Althouse: Trump's French tweetstorm ends with "MAKE FRANCE GREAT AGAIN!"

November 13, 2018

Trump's French tweetstorm ends with "MAKE FRANCE GREAT AGAIN!"

279 comments:

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J. Farmer said...: And just last year we completed a seventh round of NATO enlargement to include that geostrategic linchpin Montenegro.; 11/13/18, 2:17 PM
Howard said...: Now Bone Spurs went Full Cunt throwing his troops who take bullets for him under the bus. He got so trolled; 11/13/18, 2:21 PM
Bilwick said...: Want to make France great again? More Bastiat and de Tocqueville; less Louis Blanc and Saint-Simon.; 11/13/18, 2:53 PM
Lydia said...: I think disquieting thing was the very romantic notion many Europeans had of war prior to WWI. A general sense had been growing that war on the continent was not only inevitable but would be a good and cleansing thing.

Not sure about that. The Siege of Paris (1870) in the Franco-Prussian War was a horrifying thing and must have opened most people's eyes to the possibilities of modern warfare with the use of long-range artillery barrages.; 11/13/18, 3:09 PM
J. Farmer said...: @Lydia:

The Franco-Prussian War had occurred 44 years earlier, and most of the WWI recruits would not even have been alive to remember it. Also recall that when war broke out in the summer of 1914, it was commonly believed by many that it would conclude by Christmas of that year. The Austrian novelist Stefan Zweig described the scene in Vienna at the outbreak of the war in his autobiography The World of Yesterday:

"The trains were filled with fresh recruits, banners were flying, music sounded, and in Vienna I found the entire city in a tumult. The first shock at the news of war-the war that no one, people or government, had wanted-the war which had slipped, much against their will, out of the clumsy hands of the diplomats who had been bluffing and toying with it, had suddenly been transformed into enthusiasm. There were parades in the street, flags, ribbons, and music burst forth everywhere, young recruits were marching triumphantly, their fates lighting up at the cheering -they, the John Does and Richard Roes who usually go unnoticed and uncelebrated."; 11/13/18, 3:23 PM
Robert Cook said...: "How else, but through tweets, can Trump get out his message in unadulterated form? Through the news media?"

Writing them on bathroom walls?; 11/13/18, 3:28 PM
Ken B said...: And tenement halls; 11/13/18, 3:30 PM
Achilles said...: People today are fucking ridiculous.

Massive widespread wars used to happen regularly everywhere. It used to be that almost every person in the world was directly touched by war. Now we have time to babble about how awful the US influence in the world is.

Maybe the lot of you should be touched by a war. Maybe you should have personal experience with the likes of Al Quaeda. The Taliban. The North Koreans.

The world is really going to miss Pax Americana when you jackholes get your wish.; 11/13/18, 3:32 PM
Robert Cook said...: "I think disquieting thing was the very romantic notion many Europeans had of war prior to WWI. A general sense had been growing that war on the continent was not only inevitable but would be a good and cleansing thing."

Same as the members of the confederacy before the disaster of our War between the states actually commenced. This is the pernicious result of romanticizing wars and warriors.; 11/13/18, 3:33 PM
Achilles said...: The whole democrat party should join Farrakan next time he goes to Iran to chant Death to America with those peaceful Iranian Mullahs who aren't really involved in their proxy wars all over the middle east.

Kyrsten Synema should go offer her support of the Taliban in person next time.

She should take their "Republican" friends like Jeff Flake with her.; 11/13/18, 3:37 PM
Achilles said...: Robert Cook said...

Same as the members of the confederacy before the disaster of our War between the states actually commenced. This is the pernicious result of romanticizing wars and warriors.

The only thing to do is let Cook have his way right?

I love it when douchebags who hate the warriors that protected them sound off with their pure clean souls about shit that happens in the world.

Douchebags who support an ideology that has murdered over a hundred million people.

You should go with Synema and offer your support to the Taliban in person. Or Maduro. Or Castro. Pick one and go tell him how much better he is than those disgusting soldiers that protected you.; 11/13/18, 3:42 PM
Robert Cook said...: "I love it when douchebags who hate the warriors that protected them sound off with their pure clean souls about shit that happens in the world."

