One of the Channel A News conservative national security analyst's interpretations of the B-52 mission in the region associated with other mission aircraft exercises went on to surmise the exercise was a clear warning in response to statements from persons such as Choi Son Hui, Deputy Foreign Minister of the DPRK in respect to the failure of the Hanoi summit. The Top Ten analyst asserted this was a consensus among a number of national security experts.
Other subjects covered in the Channel A News Top Ten broadcast included the visit to South Korea by DNI Dan Coats, who apparently was accompanied by former CIA Korea Team chief, Andrew Kim, who is now "retired" and working at Stanford. It is said that Coats made a formal visit with President Moon, and gave a classified intergovernmental presentation concerning North Korean issues. One of the few comments publicly revealed by Andrew Kim was that there are large differences in views between the South Korean administration and the US concerning the nature of an effective approach to denuclearization objectives. Dan Coats was cited in other venues saying there isn't any question that Kim isn't going to give up his nuclear weapons, and that there really isn't anything further to decide on that issue, it's final, or words to that effect. The key difference has to do with the appropriate process in negotiations, step by step, with reciprocal concessions by each side, or the one bundle, all or nothing approach adopted decisively at Hanoi by the US.
Also reported on the was the level of public disclosure and openness of this fundamental difference between the two allies. Tension was said to be at an intermediate level, without accusations or criticisms being openly traded by named high level government officials, but primarily in the realm of anonymous high level officials related to the respective foreign offices. One anonymous high level US state department source allegedly said, I know that the US has no intention of asking the Blue House (President Moon) to act in a role as mediator or facilitator with North Korea. In another comment, the US accused the liberal Moon administration of failing to guarantee freedom of the press. In a final indication of declining cooperation, the conservative Top Ten analysts discussed apparent signs in the US budget proposal that the US would use funds allocated for the so called "Tango" wartime emergency bunker planned for joint use by the US-ROK alliance in wartime for the Mexico border wall.
Incidentally, Jim Cramer, the irritating financial pundit and self promotion expert had an extraordinary anti-Chinese rant deploring their untrustworthiness, their national character resembling the Shawshank warden, and their alleged unreasonable military expansion into the US Indo-Pacific jurisdiction. The confusion of trade, financial and military issues in this xenophobic, if not outright racist rant, seems to reflect the exasperation of Wall Street with an economic race that they may be losing.
The apparent inability of Wall Street, and Washington leadership circles to refrain from one war after another in far away places with dubious motives and undefined objectives, plays a role in the failure to compete effectively in the twenty first century without militaristic merchantile policies more characteristic of the 1930s than the 21st Century. Perhaps Mr. Cramer needs to look at a chart showing the extent, or overextension, of US military bases and national resources in far east before accusing China of unreasonable military expansionism.
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