CHINOOK IN A SNOWSTORM: A New York Army National Guard CH-47 in a winter exercise with “harsh conditions.”

SEOUL’S GOAL: South Korean foreign minister affirms “a complete dismantlement of the North’s nuclear program” is the shared South Korean and American goal. South Korea and the U.S. are preparing for denuclearization talks with North Korea. The foreign minister also said there will be a “trilateral” Japan-China-South Korea summit in May “to strengthen the peace momentum.”

You can find the diplomatic background here. The article includes a 2017-2018 Trump Administration denuclearization diplomacy timeline.

CLICK BAIT TITLE OF THE WEEK: BUFF in drag in Oz.

(Full disclosure: B-52 pops its drag chute as it lands in Australia.)

A DRAMATIC TWOFER: The USS Nebraska (SSBN 739) test fires a Trident II D5 ballistic missile off the California coast and a USAF F-15 Eagle deploys flares over Iraq.

DEEP RESENTMENT AND ANGER SPURRED BY THE LOSS OF POWER AND INTERNATIONAL STATURE: Putin’s Kremlin, not Hillary.

RAPTOR OVER SYRIA: Photo snapped March 5, 2018.

KOREAS PREPARE FOR MOON-KIM SUMMIT:

Negotiators for North and South agreed Saturday on a plan to meet again Thursday inside the Demilitarized Zone — a buffer area separating the two countries — to continue refining the agenda for next month’s historic, top-level summit between their respective leaders. [[President Moon Jae-in of South Korea and North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un]

MORE:

The likelihood of any Kim-Trump summit remains unknown, as does the agenda, and the North hasn’t publicly acknowledged its invitation. But some preliminary talks appear to have occurred in recent days as North Korean diplomats traveled to Finland and Sweden for talks. The latter is an occasional intermediary for matters involving the North and the United States.

Here’s the diplomatic background, including the Trump Administration’s “maximum pressure” timeline.

DEUTSCHLAND UNTER ALLEN: “Germany has come up short once more in meeting its military obligations to NATO. Leaked readiness data indicates that a key component of the NATO rapid reaction force, which Germany is to supply in 2019, is nowhere near ready to perform duties German said it could handle.”

Raise your hand if you’re surprised. Photos or facsimiles of Sarah’s surprised face are not acceptable.

IN CASE YOU MISSED IT: Background to Trump’s Korea gamble. My latest Observer essay.

RELATED: A HIMARS in South Korea demonstrates the ability to “strike targets with minimal notice.” It’s called a show of force.

ALASKA ARTILLERY DELIVERY: A CH-47 Chinook helicopter delivers a 155 mm howitzer and its gun crew to the Yukon Training Area, Alaska, March 7, 2018. Note the helo’s “skis.”

UPDATE: Link fixed.

THERE IS ONLY A WAR BETWEEN RUSSIA AND THE UNITED STATES: Radio Free Europe at its ever loving best.

A quote attributed to a Russian merc in Syria:

There is a bigger motivation, the mercenary claimed. “If you are fighting under a Russian flag, with a Russian weapon, even if you are eating moldy food and are 10,000 kilometers from home, you are nonetheless fighting for Russia,” he said.

“There is no Syrian war,” he added. “There is no Ukrainian war. There is only a war between the Russian Federation and the United States.”

MORE:

The first Russian mercenaries were sent to Syria by an organization called Slavic Corps in 2013 — 267 men, according to an investigation by the St. Petersburg website Fontanka.ru. Their official mission was to guard oil facilities and pipelines, but they were soon caught up in the country’s civil war and suffered heavy losses. When the survivors returned to Moscow in October 2013, their leaders were arrested and sentenced to three years in prison for illegal mercenary activity.

Communazi-Paganism?

A “private military contracting firm called ChVK Vagner” hires these mercs.

“Vagner is a cruel fellow,” one of the Vagner commanders told RFE/RL. “He’s no fool.” The man added that Vagner has a swastika tattooed on his shoulder, wears a helmet with horns, and practices a form of paganism, a description that RFE/RL could not confirm.

“Vagner” shows up in most Western press commentary as “Wagner.” The RFE description is right out of “Flight of the Valkyries” (Walkürenritt”). Read the whole thing…and welcome to the 21st century.

MAXIMUM VERIFICATION: It’s the “deadly fine print” in any denuclearization deal with North Korea.

Assuring denuclearization will require a very intrusive, long term, take your shorts off, take your shoes off, spread your glutes, check your hair for lice, open every cave, every bunker, every laboratory, every crevice verification regimen.

Call it maximum verification.

If North Korea balks at maximum verification, what happens next?

