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Comment by _ooqq | Hacker News Reader

I don't get why Trump gets slammed by the media for talking to Kim Yong and walking back on Iran, or even trying to set up meetings with Taliban this month. Just because he's negociating doesn't mean negociating in itself is wrong, so I find that peculiar.

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On the Iran side, he was slammed because there was already a deal, which according to independent observers was working reasonably well.

In terms of North Korea, it might have been a reasonable strategy if there was any evidence of a lasting deal. As it is, it looked like a PR dance by both leaders. Who knows what was going on with the Taliban.

Its very telling of our inability to attribute positives to someone who holds an alternative political ideology. We need to be able to compliment one another somehow if we are ever to bridge the ever increasing gap between political parties.

I think that's a reasonable goal. Of course the current president seems very content to rip up initiatives of the previous president simply because he was the previous president - see the Iran deal, for example.

Its not that he is negotiating that is the issue, its the fact that he is doing it badly. NK wanted to meet with the president of the US in order to gain international recognition for their leader. They got what they wanted in return the US got nothing, and in the mean time NK has produced more nuclear weapons and continued their missile tests. We have also alienated SK our traditional ally.

Regarding Iran, Iran had verifiably held nuclear enrichment to a set level. This was a deal that was working and Trump just pre-emptively left it and re-applied sanctions, and now everyone is mad / surprised that Iran is once again raising its enrichment level. There are essentially no or very limited ongoing negotiations with Iran. The point of the original deal was to prevent a nuclear Iran and it was working. Once Iran gets Nukes the international stage is very different. From an outsider perspective it very much appears that we have stepped back from the deal in order to find a reason to go to war.

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