Inviting Kim Jong-un for a Friendly Visit

According to a new press report:

President Trump says he would "certainly" invite North Korea's Kim Jong Un to visit the United States if summit negotiations in Singapore go well.
...
Trump says he'd probably favor the White House over his private Mar-a-Lago club in Palm Beach, Florida, as a venue for hosting Kim, saying: "Maybe we'll start with the White House."

While I've seen no pundit say it out loud, there can't be the slightest doubt what the plan is. Sham negotiations and sham agreements, hands warmly shaken and smiling photos snapped. Promises made, perhaps even some aid money changing hands. Then we kill the fat little motherfucker the moment he sets foot on our soil.

It would be unprecedented in modern diplomacy. It would set an unimaginably terrible precedent. It would be barbaric and sharply at odds with American values - heck, with over three centuries of Enlightenment values. But while I'm a peaceful, conciliatory type, I can't say I'm necessarily opposed in this one extreme case.

Leave aside Kim Jong-un's death camps, his bellicosity, his support for terrorism, his great many knives pointed at the throat of South Korea, Samoa and Japan. Forget for a moment his nukes and ICBM development. Putin's Russia does most of these things - and points those missiles right at us - yet no sane parties would propose murdering Putin (not that it would make a big difference, anyway; Putin's built a personality cult but it's not anything like North Korea's). North Korea does all those things while making nonstop credible threats against the United States and demonstrating unrestrained brutality and a visceral relish for blackmail. In fact, those things are their brand. This is a unique predicament which will soon erupt into an existential threat.

On the other hand, the North Koreans are not fools. KJU won't set foot in the United States without first showing the world the complicated set of "dead man switches" he's set up. Millions of Seoul residents would be at risk of incineration, and we'd need to worry about Japan as well. Interestingly, the Japanese Prime Minister is in Washington right at this very moment.

But it looks like Bolton, Pompeo, and Trump are wagering that, even factoring that in the less-than-certain odds that a decapitated North Korea would not slaughter millions, immediately triggering massive punishment, with no Great Leader to rally around, these are the best odds we'll ever get.

If this happens, and it works, Trump supporters (not so much the chuckle-headed MAGA bigots, but the ones who voted for Trump seeing him as an uncouth vicious asshole who'd be on our side) would get the last laugh. They've been saying all along that we needed a shake up and new thinking - more audacious, less politely occupied with norms and protocol. In this one situation, where a decades-long stalemate is about to come to a perilous head with no conceivable happy outcome, history might remember that we needed a rash, shameless jackal like Trump - execrable though he is - to get this one task done.

Only Trump could make this stick. His wildly hyperbolic and unpredictable turnarounds - nobody's "in" for long or "out" for long, it's all a wild ride of impetuous relationship shifts - make it credible that he'd go from ridiculing "Rocket Man" to forging a peace alliance in less than a year. Noble Prizes, ego, glory, etc..


Why, then, did Bolton make those Libya references (background: Muammar Gaddafi gave up his nuclear program and we invaded and slaughtered him)? And why was Giuliani antagonizing KJU this week (KJU "got back on his hands and knees and begged for it, which is exactly the position you want to put him in")? Because they're undisciplined idiots. It's as simple as that.