This Is What a World Without American Leadership Looks Like

[soryang]

This Is What a World Without American Leadership Looks Like
The escalating feud between U.S. allies Japan and South Korea is what happens when the president ignores his responsibilities.

By FRED KAPLAN
AUG 23, 201911:19 AM

A little over a month ago, White House officials suddenly realized that tensions between South Korea and Japan—the two top U.S. allies in North Asia—were spiraling out of control. Like most Americans who don’t follow Asian politics, they seemed unaware, or unfazed, that these tensions had erupted periodically for the past 70 years—and that the eruptions have usually been quelled by American mediation.

The issues between the two countries have been the same all along. What’s different, this time around, is that President Donald Trump—unlike all previous presidents—has had, until very recently, no interest in stepping in.

“How many things do I have to get involved in?” he asked last month, in a tone of exasperation, when he first heard requests to help quell the tensions. The implication was that he didn’t much want to get involved in this one. And so the tensions spiraled.

Those issues between the two countries amount to a toxic brew of nationalist resentments dating back more than a century. They ought to be a cautionary tale in this era when our own country is repackaging old tribal disputes into seething partisan politics.

https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2019/08/south-korea-japan-feud-history-comfort-women-trump.html

White House indifference to the South Korea - Japan dispute is part of the transactional/coercive technique of this administration. The white house loathes the progressive Moon Jae In democratic party government of South Korea. The US defense interests want to increase South Korean payments to the US for defense costs, increase ROK commitments to out of area Indo-Pacific operations; deploy intermediate range ballistic missiles and more THAAD launchers in South Korea; and have South Korea buy into an integrated Aegis air defense system in the region with US and Japanese forces. Unlikely to get much cooperation on these issues from the progressive Moon government, weakening and destabilizing the Moon administration in tacit alliance with the right wing "make Japan great again" Abe government is the chosen path.

[SWBTATTReg]

1. Again showing how incompetent he is...a joke all by himself, and a national disaster in the ...

making. We need to declare a national emergency, the American people, and take matters into our own hands, since our leaders aren't (or at least, the repugs aren't, ours, the democratic leaders of this country who care very deeply about this country, are slowly coming to the point that impeachment is needed).

[Dan]

2. Trump truly is a dumb ass...

Domestic politics can potentially result in him losing an election.

International politics can get us all killed.