Trump Leaving Old-Spice-Scented Love Notes In Kim Jong-Un's Locker Again
And other foreign policy stuff!
Hello, Wonkers! A lot has been going on in international relations the last few days, only you may not have noticed because you were busy noticing all the domestic horrors that comprise every day of life under Donald Trump. Let’s catch up!
You know what we haven’t thought about very much since Donald Trump returned to the White House? North Korea. The corner of our beautiful brain taken up by foreign policy has been busy with his fucking up the Middle East, his fucking up Ukraine, his fucking up our relationship with some of our oldest and closest allies, his drone murders of fishermen in the Caribbean, his destroying NATO, his invasion of Venezuela, his saber-rattling at Cuba, his Greenland fetish, and probably eight million other humiliations that we have missed or not retained because we only have so much space for horror.
So it was quite a nostalgia trip this weekend to see Trump get back to his first-term habit of giving Kim Jong-un and his murderous regime a gentle and considerate tug job. We’re sure the North Korean dictator appreciates it. Probably celebrated by having a few of his generals shot.
The United States was just about to begin its annual two-week military exercise with South Korea, known as Ulchi Freedom Shield. The two nations have been conducting some version of this exercise almost every year since 1976, so it’s not as if it just snuck up on Trump and his administration. But he has been so busy running everything else into the ground that he lost track of the date.
On Sunday, Trump posted this:
Trump is not happy with the US agreeing to a military exercise that it agreed to 50 years ago, back when he was still in New York fuming because the Vanderbilts thought — correctly — that he was too tacky for polite society.
This is the second time Trump has tried to cancel these exercises because they upset Kim Jong-un. The first time was back in 2018, when the two dictators were busy making kissy faces and exchanging love letters with each other.
Trump determined the exercises were too provocative while he was trying to get into Kim’s pants, even though they had been going on every year for over 40 years at that point. North Korea had made a routine of denouncing them, the US and South Korea had made a routine of not caring, and the globe spun on.
The 2018 cancellation led to a break of a few years before the exercises started up again under the Biden administration. But now we’re back to Trump whining about the cost of the exercises and the possibility that Kim may be so offended that he scraps the president’s invite to his next birthday party.
To top it all off, Trump indicates that part of his reason for scaling back the exercises is because he’s mad South Korea won’t join the US in bombing Iran for no reason. You really do have to wonder if Trump would order the tens of thousands of US troops in South Korea to stand down if the North invaded.
Ironically, this came amid reports that North Korea is sending soldiers and arms to Russia to help its war against Ukraine. This will only prolong a war that Trump promised to end on day one of his second term, which he has been unable to do because he’s an inconsistent and amoral fuckup.
Trump is probably okay with Kim helping out Vladimir Putin, though. Murderous thugs have to stick together.
While Trump was promising to abandon our longstanding Pacific ally, he was also threatening to incinerate ... Oman? Oman. From The Guardian:
“If Oman gets in the way, we’ll bomb the shit out of them,” Trump told Fox News on Monday, the second time he has directed such a threat at Muscat, a longtime US strategic partner that has traditionally served as a key backchannel between Washington and Tehran.
Oman is a longtime ally of the US. It has officially stayed neutral in the current conflict but has been bombed by Iran. Nevertheless, the country is trying to save Trump’s ass by negotiating with Iranian officials on a deal to keep the Strait of Hormuz open. The sooner that happens, the better for the world economy. Which means better for Trump, whose lackeys keep blaming the war for why America’s economy isn’t taking off. But as ever, he’s too dumb to realize it.
Of course, if threatening to bomb Oman doesn’t do the trick, Trump can try an even dumber idea: he can send his failson-in-law Jared Kushner to talk to the Omanis. What the hell, the Kush is already in the Mideast talking to Hamas. Wait, what?
Yes, Kushner reportedly spent Sunday in Egypt meeting with Hamas officials to try and revive the peace process to end Israel’s war on the Gaza Strip. There is an irony here. Back in Trump’s first term, when Kushner was negotiating what became the Abraham Accords, he was warned he was making a mistake by ignoring the Palestinian issue. In fact, he was openly dismissive of the Palestinians, telling them to get on board or get left behind.
Various foreign policy observers think that being ignored was at least partially what led Hamas to attack Israel in 2023, resulting in this neverending one-sided monstrosity of a war that is still going on.
In other words, Kushner, half-bright dilettante that he is, screwed up his father-in-law’s allegedly legacy-defining peace pact in his first term with his arrogance. Then Trump tasked him with ending the war that resulted from that screw-up.
It’s quite an achievement! But at least he got some self-enriching deals with Saudi Arabia out of all his trips. People are dying, but the Kushners are slightly richer!
Remarkably, Kushner might still be a better choice for all this diplomacy than America’s actual secretary of State, Marco Rubio, who also sucks.
Finally in our foreign policy roundup, there is this:
More than 200,000 people have signed a petition to the Canadian Parliament, submitted by a Calgary resident on July 21, calling for the removal of the [American] ambassador, Pete Hoekstra.
Not content to have screwed up America’s relationship with the Dutch when he was Ambassador to the Netherlands during Trump’s first term, Hoekstra has now been a key component in screwing up America’s relationship with Canada in the second.
The Times reports that it only takes 500 signatures to bring a petition up for discussion on the floor of Parliament, so this one is going to make it with plenty of room to spare. So yes, Canada’s parliament at some point this fall will discuss expelling the American ambassador because he’s that big of an asshole.
America’s back, baby. Back to sucking!
[CNN / Military Times / The Guardian / NYT]
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Glad Obama killed Osama bin Laden before Trump could become best friends with him
I once again have to ask, what would a Putin appointed Russian agent do anything differently than Trump has?