In Trump should get even tougher with North Korea author Mark Thiessen writes that the United States should keep the Libya model on the table in dealing with North Korea.
Why does the mere mention of the Libya Model send exactly the wrong message to Kim? An article in The Diplomate explains:
Trump's 'Libya Model' Remark on North Korea Was a Threat and May Sink the June 12 Summit from The Diplomat).
But Trump’s assurances were immediately overshadowed by a moment of confused incoherence in discussing Bolton’s remarks on the so-called Libya model. “The Libya model isn’t the model that we have at all when we’re thinking of North Korea,” Trump said. “In Libya, we decimated that country.” Trump added that “that model would take place if we don’t make a deal [with North Korea], most likely,” leaving Kim Jong-un with precisely the kind of threat that North Korea hears when it imagines the “Libya model.”
Libyan leader Moammar Gaddafi, disarmed of his nascent nuclear weapons in 2003, died at the hands of rebels backed by Western airpower in 2011, of course. Bolton’s “Libya model” and Trump’s “Libya model” are two different things; by emphasizing the latter, Trump showed North Korea that it had been right all along to be wary of Bolton’s comments. For North Korea, a Libya-style disarmament deal with the United States sets the Kim regime down the road to a painful and undignified end. Trump punctuated his Libya remarks by adding that “we just cannot let that country have nukes,” emphasizing the very maximalist U.S. position on denuclearization that Kim Kye-gwan sought to warn against in his statement.
The president’s comments will serve as a reminder in North Korea of a central reason why the country pursued nuclear weapons. Like China decades ago, North Korea has long seen the United States as far too willing to use its own nuclear arsenal for coercive ends. The only way out of that coercion—the only way to maintain self-reliance and dignity—was to acquire nuclear weapons. Trump’s threats will only emphasize to Kim why he must under no circumstances relinquish his so-called “treasured sword” and open himself to suffering the same fate as Gaddafi down the line.
Here’s Marc Thiessen’s recommendation for dealing with North Korea:
Trump should get even tougher with North Korea Mark Thiessen
Why is Kim Jong Un’s regime lashing out? It’s not because they are offended at talk of a “Libya model.” It’s because they were hoping to follow the “Iran model” — sanctions relief up front and without full denuclearization — and are starting to realize that is not going to happen.
When national security adviser John Bolton first raised the “Libya model,” he was not referring to the overthrow of Moammar Gaddafi. He was saying North Korea would have to carry out complete, verifiable and irreversible denuclearization before the Trump administration lifted its “maximum pressure” campaign.
……….
The president made the right decision by calling off the summit, which should disabuse Pyongyang of the notion that he is desperate for a deal. Now, his conciliatory public letter to Kim should be followed by tough back-channel warnings that the alternative to negotiations is not to continue the status quo. My American Enterprise Institute colleague Dan Blumenthal suggests Trump could also announce a major U.S.-Japan joint project to develop missile-defense capabilities to “shoot down missiles at their ‘boost phase’ (when they are at their warmest in their ascent and easier to track) through space, unmanned aerial vehicles, and other sensors and shooters,” and also put major Chinese banks on notice that they could face sanctions for financing North Korean projects. “This would get the attention of both Beijing and Pyongyang.”
Trump should make clear to both North Korea and China, absent an agreement, that sanctions will get tighter and military action is possible. And that means the “Libya model” is indeed on the table.
While Thiessen tries to minimize the meaning of Libya Model deflecting from the common perception that it means overthrowing Kim Jung Un and having him suffer the fate of Muammar Gaddafi, the fact is that such nuances are likely to be lost on Kim.
This prompted comments like these:
- Keep polishin' that turd, Marc. There ain't nothing Trump can do to spin this one into anything that looks semi-competent.
- Washington Post--Please limit yourself to columnists who are grounded in reality. Thiessen has proven time after time that he is not.
- Oh may, spoken like a guy who hasn't been a soldier, has limited understanding of war and its aftermath, and I'm sure wrote the "Mission Accomplished" speech for President Bush delivered on the aircraft carrier! Remember that?? (He was a speechwriter for Rumsfeld and Bush.)
- I understand the point of having opinion writers at the Post with various viewpoints.However. It would be helpful if those viewpoints were grounded in reality and contained at least a minimum of factual evidence. Thirteen offers neither. He makes wildly inaccurate claims and offers no proof to back those claims. He therefore offers NOTHING to the conversation other than constant, sickening platitudes to what is surely the most inept, corrupt, and dishonest President in American history.
- With all credit to SNL....Marc, you ignorant slack!!
Having written
“Message to Trump and Gina Haspel - “24” is not real” before the later was confirmed as CIA director (I originally posted this on January 27, 2017) I thought Thiessen lived in the same testosterone-fueled fantasy world as Trump and Haspel, so
looked him up in Wikipedia and I posted this comment:
Hmm. This blood-thirsty piece of lurid fantasy prompted me to look the author up in Wikipedia. My conclusion is that Mr. Thiessen, like Donald Trump, thinks that "24" is a reality show and is one he particularly enjoys when Jack Baurer saves the world using ever more creative versions of "enhanced interrogation."
From Wiki:
His one book is a defense of the enhanced interrogation techniques used by the CIA under the George W. Bush administration.
Thiessen's first book, Courting Disaster: How the CIA Kept America Safe and How Barack Obama Is Inviting the Next Attack (ISBN 1596986034), was published by Regnery Publishing in January 2010. In the book, he argued that the enhanced interrogation techniques used by the CIA, which the Obama administration has characterized as torture,[11] are not torture by any reasonable legal or moral standard and "were not only effective, but lawful and morally just".[12]
The book was endorsed by the former Vice President Dick Cheney, former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, and former Attorney General Michael Mukasey.[13] It reached the No. 9 spot on the New York Times Best Sellers list for hardcover nonfiction in February 2010.[14]An anonymous former military interrogator and author of How to Break a Terrorist, writing for Slate, characterized Thiessen's book as "a literary defense of war criminals".
I could substitute Thiessen’s name for Trump’s in this from my original article:
Considering Trump’s emphatic belief that torture works, I think it is vital we remind him that TV shows where the heroic anti-hero saves the world by brutally getting a terrorist to reveal where the nuclear bomb is hidden (within a time span of just one day) — if you were a fan you know how many times Jack Bauer did that from one season to the next. Attention Mr. President, Jack Bauer wasn’t real. He was a fictional character. Don’t believe me, look it up on Wikipedia? He was played by Keifer Sutherland.
The newspaper owned by Jeff Bezos which Trump loves to hate and is trying to punish by raising postage rates for Amazon has at least one columnist sending warm albeit bloody fuzzies his way.