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Notes -
NYTimes steps up to sabotage the Trump administration's attempts for peace on the Korean peninsula
Yesterday the New York Times broke a story revealing that in 2019 the Trump Administration attempted to insert a Seal Team to plant an electronic interception device to capture Kim Jong Un's communications. The mission went sideways and was aborted after the commandos ran across a fishing boat, thought they had been discovered, and broke mission silence to kill them. There are probably volumes to be written about different contingencies that could have been taken and how the mission was poorly designed, but we're here to talk about culture war.
Specifically, I wanted to talk about the suspicious timing of this article. It is pretty obvious to anyone who is watching that Trump has been gunning for a Nobel Peace Prize. He has inserted himself into the Israel-Gaza conflict to try to find peaceful solutions, he's been trying to negotiate between Putin (who seems to be playing him) and Zelenski, he successfully stopped a conflict in Cambodia (which somehow got more press abroad than in the US), and he claims to have put pressure on India and Pakistan to wind down their conflict.
Well, two weeks ago during a meeting with South Korean President Lee Jae Myung, Trump and Lee found common ground over seeking peace with North Korea. In Korean news this was reported as "Trump says he wants to meet Kim again", but reading a transcript, it looks like Lee broached the topic first and was a bit flattering Trump's ego: "So I look forward to your meeting with chairman Kim Jong Un and construction of a Trump Tower in North Korea and playing golf at that place. I believe he will be waiting for you." Trump was playing bad cop at first, mentioning B-2s and B-52s, but ended up remarking that "I look forward to meeting with Kim Jong Un in the appropriate future." And there was a really good line by Lee: "And the only person that can make progress on this issue is you, Mr. President. If you become the -- the peacemaker, then I will assist you by being a pacemaker." So the South Korean public, who still dream of Korean Unification, was pretty happy about this summit.
The timing for peace overtures could not be better. Although North Korea declared South Korea a "permanent enemy" state two years ago, they contemporaneously also began the process of market reforms in farm management, and just a few months ago discontinued use of cross-border propaganda speakers. It's a small token, but a small step in the correct direction.
And now the New York Times reveals that US Special Forces went into North Korea in 2005 and 2019, and killed North Korean civilians while executing a mission under Trump's "direct approval". The Times claims that it is important to break this story because "If the public and policymakers become aware only of high-profile successes, such as the raid that killed bin Laden in Pakistan, they may underestimate the extreme risks that American forces undertake." I suspect this the timing is less of a coincidence: either former members of the Biden administration (who performed a classified investigation into the mission's failure) reached out recently to spread the story, or the Times has been sitting on the story for a while and decided to publish in the event that Trump made overtures to North Korea. Either way, I expect the North Koreans will be furious, this will renew their dedication to not seeking peace, and any inter-Korean summit will be off the table for at least another year.
So is the Times deliberately sabotaging peace on the Korean peninsula just to hurt Trump? I have no way of knowing, but the timing is a hell of a coincidence.
The NYT also broke the story of the August 29, 2021 US air strike that killed 10 civilians during the Afghanistan withdrawal. And I don't think it's likely that they broke that story in order to sabotage Biden's diplomacy or his reputation. I see no more reason to believe that they are reporting the Korea story in order to damage Trump, other than that clearly they dislike Trump more than they dislike Biden. But even with that dislike, they do have a track record of breaking stories like this even when it does not suit their political lean, so I am willing to give them the benefit of the doubt and believe that they may actually just be doing honest journalism here.
Personally, I certainly appreciate knowing that this incident happened. Whatever the motives of the leakers are, and whatever the motives of the NYT are, I now know more than I did a couple days ago. So one way or another, and whatever the motives might be, in this case journalism has succeeded at its fundamental purpose of discovering and publicizing information.
The August 2021 airstrike was also the sort of the story that would have broken out soon after due to exceptional international visibility in Afghanistan, including substantial foreign media coverage. The NYT did not break the story as much as shape it's unfolding.
There are substantial differences between shaping an emerging media event, and instigating a media event yourself. When dealing with people attempting to shape discussion, what matters most is typically what they are trying to emphasize / lead the audience to and how. When dealing with instigated discussions, another distinct additional need is 'why now?'
I see no reason to think that the NYT tried to shape that story's unfolding in a way that would benefit the Biden administration. Here is the story: https://archive.is/TFvyH.
You're looking at this through a narrow partisan lens and I don't think that helps you. The NYT doesn't have to be completely aligned with the Biden administration for rokmonster's point to stand true, and certainly not for Dean's point to be true, either.
I think the general point is that the NYT holds the special privilege of receiving exclusive government leaks, and distributing them as they see fit in order to influence public opinion to the editorial desk's particular preferences. They are also a newspaper but they primarily occupy a political position much more powerful than just a newspaper.
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