Month: July 2018
We Still Don’t Know
It is almost a week, and we have no reliable information about the meeting between Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin.
Trump and Putin spent two and a half hours together in Helsinki with no note-takers, no expert advice, only their interpreters. We have no record of what happened during those two and a half hours, no record of what either man said or may have promised.
The standard practice to have note-takers in such a meeting is because the president is not representing himself, but rather the country. It’s important to have notes because memories of a meeting may be inaccurate or the other party may dispute them.
Engagement in serious discussion precludes note-taking or even forming a coherent memory of all the things said and done. A competent interlocutor pays attention to what the other party is saying and thinks about what s/he will say, informed by recall of materials studied before the meeting. Read More
Sunday Comics
Sunday Comics
Live-Tweeting The Trinity Weather Log
The opera “Dr. Atomic” premieres at the Santa Fe Opera on Saturday, July 14. This will be its first performance so close to Los Alamos.
To commemorate the events of the opera, Nuclear Diner will live-tweet the weather reports for the Trinity test of the first nuclear device to be exploded. The weather reports were significant, because this time of year is monsoon season, and thunderstorms surrounded the test site.
The Twitter account is @NuclearDiner. The live-tweet starts at 12:30 am Mountain Daylight Time July 16. You don’t need to be registered on Twitter to see the tweets, and you can read them later.
The photo is from the Santa Fe Opera’s tweet stream, which contains a great many from their dress rehearsal.
Mike Pompeo’s Masculine Meltdown
Secretary of State Mike Pompeo had a meltdown last night after he had earlier claimed the talks with North Korea were “productive” and made progress “on almost all of the central issues,” followed by North Korea’s blast at “unilateral and robber-like denuclearization demands as [complete, verifiable and irreversible denuclearization (CVID)], declaration and verification that go against the spirit of the North-U.S. summit meeting.”
Pompeo returned that if the US is behaving like a gangster, then so is the rest of the world, referring to United Nations resolutions that North Korea disarm. (One Korean speaker says that “robber” is a better translation than “gangster.”) He then went on to say that North Korea did not have an issue with CVID, directly contradicting North Korea’s statement of its position. He also went back to the importance of “maintaining maximum pressure” on North Korea, after Donald Trump had backed off from that phrase. Read More
Sunday Comics
How Long Would It Take To *Cough* End North Korea’s Nuclear Weapons Program?
Observe how gracefully I avoided the unclear word denuclearization by saying what I mean. Another area of disagreement is in how long it would take to remove North Korea’s nuclear weapons and eliminate or repurpose the facilities that develop and build them. And we don’t know what North Korea thinks about that.
John Bolton estimated that it would take a year. The Institute for Science and International Security estimates 30 months. A study by Siegfried Hecker, Robert Carlin, and Elliot Serbin at Stanford’s Center for International Security and Cooperation estimates as long as 15 years.
Why the big differences? Read More
Nothing Means Anything, Chapter 715
Or: Another Day In The Trump Administration
There are two very different narratives of what is happening in the negotiations with North Korea.
- As Kim Jong Un promised in his New Year’s Day address, North Korea is building up its capacity to manufacture nuclear weapons and the missiles they might ride on. In the past week, we have seen evidence from the national intelligence agencies and independent analysts that there are at least two clandestine uranium enrichment plants, a missile manufacturing plant is being expanded, and related production is being expanded. This narrative is held by all the US intelligence agencies and most independent experts on North Korea and nuclear weapons.
- North Korea has agreed to give up its nuclear weapons program. Full denuclearization can be completed in a year or less. Kim and Donald Trump saw eye to eye at the Singapore summit. Kim wants to improve the North Korean economy, and he understands that only by giving up his nuclear program can he expect sanctions to be lifted. This is a victory for Trump’s policiy of “maximum pressure.” This narrative is held in public by Trump, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, and National Security Advisor John Bolton.
Nuclear Diner 