Not one U.S. soldier who has died in war in my lifetime has died for my protection. They have died (and continue to die) for the expansion of U.S. global domination.; 11/13/18, 3:46 PM
J. Farmer said...: @Achilles:

Massive widespread wars used to happen regularly everywhere.

Can you please provide an example of one of the "massive widespread wars" that "used to happen regularly everywhere" prior to WWI? That is an ahistoric notion. For one thing, there had been relative peace (save a few smaller regional conflicts) on the continent for decades prior to WWI. The closest thing Europe had seen to a massive widespread war were the Napoleonic Wars, which had concluded a hundred years before WWI. And recall that deaths in the Napoleonic Wars were a third of the death toll of WWI despite the war lasting three times as long.; 11/13/18, 3:47 PM
Robert Cook said...: "And tenement halls."

Ha! Good one!; 11/13/18, 3:48 PM
narciso said...: Conscription, for one, mass bombardments (aerial artillery, missiles) the last is what Israel faces on a regular basis, for another, its been a long time, since that happened in the west, about 75 years ago, in terms of the uk,; 11/13/18, 3:59 PM
James K said...: Can you please provide an example of one of the "massive widespread wars" that "used to happen regularly everywhere" prior to WWI?

The Crimean War was a pretty big deal, something over 100,000 killed in battles plus maybe half a million by disease.

And recall that deaths in the Napoleonic Wars were a third of the death toll of WWI despite the war lasting three times as long.

There were a lot fewer people around.; 11/13/18, 4:01 PM
J. Farmer said...: It is also worth remembering that the second half of the 20th century was just as violent as the first half. The only significant difference was that conflicts tended to take place within internationally recognized borders as opposed to between them. Industrialization also made great power wars very cost prohibitive, and atomic weaponry also played a part in reducing direct conflict between competing great powers.; 11/13/18, 4:02 PM
narciso said...: this is why general Makarov's threat to retaliate for a defensive military system in central Europe was concerning,; 11/13/18, 4:03 PM
narciso said...: does anybody know how to run this railroad

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2018/11/13/brexit-latestdeal-possible-next-48-hours-david-lidington-suggests/; 11/13/18, 4:09 PM
J. Farmer said...: James K:

The Crimean War was a pretty big deal, something over 100,000 killed in battles plus maybe half a million by disease.

The Crimean War was certainly significant, but I don't think it counts as widespread since battles were limited to the area surrounding the Crimean peninsula primarily.

There were a lot fewer people around.

That is a fair point.; 11/13/18, 4:10 PM
James K said...: I don't think it counts as widespread

It involved the British, French, Russian, and Ottomans, and in terms of battles actually extended to the Baltics, the Caucasus, and other parts of Russia (even the far east).

The Franco-Prussian War was also pretty massive, though I'd accept that wasn't so "widespread."; 11/13/18, 4:17 PM
J. Farmer said...: @James K:

It involved the British, French, Russian, and Ottomans, and in terms of battles actually extended to the Baltics, the Caucasus, and other parts of Russia (even the far east).

Granted, terms like "massive" and "widespread" are obviously relative. But I still don't think the Crimean War counts as a "widespread" conflict. The Far East was mostly minor naval skirmishes. All of the most significant battles in the war--Balaklava, Inkerman, and Malakoff--all took place on the peninsula. The conflicts in the Baltic Sea and the Caucasus were relatively minor by comparison.; 11/13/18, 4:27 PM
bagoh20 said...: Didn't WWI happen as a result of too many allegiances, which to me are a severe weakening of nationalism. A little more nationalism of the type Trump is talking about and the whole mess might have never got going.; 11/13/18, 4:33 PM
narciso said...: an example of the latter,

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/13297/hamas-missiles-qatari-money

Russia was in association with the Serbian black hand, which led to the events in Sarajevo,; 11/13/18, 4:38 PM
Roberto said...: Good lord...after everything we've seen and heard...the majority of people here are still sucking on Don?

Embarrassing.; 11/13/18, 4:43 PM
J. Farmer said...: @bagoh20:

Didn't WWI happen as a result of too many allegiances, which to me are a severe weakening of nationalism. A little more nationalism of the type Trump is talking about and the whole mess might have never got going

That is actually folk myth about the war that was primarily pushed by Barbara Tuchman's The Guns of August, and the thesis wasn't even tenable based on primary source evidence at the time Tuchman wrote the book. There had long been a series of rivalries and alliances on the continents that did not lead to general war.

