#61 - Rocket Man

In his first speech to the United Nations General Assembly on Tuesday, Donald Trump was his typical Trumpster self.  Ignoring dialogue favored by diplomats around the world for generations, Trump used language typically reserved for that Tweeter thing he likes so much.  Referencing “loser terrorists” and calling the international nuclear deal on Iran “an embarrassment to the United States” and just for yuks, coming close to declaring war on Venezuela, just to throw out a little more red meat for that very red base of his, he still managed to save his best for Dennis Rodman’s BFF both on and off the court, that short little chubby guy with the funny haircut, from North Korea, Kim Jong-un.

“The United States has great strength and patience, but if it is forced to defend itself or its allies, we will have no choice but to totally destroy North Korea,” Trump said on Tuesday. “Rocket Man is on a suicide mission for himself and for his regime.”

Poor Elton John.  What did he do to deserve this?

Now Trump’s success in the primaries and in the election in coming up with Twitter friendly derogatory putdowns of all of his opponents, you know them all - Lying Ted, Lazy Jeb, Crooked Hillary etc, etc, may have led him to conclude that if he simply calls the chubby little guy some kind of nasty name, he will roll over and die, like the rest of Trump’s mediocre opponents did along the way. But I have my doubts. 

I’m just not sure “Rocket Man” should have been Trump’s go to insult.  It's not clear what the impact will be on this one.  The little guy might take it as a compliment, a pretty mild insult, or just an accurate description of one his bigger hobbies.  Either way, I don't consider this approach as adding value to the matter in any way whatsoever. 

North Korea has been a major thorn in the side of the Clinton, Bush and Obama administrations going back 24+ years and now under the “leadership” of Kim Jong-un, the thorn has been getting bigger and has been getting pushed in deeper.  With each passing year North Korea has been improving both its nuclear capabilities and the delivery systems for those weapons and making America look weak and inept at dealing with this crisis.  And in recent months their progress on both of these technical fronts has accelerated. So now, through no fault of Donald Trump, North Korea now represents the single biggest wild card on the nuclear horizon.  China, Russia, the United States and other nuclear nations would all acknowledge that any nuclear armed confrontation is a lose, lose proposition, and as such, this belief has acted as a built-in control and provided humanity with a high degree of comfort that no one, absolutely no one would be dumb enough to actually engage in such an “undertaking”.  That’s been the working theory for 70+ years now and it has kept most of the world relatively safe.

Well that was before, and this is now.  North Korea and Kim Jong-un now represent the biggest threat on the world stage.  They are a throw-back to an antiquated world where an entire country is completely, completely (double emphasis intended) dominated by a third generation child king who has been described as irrational, selfish and childish. Recent reports have said he has a fondness for caviar, teen sex slaves and gory public executions. In an attempt to consolidate power and put an end to any possible political threats, it has been said that he has had his uncle and his half-brother assassinated. In other words. he appears to be a highly functional and sadly perverted, whack job.     

Enter Donald Trump, who was appropriately warned by numerous members of the outgoing Obama administration that North Korea represented the single biggest threat to America (If Obama knew this crisis was going to be placed in the lap of Donald Trump, do you think he might have been a bit more pro-active on this one?)  

In recent months, Trump has directly insulted Kim Jong-un by saying that he is not as powerful as he thinks he is, and announced that we were sending a big, huge powerful armada to the seas off of North Korea, even though someone forgot to tell the armada, which was actually moving AWAY from North Korea at the time.  Still more recently Trump has threatened to “rain fire and fury on North Korea, the likes of which the world has never seen”.  And now in Tuesday’s U.N. speech, without any attempt to offer a diplomatic olive branch, Trump threatens to “totally destroy” Rocket Man and North Korea.   Just in case you glossed over it, “totally destroy” is secret code for “Nuclear annihilation”

If Donald Trump has a strategy here, and I sure as hell hope he does, it seems to be that he announcing to Kim Jong-un, that “I am bigger, bader whack job than you!”

Sadly, this may be the extent of the Trump Doctrine, because on top of the fact that he offered no visible path for diplomacy to North Korea, he infers that the previously negotiated international nuclear deal with Iran deal might be on the chopping block.  This point is not helpful to getting North Korea to bend toward any type of diplomatic solution…on yes, that’s right, another nuclear deal.

Personally, I don’t subscribe to the theory that Trump employs strategy in anything he does.  I think the more accurate version of reality, is that on any given day, he is not sure who he is, what he stands for, and doesn’t have a clue about well, a lot.  While he says he is “detail oriented”, he is anything but that.   No, the simple truth here is Donald Trump really is a whack job.  But maybe the beauty of this, the potentially powerful beauty, is that in dealing with North Korea, this may absolutely be the best way to deal with them.  For if you subscribe to the theory that the Donald really is a whack job, as I do, there is simply no evidence on the planet to contradict the fact that he is certainly a bigger one and a much more powerful one than Kim Jong-un.

The Trump Administration has already achieved some level of success in getting Russia and China to back increased, but still not a high enough, level of economic sanctions against North Korea, either a sign of Trump’s diplomatic acumen or a sign of just how dangerous this situation has now become (I’m going with the second choice here).  Still, this is not something that Obama, Bush or Clinton could have pulled off.  Whether you agreed or disagreed with any of their positions or policies, they were all simply too… reasonable.

Having said all this, I don’t want you to think I am oblivious to the danger of having the most important man in the world (oh, how it hurts me to say this) actually be a whack job in his own right.   I get it, things can also go horribly wrong, and in the worst of situations countless innocent people can be killed or harmed, but I have a certain amount of faith that some of the people surrounding Trump, will, when the rubber really meets the road on this one, pull our guy back from the brink and avoid a catastrophe of epic proportions.  We have seasoned veterans with important military experience including Secretary of Defense James Mattis, National Security Advisor, HR McMaster (See Post # ) and Chief of Staff John Kelly, advising Trump.  They understand the grave consequences of going to war.  They will speak up to the President, for they know the possible ramifications if they do not.   Therein lies the difference between the United States, even with Donald Trump at the helm, and North Korea.  In North Korea, if you say something the that Kim Jong-un doesn’t like, you get shot.

We can only hope that all of this is just our whack job’s amped up attempt at a very simplistic Good Cop / Bad Cop strategy that Trump is attempting to execute, and Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, who has seemingly be missing in action for most of the year, has secretly been working behind the scenes and actually working on a diplomatic solution.  We could also hold out hope that Jared, the Boy Wonder, has been pressed into action on this one, but then again….

While I have dissed Donald with some frequency (and you have my personal commitment, I will continue to do so), more for his incredibly consistent level of incompetence (a strong attribute of the highest caliber whack jobs) and less on his policy, and while I personally disagree with all of his bombastic rhetoric regarding North Korea, and don't believe it is helpful, as difficult as it is for me to say, he is still my horse in this horse race.  

So I am not at all ashamed to say that I am absolutely rooting for our whack job on this one.

And the rest of the world should be rooting for him too, as difficult as that may be.