15 Jun 2018

Raimondo on Korea

Foreign Policy, Trump 9 Comments

Now admittedly there is an element of “I told you so!” to this essay, but Justin Raimondo’s analysis on North Korea is also very optimistic. Remember, the Chinese leadership realized hardcore communism wasn’t working, and began serious liberalization. It’s not ludicrous to think Kim wants the same, if he can figure out how to achieve it without getting ousted/killed.

Justin also alludes to the video they showed Kim before the meeting. Check this thing out:

9 Responses to “Raimondo on Korea”

  1. Harold says:

    I looked at this after the mention in the last post. Much of it at the start is nonsensical where he tries to deny it is a victory for Kim. In fact, thus is a victory for Kim, but that doesn’t mean it cannot also be a victory for Trump. He tries to claim it was not a victory for Kim using very stupid arguments, which does not give me much confidence for the rest of the article.

    • Andrew says:

      False: “He tries to claim it was not a victory for Kim.”

      • Harold says:

        Raimondo says that people are declaring this a win for Kim because
        ““For Kim Jong-un this is already a victory because he wants legitimacy, he wants a place on the international stage, he wants to be recognized as an equal by the president of the United States, he wants to seen as nuclear power, and he’s achieving all of that. This is a tremendous propaganda victory for him.”

        Raimondo then goes through each of these points – legitimacy, recognised as equal, seen as nuclear power – and explains why he thinks Kim got none of these. That is denying that it was a win for Kim.

        • Andrew says:

          (1) There go those pesky goalposts again.

          (2) On being recognized as an equal:

          does anyone, including Kim, really believe that a poor, isolated, and desperately poor regime is really the equal of the world’s sole “super-power,” no matter how many photo ops are taken with POTUS? Of course they don’t.

          That seems pretty straightforward to me and not a “very stupid argument.”

          (3) On legitimacy:

          And what about this “tremendous propaganda victory” – just how tremendous is it? Is it convincing the world’s peoples that the North Korean system is superior to liberal democracy? Nope. Quite the opposite: Kim has been driven to negotiate because his own system is failing.

          Ditto my comment on (2). Unless you want to argue that North Korea is robust and stable?

          (4) On being seen as a nuclear power, you’re lying again Harold:

          But of course North Korea is indeed a nuclear power – are we supposed to ignore this?

          Explain to me how that is a denial.

          He never denied it was a win for Kim. He denied that any of Max Boot’s complaints had merit. I won’t deny that you are an expert on the subject of very stupid arguments, but I can’t agree that this article serves as a good example.

          • Harold says:

            The arguments are stupid because what Kim wants is not what Raimondo is saying he wants.

            Kim does not believe that meeting with trump will suddenly make Korea 1000 times wealthier and more powerful. He never expected that and nobody suggested he did. For Raimondo to negate Kim’s win on the basis that N Korea is still relatively poor is a straw man. Scott Adams recognised that Kim was presented as equal to Trump in the video Trump showed. Adams said this was an example of superb persuasion.

            On legitimacy, nobody, Kim least of all, has suggested that meeting Trump would suddenly make liberal democracies think his dictatorship was superior to liberal democracy. That is a straw man. What he got was recognition that his regime was a legitimate one worthy of a summit with the Pres, which is what he wanted.

            What could it mean to be “seen as a nuclear power?” Does it make any sense to mean that he wants to meet Trump so the world knows he has nuclear weapons? Of course not, because everybody already knows this. It makes more sense to mean seen as worthy of disarmament discussion, like the USSR. So again a stupid argument arguing against something nobody suggested.

            In each of these cases Raimondo tried and failed to show that Kim did not get a win. Again, that does not mean Trump lost. If we can use the term win-win then Kim can win without there being a loser. Raimondo’s arguments are unnecessary as well as wrong because he could have gone on with his other points regardless. As it was he tainted his essay with fallacies.

    • Dan says:

      Your reading comprehension leaves much to be desired. He was very clear that this was a win for everyone but the proponents of war. If anything, he could be said to be a bit too optimistic, but he certainly didn’t deny it is a victory for Kim.

  2. David R Henderson says:

    Excellent video.

  3. Craw says:

    Ah, yesteryear, when I was young, the Beatles were together, men walked on the moon, and Democrats would quote Churchill: “Jaw-jaw beats war-war.” Gone, all gone.

    • Bob Murphy says:

      In fairness Democrats bombed the crap out of people in the ’60s too.

Leave a Reply