Senators want to know if the next Joint Chiefs chairman can stand up to Trump

Hooah!

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Exactly!

Hooah!

You seem to have a very short-term-focus MAJ Bryan Zeski We had no diplomatic relations with North Korea since they invaded the south in 1950.
Remember you and I have no visibility of what is happening at many of the levels of interaction with North Korea which range from repatriation of remains from the Korea War [we have visibility of that], economic issues, increased ability for people from North Korea to visit family in the south and vice versa; medical and food aid for North Korea, etc.
1. Staunch anti-communist reestablished relations following his historic trip to that nation. That did not occur overnight and we are still negotiating with the Chinese on many fronts. Diplomatic relationships can be for the long haul - so much better than warfare.
2. Following WWII George C Marshall pushed what is not known as the Marshall Plan which among other things turned Germany from an implacable enemy into a ally in many respects.
3. In Japan General of the Army Douglas MacArthur worked with the Japanese to turn them from an implacable enemy to a staunch friend.
4. We have an opportunity over the next year to 18 months to see the beginnings of a normalization of diplomatic relations with North Korea. It will take at least a decade to see fuller realization of economic relations and sharing of medical and related technology and products.

Remember "I am not a crook" Nixon MSG Stan Hutchison established relationship with communist China in 1972. That took us from the brink of war.
2. On September 17, 1978, Egyptian President Anwar Sadat, Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin and US President Jimmy Carter signed the Camp David Accords in Washington.
3. President Ronald Reagan pushed hard to bring the Soviet Union and Warsaw Pact to yield and it was realized by the end of 1991. Now we have former Warsaw Pact nations training along side us.4. It does not matter at all if you or I like or support President trump, he is President. Most of what Presidents do is not visible to those without a bonafide need to know. Some aspects of the administrations of George W Bush, Barack Obama and Donald Trump will be declassified and made available to our children and grandchildren probably after 2050.

LTC Stephen F. - I think the thing you're overlooking in your analysis comparing Germany and Japan to North Korea is the types of leaders and nations those were prior. Germans weren't starving. Hitler, while a bad guy, wasn't living high on the hog while his policies and processes starved and killed his own people (aside from a select group). The Japanese Emperor valued his people probably more than his own life.

KJU and North Korea are nothing like Germany and Japan. Normalizing relations with North Korea, in my opinion, will not help North Koreans. It will refill the coffers that had sustained KJI into KJUs rule, but were almost depleted. I think the short term "benefits" we're seeing is a direct result of a failure to look further than the next election cycle. POTUS wants wins. He thinks making nice with NK is a win. And maybe it is - for him and KJU. They can write each other love notes all day long. The people who lose are the North Koreans, and the South Koreans who have to continue to have a madman at their doorstep for the next few decades. Another group that loses here is the US military which will have to maintain its force levels in Korea as long as KJU is in power. POTUS wins. KJU wins. The people lose.

I expect you still have an active clearance but you and I have no need to know what is going on on the Korean Penisula MAJ Bryan Zeski.
I have been studying history and current events which are indelibly linked for over 50 years.
1.. North Korea and South Koreans hate the Japanese. The Korean peninsula which was occupied by Japan in about 1933 and the Japanese brutally treated the Koreans as they has in previous invasions. Japan has a lengthy history
2. Germany was not formed until 1871 [Franco-Prussian War victory by the Prussians ] North Korea is similar to Germany post-WWI in a number of respects.
a. Germany was enclosed by France, Poland and England was just beyond the low countries. North Korea is enclosed by Communist China with South Korea and the US and its mortal enemy Japan just over the horizon. Russia is just north of North Korea.
b. Poverty was rampant in post-WWI Germany and it is rampant in Korea.
c. Germany was divided in 1945 with the USSR occupying the eastern zone and US and UK occupied the western zone. A wall was built with barbed wire, mines, etc between east and west Germany and west Germany and Czechoslovakia for that matter. Similarly in 1945 the division of Korea began at the end of World War II. With the declaration of the Soviet-Japanese War, the Soviet Union occupied the north of Korea, and the United States occupied the south.
d. There are similarities between hardened communist Walter Ulbricht and Kim Jong-un' s family - especially his grandfather.
(1) Walter Ulbricht was a Bolshevik communist. He fled Germany when Adolf Hitler became chancellor in January 1933 and he "fled abroad, serving for the next five years as an agent of both the KPD and the Comintern in Paris and Moscow and in Spain during the Spanish Civil War (1936–39), all the time relentlessly persecuting Trotskyites and other deviationists. Back in Moscow at the start of Germany’s invasion of the Soviet Union (1941), Ulbricht was assigned to propagandize German prisoners of war and process information from the German army." [background from britannica.com/biography/Walter-Ulbricht].
(2) Kim Jong-un's grandfather, Kim Il-sung was the first leader of North Korea which he ruled from the country's establishment in 1948 [post Soviet Union control] until his death in 1994.
e. The most significant similarity between German and Korea is that at the end of WWII both were divided with the Soviet Union occupying East Germany and North Korea and the US as lead in West Germany and South Korea. North Germany and Korea were divided by a DMZ with land mines, barbed wire, guard towers,etc.
5. My old friend Vince Brooks does know since he commanded the the US and South Korean forces for a couple years until he retired last year. I will talk to him offline at some point at our 40th USMA class reunion next year.

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