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On Balance | Damaging anti-China policies hold no promise for Republican 2024 hopefuls
- Republicans vying for the party’s presidential nomination must be aware that pursuing bad policies to score political points will come at a price
- Biden’s poll numbers show voters will punish those who block business and increase costs, no matter the benefits to national security
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Remember CVID? No, this isn’t an erroneous spelling of the illness that upended our lives. Rather, “complete, verifiable, irreversible denuclearisation” was the precondition former US president Donald Trump’s administration swore was needed before it would agree to formal talks with North Korea.
US Republican presidential candidate Nikki Haley remembers. She wielded the acronym regularly while serving as Trump’s ambassador to the United Nations.
North Korea was conducting nuclear detonations and launching nuclear-warhead-ready missiles at the time. The UN Security Council would then convene. Haley led the charge to a unanimous vote in favour of sanctions against Pyongyang, batting down arguments from Russia and China that Washington was partly responsible for North Korea’s nuclear ambitions.
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Faced with accusations that Washington ignored Pyongyang’s legitimate interests, she said the Trump administration would be willing to meet North Korean officials to talk bilaterally, but not before “CVID”.
However, North Korean leader Kim Jong-un got what he wanted, because he understood Trump’s psyche – all that was required to go around Haley was a few “love letters” to Trump, who has never met an authoritarian leader he didn’t like.
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But Haley has also not always been consistent. She condemned Trump for encouraging the mob that attacked the US Capitol on January 6, 2021, but later declared that conservatives “need him”. She vowed not to run against him in 2024 but then jumped into the race.
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