ABOUT FACE

President Trump’s speech to the UN was stunning.

http://www.politico.com/story/2017/09/19/trump-un-speech-2017-full-text-transcript-242879

“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. Rocket Man is on a suicide mission for himself and for his regime.”

Trump was reading from a TelePrompter when he gave this speech, so it is safe to assume this wording was very carefully selected.  I suspect it was designed to cause Kim Jong-un to lose face.  That is significant.  Kim Jong-un will respond to this.  The least likely outcome seems to be Kim Jong-un acting responsibly.  He may do something foolish, like launch an attack that results in a massive response by the U.S.  If China believes that Kim Jong-un has lost face, they may decide to do something about it.  To China the worst case scenario is probably the reunification of North and South Korea with South Korea in charge.  China has far more resources in North Korea than we do.  They have to be terrified over the prospect of a U.S. attack on North Korea.  They have already told Kim Jong-un that if he attacks the U.S. China will not defend him.

While writing this, we just learned that China has already taken action.  Trump announced cutting off all source of revenue to fund North Korea and he said that the central bank of China has told their other banks to immediately stop doing business with North Korea.  He was at a joint press conference with South Korean President Moon Jae-in and Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe.

It is clear that Kim Jong-un has suffered complete loss of face.  Something is going to happen and we will be very fortunate if it is not really bad.  He appears to have brutally eliminated anyone who he considered to be a potential threat to him.  That included the murder of his own half-brother.  There are reports of him strapping people he considered to be a threat to the barrel of a field artillary gun and blowing them apart.  He allegedly did this in front of kids from the local school.  He thought watching this would be great fun.  We may soon find out if he missed anyone.

The good news is that Trump has united the entire world and motivated them to deal with North Korea.  The bad news is that thanks to the feckless and dangerous foreign policy of Barack Obama he is now dealing with a maniac periously close to having the ability to attack us with a nuclear weapon.  CNN, of course, was too busy trying and failing to ressurect the Russia collusion nonsense to notice.

TDM