To quote from an acquaintance's review of the book on Amazon:

"Here we need to cut through some bland nonsense. The war does not break out simply because of a set of longstanding bitter rivalries. Those rivalries were just that... longstanding. They are historically relevant background, but they are ONLY background. Crises came and went in the preceding years without leading to general war. The point is that even in a time of genuine crisis, something more is required to transform a crisis into a war. What is required is a specific set of choices, made by a specific set of decision-makers, occurring within a specific timeline. Tuchman's one paragraph treatment of the crisis period is a completely inadequate examination of what the key actors were actually doing during this critical period."; 11/13/18, 4:44 PM
alanc709 said...: Patton supposed once said he'd rather have a German division in front of him, than a French division behind him.; 11/13/18, 4:59 PM
J. Farmer said...: @narciso:

Russia was in association with the Serbian black hand, which led to the events in Sarajevo,

That is a highly contestable point that is far from an historical fact. The only real evidence for any Russian involvement was Apis' claim in a letter during his trial that Viktor Artamonov, a military attache in Serbia had knowledge of the event. The claim is amplified in McMeekin's atrocious book The Russian Origins of the First World War. Yet the veracity of Apis' claim is questionable, and no corroborating evidence as far as I know has been discovered to support it. And even if we accept Apis' claim at face value, it remains unknown how much Artamonov was acting as a freelancer versus following orders provided by the Tsar. There are no mentions of it in his cables to Moscow, and earlier cables of his had disparaged Black Hand. While none of this is by any means dispositive, the question of Russian involvement with Black Hand is still mired by uncertainty.; 11/13/18, 5:22 PM
Drago said...: alanc709: "Patton supposed once said he'd rather have a German division in front of him, than a French division behind him."

2 German Divisions in front of him rather than 1 French division behind him.; 11/13/18, 5:27 PM
mockturtle said...: This comment has been removed by the author.; 11/13/18, 5:31 PM
mockturtle said...: Patton was actually quite the francophile and was fluent in French. He was not so fond of the British.; 11/13/18, 5:31 PM
narciso said...: why is it atrocious, its based on an actual document, as ferguson points out, the german and british economies were thoroughly integrated at the start of the war, so why would the king wage war on his cousin, in the tangled geneology of the error, mcmeekin is a valuable corrective to many erroneous accounts of pre revolutionary Russia, with the exception of pipes conceivably, I haven't reviewed lieven's account well enough to put that in that perspective,; 11/13/18, 5:32 PM
J. Farmer said...: @narciso:

why is it atrocious

I will again defer to my acquaintance's review of the book:

"Before proceeding any further, we need to dispense with a big fat Red Herring. This is not about Fritz Fischer, or whether one agrees of disagrees with any particular interpretation of the "Fischer School". Even if Fischer had never been born, the primary source evidence is what it is. One can find much of it in Albertini, or if one is lucky and has access to good library, you can go all the way back to the Kautsky collection. One can set aside all of the interpretations that historians have proposed over the past 99 years and go straight to words of the actual participants. What they have to say is illuminating.

So what relevant facts have gone missing in the donut hole? Here's a sample...

1) McMeekin doesn't tell the reader that on June 30th, German ambassador in Vienna initially counseled against "hasty measures", or that Zimmerman, the acting German foreign minister initially advised "against making humiliating demands on Serbia". More importantly, he doesn't tell the reader that the Kaiser rejected the actions of his ambassador as "utterly stupid" and "nonsense".

2) McMeekin's devotes all of ONE sentence to Germany's July 5th "Blank Cheque"! He accurately characterizes it as Germany's commitment to "stand by Austria if she attacked Serbia", but he fails to include any reference to its discussion of the possibility of escalation. He fails to note A-H ambassador Szogyeny's report that Kaiser Wilhelm II "would deplore our not taking advantage of the present moment which is so favorable to us".

3) While McMeekin will later make a great deal out Russia's decision to commence pre-mobilization measures on July 24th, for some reason he doesn't bother to inform the reader that Germany decided to commence its pre-mobilization measures 18 days earlier on July 6th!!!