Well, Trump said his administration would “go hard in either direction.” War takes maximum pressure to a new level. It’s all in my latest Observer essay.

TAKE A NORTH POLE CRUISE ON AN ICEBREAKER: Well, you can’t make the voyage until 2021, when the luxury icebreaker is launched.

Ponant’s ship will stock 16 Zodiacs (motor powered inflatable vessels specially designed for Polar waters) and two helicopters, all deployed for remote excursions from the Weddell Sea to the Ross Sea. Passengers will also board helicopters and, potentially, touch down on the uninhabited, volcanic Peter I Island—one of the most remote on the planet—a breeding ground for various Arctic birds, and, if reports are true, the occasional Chinstrap Penguin or seal.

Voyages to Antarctica are also on the itinerary.

KIM’S YUGE NEGOTIATIONS CONCESSION: Trump told Tim Russert in 1999 he’d negotiate with North Korea but the negotiations would be serious. (My latest New York Observer essay.)

U.K. NERVE AGENT ATTACK UPDATE: Britain’s allies condemn the “first offensive use of a nerve agent in Europe since the Second World War” and describe it as an assault on UK sovereignty.

RELATED: My latest Creators Syndicate column.

…the use of an illegal chemical weapon that could be employed on a battlefield makes the March 4 crime qualitatively different. The assassins used Novichok -A-230, an “enhanced” nerve agent dispersible as a liquid or powder. Reports claim it is eight times more toxic than VX liquid nerve agent.

Tsar Vlad the Bad loves “gray zone warfare.” But the March 4 incident left the gray zone

NEGOTIATION DEMONSTRATIONS: This “show of force” photo of a B-1B and South Korean F-15Ks was taken in September 2017, when North Korea threatened to shoot down U.S. aircraft in international airspace and launch a nuclear attack.

DENUCLEARIZING NORTH KOREA AND ENDING A COLD WAR-ERA WAR:

Trump is a man who intuitively seeks and finds leverage in business negotiations…Since his election in November 2016, that skill is now applied to two entwined problems from Hell that for six decades have boggled U.S. foreign policy officials and the vain goblins at the Council on Foreign Relations: ending The Korean War and halting nuclear proliferation.

It’s my latest essay for The New York Observer.

MAXIMUM PRESSURE: How Team Trump got North Korea to the negotiating table. 1999 to 2018. Yes, 1999. My latest New York Observer essay.

SUBMARINE ICEBREAKER: The Seawolf-class fast-attack submarine USS Connecticut (SSN 22) and the Los Angeles-class fast-attack submarine USS Hartford (SSN 768) break through Arctic ice, March 10, 2018

Is Russia’s Nerve Gas Attack in Great Britain An Act of War?

MAXIMUM PRESSURE: How Team Trump got North Korea to the negotiating table. 1999 to 2018. Yes, 1999. (bumped)

TEAM TRUMP VERSUS NORTH KOREA:

Trump is a man who intuitively seeks and finds leverage in business negotiations…Since his election in November 2016, that skill is now applied to two entwined problems from Hell that for six decades have boggled U.S. foreign policy officials and the vain goblins at the Council on Foreign Relations: ending The Korean War and halting nuclear proliferation.

It’s my latest essay for The New York Observer.

MAXIMUM PRESSURE: How Team Trump got North Korea to the negotiating table.

Donald Trump’s October 24, 1999 Meet the Press interview with Tim Russert is a historically illuminating flash forward to the most surprising, promising and history-altering opportunity since the Soviet Union collapsed: “denuclearizing” North Korea without the could-be belligerents waging a hideously destructive war that scars East Asia and seeds a global economic depression.

Read the whole thing.

BRITAIN AND U.S. DEMAND ANSWERS FROM RUSSIA ABOUT THE ATTEMPTED ASSASSINATION OF A FORMER SPY:

May demanded to know why a Russian-made nerve agent was used in the poisoning of former Russian agent Sergei Skripal and his daughter earlier this month. Skripal, 66, and daughter Yulia Skripal, 33, were found slumped on a bench following the attack and remain in critical condition, officials said.

Earlier, May said it was “highly likely” Moscow was responsible for the March 4 attack in Salisbury, Wiltshire, because the poison was part of a group of military-grade nerve agents — known as Novichok — developed by Russia.

“Either this was a direct action by the Russian state against our country, or the Russian government lost control of its potentially catastrophically damaging nerve agent and allowed it to get into the hands of others,” she said.

The more we learn the uglier it gets.

NIGHT ENGAGEMENT: A Marine M1A1 Abrams tank engages targets at night. It’s on the tank range participating in semi-annual tank crew qualifications.