them.

[DemocratSinceBirth]

18. I mentioned that but it was done surreptitiously,

It was Russia who appeared to lose face.

[Azathoth]

17. The USSR was fundamentally a rational actor

They had as much to lose as we did, hence MAD.

North Korea is not rational, at least insofar as they genuinely perceive the world differently from the rest of us. They honestly see themselves as an island of hope in a sea of rabid hostility, like the last survivor in a zombie film. They are building nuclear weapons and hurling insults not because they want attention and not because they want to extort money and food from the world, but because they legitimately believe they are besieged and under imminent threat of attack from all sides. Nothing will change that perception -- not diplomacy, and certainly not whatever the fuck Trump is doing.