4) McMeekin suggests a "gap in the record" opens in mid-July. However, even a cursory reference to Albertini provides abundant primary source documentation of German pressure on A-H to attack Serbia, as well as the decision to issue an ultimatum to Serbia which was intentionally to be composed so as to be impossible for the Serbians to accept. The Germans knew in advance that A-H intended to launch a punitive war against Serbia in preference to a diplomatic approach, and they approved of that decision."; 11/13/18, 5:37 PM
Roughcoat said...: In order to knowledgeably discuss the causes of the First World War it is absolutley necessary to read Fritz Fischers's writings on the subject, particularly Griff nach der Weltmacht: die Kriegszielpolitik des Kaiserlichen Deutschland, 1914–18 and Krieg der Illusionen: Die deutsche Politik von 1911 bis 1914. One must become thoroughly conversant in the "Fischer Thesis" and in the still-ongoing scholarly debate concerning his views. Unless and until this is done one cannot speak with any authority about the onset of the war.; 11/13/18, 5:44 PM
Roughcoat said...: "Before proceeding any further, we need to dispense with a big fat Red Herring. This is not about Fritz Fischer, or whether one agrees of disagrees with any particular interpretation of the "Fischer School". Even if Fischer had never been born, the primary source evidence is what it is.

Oh dear, that is an unfortunate statement. And so very reminiscent of Stalinist formulations, e.g., Eto khorosho izvestno (Это хорошо известно).; 11/13/18, 5:50 PM
J. Farmer said...: @Roughcoat:

In order to knowledgeably discuss the causes of the First World War it is absolutley necessary to read...

I would replace Fischer's work in that sentence with Luigi Albertini's magisterial three-volume work The Origins of the War of 1914.; 11/13/18, 5:52 PM
bagoh20 said...: Without allegiances neither world war was possible. You would just have two nations fighting which would be over soon. Allegiances may be necessary, or even unavoidable, but their dominos-like effect on the expansions of these wars is pretty self-evident.; 11/13/18, 5:53 PM
J. Farmer said...: @Roughcoat:

Oh dear, that is an unfortunate statement. And so very reminiscent of Stalinist formulations, e.g., Eto khorosho izvestno (Это хорошо известно).

The writer of that sentence in a review of The Russian Origins of the First World War is supportive of the Fischer thesis that Germany deserves primary guilt for the war.; 11/13/18, 5:54 PM
Roughcoat said...: "The primary evidence is what it is" -- in other words, a tautology. Actually, the primary evidence is open to interpretation.; 11/13/18, 5:55 PM
bagoh20 said...: In WWII the expansion may have been unavoidable due to Hitler's ambition, but what would have happened to WWI if most of the nations refused to join in and just defended their borders all nationalistic like?

I'm not claiming expertise, just asking.; 11/13/18, 5:56 PM
Roughcoat said...: Fischer is, and must be, the starting point.; 11/13/18, 5:56 PM
narciso said...: from the wiki:

Moreover, Fischer's timetable has also been criticized as inaccurate. Hollweg's Septemberprogramm, outlining German war aims, was not produced until after the war had begun and was still going well for Germany. At the same time, other powers had been harboring similarly grandiose plans for post-war territorial gains.[14][15][16][17][18] Since its defeat in the Franco-Prussian War (1870), France was committed to a path of revenge against Germany and the reacquisition of Alsace and Lorraine. Russia, too, had long-standing, explicit war aims.[19]; 11/13/18, 5:57 PM
J. Farmer said...: @Roughcoat:

The primary evidence is what it is" -- in other words, a tautology. Actually, the primary evidence is open to interpretation.

That is from a review of McMeekin's book that I quoted (in part) in response to another commenters question about the book. The point is that the evidence against McMeekin's theory was available for 30 years before Fischer's work was published. In other words, he is pointing out that you do not have to rely on the so called Fischer thesis to conclude that Germany bares primary responsibility for the war.; 11/13/18, 6:00 PM
J. Farmer said...: Fischer is, and must be, the starting point.

That is not true. Karl Kautsky predates Fischer by decades, and Albertini's three-volume work was published in Italy in the early 1940s.; 11/13/18, 6:02 PM
narciso said...: can't say I know enough german, rough coat, maybe you could do the honors,

digital.cjh.org//exlibris/dtl/d3_1/apache_media/L2V4bGlicmlzL2R0bC9kM18xL2FwYWNoZV9tZWRpYS8yODA3NTY4.pdf

re a letter from the leading policy maker,kurt riezler, who also was responsible for enabling the Bolshevik revolution, later on down the line,; 11/13/18, 6:05 PM
Roughcoat said...: That's my opinion. It isn't a question of truth or untruth. Fischer's scholarship is superior to Kautsky's and Albertini's. In my opinion.; 11/13/18, 6:06 PM
J. Farmer said...: @Roughcoat:

Fischer's scholarship is superior to Kautsky's and Albertini's.

In what ways?; 11/13/18, 6:10 PM
Roughcoat said...: narciso:

You want me to read and translate from the German a 67-page letter and then comment upon it in this thread? You can't be serious. No, I think you are not being serious. I think you're pulling your dick out of your pants and for me to do the same so we can establish whose dick is bigger.

I like you, narciso, and I usually agree with your views, but here you're being an asshole.; 11/13/18, 6:11 PM
narciso said...: but some evidence hasn't been available for a long time,

https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/love-letters-put-germany-back-on-trial-over-the-great-war-cl3l6cwr0

like the soviet and Chinese archives that moyar perused; 11/13/18, 6:11 PM
Drago said...: bagoh20: "In WWII the expansion may have been unavoidable due to Hitler's ambition, but what would have happened to WWI if most of the nations refused to join in and just defended their borders all
nationalistic like?

I'm not claiming expertise, just asking."

One key factor limiting the ability of WW1 leaders from drawing back from the brink involved the extremely slow and inefficient mobilization and supply chain processes.

Once begun, mobilization took months and months and with every other European nation mibilizing any leader that chose to either slow or reverse mobilization and movement of troops to forward positions would have been a sitting duck.

And of course once millions of men had been positioned for attack it only takes a spark to set off a massive conflagration.; 11/13/18, 6:13 PM
Roughcoat said...: ... a document written entirely in script, no less. Gee, narciso, hang on, I'll get right to it....; 11/13/18, 6:13 PM
narciso said...: well that escalated quickly, maybe just the end part, good grief,; 11/13/18, 6:13 PM
Henry said...: @J. Farmer -- Good call on the Tuchman book. It is very compelling reading, but as I kept reading military history, I found that the specialists were unimpressed.

J. Farmer: I think disquieting thing was the very romantic notion many Europeans had of war prior to WWI. A general sense had been growing that war on the continent was not only inevitable but would be a good and cleansing thing."

Robert Cook: Same as the members of the confederacy before the disaster of our War between the states actually commenced. This is the pernicious result of romanticizing wars and warriors.

It's also worth pointing out that all the major European powers had observers at the U.S. Civil War, which by its end was characterized by trenches, barbed wire, massed artillery, and wholesale slaughter of frontal offensives.
Yet every major European power entered WWI expecting a war of movement and quick results.

Meanwhile, by the end of the Boer and Spanish American wars, Great Britain and the U.S. had been introduced to guerrilla warfare on a large scale. Even with this historical knowledge and the contemporary awareness of the French failures in Algeria, and the 12-year Malayan emergency faced by the British, the U.S. still entered Vietnam with a totally conventionally attitude.

Some U.S. strategists left Vietnam much wiser, but what they learned was forgotten 30 years later and had to be relearned again.

Back to Tuchman: For all the criticism of The Guns of August, her The Proud Tower is one of the most compelling books I've read. It's not visibly ambitious and (intentionally) fragmentary, but it opens up multiple insights into the Edwardian world that rewards follow-up in other books.; 11/13/18, 6:13 PM
Roughcoat said...: well that escalated quickly, maybe just the end part, good grief,

Kind of like what happened in August 1914.; 11/13/18, 6:17 PM
Roughcoat said...: I like "Guns of August" despite its flaws, I'm not going to join the Tuchman-bashing club, which I suspect is populated by large numbers of historians who are envious of her fame and success, and her superior skills as a narrative writer. Historians as a group can be real backbiting shits. I do disagree with Tuchman's assessment of Joffre and Gallieni. She seems to think that Joffre's one and only positive trait was his phlegmatic temperament, and that Gallieni is the real hero of the Marne. Me, I think Joffre was brilliant, an extraordinary general, the one man who could and did save Western civilization from German hegemony.; 11/13/18, 6:27 PM
Roughcoat said...: Anyway, I do like narciso, and I do agree (mostly) with what he says. Pub conversations can get very contentious.; 11/13/18, 6:31 PM
J. Farmer said...: @Roughcoat:

I agree that Tuchman is a terrific writer, and the writing is the single best part of The Guns of August. But given that it is the single most influential popular history of the war, it maters that its thesis was not tenable at the time of its publishing on the basis of available scholarship.

Also, I am curious to hear your thoughts on why you consider Fischer's work to be superior to Albertini's?; 11/13/18, 6:33 PM
bagoh20 said...: "well that escalated quickly, maybe just the end part, good grief,"

My foreign ministers are all in the sauna right now, but when they emerge, they will tell everyone that bagoh20 has nobody's back.; 11/13/18, 6:34 PM
FIDO said...: Willful Blindness seems an issue with you, Farmer.

Since following an anology of more than 50 syllables, let me use one sentence and one question.

You will ignore it but I will have made the effort.

A nuclear weapon essentially makes a regime immune to invasion and open external regime change.

What can any of your fucking agreements offer a dictator which is more valuable than that?

So your silly straw man assertion of 'all agreements will fail' is diversionary and dishonest bullshit.

IRAN and NORTH KOREA will always cheat on any deal forbidding them from developing nukes.

The Iranians did it. The North Koreans did it.

A deal on grain? Sure. A deal on trade, sure. A deal which stops them from getting a nuke? No.

How many times will they be caught cheating before you stop your willful blindness?; 11/13/18, 6:42 PM
Roughcoat said...: Re Fischer v. Albertini. No, not tonight. Sorry.; 11/13/18, 6:47 PM
FIDO said...: You want to believe in it, fine. India did it against Americas wishes. Pakistan. France.

Not everyone (one never reads about the Thai nuke program)

But militaristic, expansionistic and ideological dictatorships? Yeah, only State department weenies believe you. Everyone else just hopes these agreements slow them down enough to be out of office before it happens.; 11/13/18, 6:47 PM
Roughcoat said...: "A Distant Mirror" is Tuchman's best book, IMO. Really enthralling, a page-turner.; 11/13/18, 6:59 PM
Henry said...: @Roughcoat -- agreed. Probably her best work by a longshot.; 11/13/18, 7:09 PM
narciso said...: I suggested it out of respect, I didn't realize how long a document was going to be.; 11/13/18, 7:23 PM
Roughcoat said...: narciso:

I know. I'm sorry, I apologize. I was out of line. You know, LBJ and this damn war ...; 11/13/18, 7:44 PM
mockturtle said...: Glad to see you boys are playing nice. :-); 11/13/18, 8:27 PM
Bleach Drinkers Curing Coronavirus Together said...: Yeah? Mockery without contempt? From the left? I'd love to see what that looks like. No jeers, sneers, taunts, disdain, derision, disparagement, denigration, disrespect, insults, scorn. Just straight up mockery and ridicule but with love (or at least neutral, without hate.)

Try doing something respectable first.

Respect isn't automatic. It's earned.

DIdn't you jeer, sneer, taunt, disdain, deride, disparage, denigrate, disrespect, insult an scorn a recently homeless friend of yours because he couldn't complete a business transaction with you?

Yeah, that's basically no one's idea of respectable behavior.; 11/13/18, 8:27 PM
J. Farmer said...: @FIDO:

Willful Blindness seems an issue with you, Farmer.

I do not believe you have understood my position well, and I am willing to take the blame for that for being insufficiently clear. This whole discussion began on the question of what to do about North Korea. I have said for years now that it is highly unlikely that the North will give up its nuclear weapons as it sees them as essential to its survival. The best hope the US has now is to contain and restrict it. A negotiated settlement will have to be pursued.

The point in bringing up the Agreed Framework is to demonstrate that, for all its faults, it did succeed in slowing the North's pursuit of nuclear weapons. A conscious decision was made in 2003 to abrogate the Agreed Framework and pursue a more punitive policy. That policy, by its own goals, failed. In that time, the North left the NPT, reopened their closed reactors, unsealed their spent fuel and within a few years detonated their first bomb. The only thing the six-party talks achieved was a more limited version of what had already been in place under the Agreed Framework. The Bush administration had even been reduced to offering to provide light water reactors, even though earlier this was identified was one of the Framework's biggest flaws.

The Obama administration followed a similar course and likewise failed. Obama also helped poison the well through the Libyan intervention. The Libyans had given up WMD earlier in exchange for sanctions relief and normalization, and the result was he was destroyed by western powers. The North learned a very important lesson from this turn of events.

Trump pulled off a Nixon goes to China moment with Kim Jung Un, but in my opinion the opportunity was wasted, and the event turned into little more than a glorified photo op. The administration's policy has similarly born little fruit. If anything, the meeting with Trump is likely to be seen as a major political win inside the regime. The leader of a tiny, impoverished state was accorded international prestige and attention. It's a source of domestic propaganda and legitimacy. The leader is seen as commanding the attention and respect of the leader of a superpower. The North has likewise seen the continual postponement of US-ROK military games, a major objective it has pursued for years.

The sanction-them-into-submission strategy has been tried for 15 years and has not succeeded. The North is already one of the most isolated regimes on the planet. They also have the patronage of China, which for a whole variety of self-interested reasons is not likely to permit the collapse of the regime by outside pressure. The other option is the military option, which I think would be a disaster. If such an action were taken in spite of South Korean objections, it would cause a major strain to US-ROK relations. It could very likely draw the US into direct conflict with China. And could likely result in millions of deaths on the Korean peninsula.; 11/13/18, 8:45 PM
J. Farmer said...: @roughcoat:

Re Fischer v. Albertini. No, not tonight. Sorry.

I'll take a rain check.; 11/13/18, 8:46 PM
J. Farmer said...: @Roughcoat:

I should add briefly in case I was not clear before that I highly respect Fischer and both of his major books on the subject. I agree with his thesis. And I agree they are major contributions to the field. If anything I only disagreed with your ranking. I think that works of equal scholarly merit, which essentially reached the same conclusion, had been produced many years before Fischer's. It's also worth pointing out that Albertini began his research in the 1930s and not only compiled primary source documentation but interviewed many of the major players, most of whom had passed away by the time Fischer began his work in the 1950s.; 11/13/18, 9:11 PM
Roughcoat said...: Farmer:

Noted. Thanks for the clarification. My view: Fischer in combination with the scholarly debate his thesis inspired has greatly broadened and deepened the discussion. I think his distance from the subject (compared to Altini) works in his favor in terms of allowing for sharpened clarity and a bigger field of {historical] vision. Also I like the way he writes and thinks. Full disclosure: I'm only really comfortable reading him in translation. Altini helped to shape the battlefield but Fischer took it and made it his own. When people today debate the causes of the war they reference Fischer first and foremost. If you know Fischer you'll know Altini. But if you know Altini you won't know Fischer. And so on.; 11/13/18, 9:30 PM
Roughcoat said...: Anyway, the whole goddam thing was the Huns' doing. They wanted their place in the sun and war was their way of getting it. "The German problem" indeed.; 11/13/18, 9:34 PM
J. Farmer said...: I have a fried who, while an autodidact on the subject, I consider an expert on the origins of the First World War. He has read every major work that has been published on the subject and has written hundreds of comments in reviews of books on Amazon. He has been obsessed with the subject for more than 25 years. He is on the one that first turned me on to works by Albertini, Pierre Renouvin, and Fischer.

I tried to read Niall Ferguson's The Pity of War but honestly could not get through it. Ferguson produced one great work about the Rothschilds but has written mostly pop history junk ever since. He is obviously a smart and talented historian, but he seems to be afflicted with a showbiz obsession. If you've ever seen Alan Bennet's play, or the film adaptation of The History Boys, the character of Irwin is modeled after Ferguson, and his personality fits to a tee.; 11/13/18, 9:45 PM
Unknown said...: Macron deliberately baited Trump with his “Nationalist” rhetoric, guaranteeing a reply. Completely overshadowing the Remembrance of those who died in WWI and the 100th anniversary of the end of that conflict. Macron’s behavior was disgusting and petty.; 11/13/18, 10:00 PM
narciso said...: Well the thing that impressed me about pity were the numbers he uses to weave his tale, not just casualty figures but Francs Mark's pounds the Rothschild wasnt that impressive by contrast.; 11/13/18, 10:55 PM
FIDO said...: No Farmer, while I get what you are saying, your position was 'The Norks were doing just dandy, everything was going swimmingly until that fucking idiot Bush and Bolton stopped abiding by the agreements.'

And after about being corrected in 50 posts, you have finally admitted that the Norks were cheating, we were slow walking because the Norks were cheating, and that while they were not developing Plutonium bombs, boy howdy were they working on URANIUM ones.

So while MAYBE being technically correct, at the end of the day, through the entire agreement, the Norks were working on nukes.

If I am dead by irradiation from a Uranium bomb or a Plutonium bomb, however, makes a specific difference because you'll assert that since it wasn't Plutonium, the Agreement 'worked'.

I look askance at that kind of pettifoggery.; 11/14/18, 4:39 AM
J. Farmer said...: @FIDO:

No Farmer, while I get what you are saying, your position was 'The Norks were doing just dandy, everything was going swimmingly until that fucking idiot Bush and Bolton stopped abiding by the agreements.'

No, that was never my position, and I never said anything even remotely comparable to that. If that is what you honestly believed my position was, then you have seriously compromised reading comprehension skills.

And after about being corrected in 50 posts, you have finally admitted that the Norks were cheating

In one of my earlier responses to you, I wrote: "The Bush administration did accuse the North Koreans of cheating (though on the NPT, not the Agreed Framework) in the form of secret uranium enrichment and provided their evidence to the North Koreans, at which time they admitted to the program." So I was not "being corrected in 50 posts" and have not "finally admitted" anything.

If I am dead by irradiation from a Uranium bomb or a Plutonium bomb, however, makes a specific difference because you'll assert that since it wasn't Plutonium, the Agreement 'worked'.

You're again completely missing the point. What I said was, "The point in bringing up the Agreed Framework is to demonstrate that, for all its faults, it did succeed in slowing the North's pursuit of nuclear weapons." If you want to challenge this statement, please do so.

Also, at the end of Bush's six-party talks, the result was an agreement that was essentially a watered down version of the Agreed Framework. Why do you think Bush negotiated such a deal?; 11/14/18, 8:59 AM
FIDO said...: Feh. You said halted, frozen, stopped. Not 'slowed' until you got called on it.

The 'pudding' was 'no nukes', not 'no plutonium'.

And unlike you, I am not so credulous as to believe that the same people who cheated on the NPT did not also cheat on the Agreement, but simply were not caught at that.

The absence of evidence is not evidence of absence. Probability suggests they were cheating on Plutonium too.

So any 'agreement' which allowed them to get to nukes was a failure.

As I said: There was nothing we could offer which would make Norks not nudge nearer nukes. You have not refuted this idea so much as ignored it.; 11/14/18, 10:13 AM
J. Farmer said...: @FIDO:

Feh. You said halted, frozen, stopped. Not 'slowed' until you got called on it.

Wrong again. But don't worry, I don't expect you to acknowledge or apologize for it.

Here is where I used the word froze:

"The United States successfully froze that stockpile—a freeze that lasted eight years."

Here is where I used the word halted:

"But again, as to the basic purpose of the Agreed Framework, it was succeeding and had halted North Korea's plutonium enrichment activities and significantly slowed its progress towards developing a weapon."

The 'pudding' was 'no nukes', not 'no plutonium'.

The North Koreans were nowhere near a nuclear weapon during the time of the Agreed Framework. Even the uranium enrichment plans they were seeking would not have been operational for more than 10 years. The Bush administration chose to abandon the Agreed Framework and pursue an alternative course. After that, IAEA inspectors were ejected from North Korea, the sealed plutonium fuel was unsealed, and the reactor reactivated. This had not been the case for the past eight years. In that time, the fuel was sealed, and the reactor was shut down. Three years later the North tested their first weapon. You are blaming the Agreed Framework for not solving a problem that did not exist until three years after the Framework was abandoned in favor of an alternate course.

As I said: There was nothing we could offer which would make Norks not nudge nearer nukes. You have not refuted this idea so much as ignored it.

Do you understand basic English? I said this last night, read above: " I have said for years now that it is highly unlikely that the North will give up its nuclear weapons as it sees them as essential to its survival. The best hope the US has now is to contain and restrict it."

Policy is no longer about the North nudging nearer towards nukes or not. They are a nuclear power state and likely have several weapons. The Trump administration seems to believe that the North has agreed to disarmament. I think that is fabulism. Do you disagree?; 11/14/18, 11:48 AM