It’s what happens when you don’t have the the ability to analyze through dialectical materialism. It’s confusing when suddenly the fascist mad man is seemingly taking the same stance as “tankies” on normalizing relations with a non violent country who’s only crime has been being victim of a genocidal campaign over half a century ago. Trump likes Kim for the same reason that he likes Xi. He thinks they are actually the evil dictators that the US makes them out to be. He wants to be an evil dictator. He will always respect any leader that panders to his ego and treats him like a leader. Ironically, Western countries are bad at this. It’s why he hates europe. Hell, Mamdani was smart enough to play a similar game of charisma. That’s the dialectics. At least from what we are hearing from Trump. It’s why he says things like this.
The main material reason is that the defeat in Iran has made any chance of the US maintaining its military in East Asia laughable. It cannot maintain its illusion of China being a threat. If China was going to invade Taiwan it would have done it. Instead, China cut its oil imports to help all of its Asian neighbors. The dream of a “shift to Asia” that happened under Obama is gone. The US power in West Asia is dying and they are pulling weapons and troops from East Asia to desperately attempt to hold onto it. They are stuck with capital invested in a region that they are showing absolute failure and weakness in. With capital investments in Israel and the military industrial complex Trump is being pressured to just “bring things back to how they were”. They never will be. It may take a long time before that is admitted. I expect another round of bombing campaigns and maybe even a desperate small ground troop invasion to attempt to save face and “claim the strate”. But this likely will fail and remain in this denial state for some time; ending through a different president most likely.
He will continue to deny the defeat and soon desperately shift to the one region of the world US capital can continue to exploit: South America.
Some of this is me mixing in my own predictions. Feel free to critize that. But, we obviously all know “JDPON Don” falls into the correct position sometimes, often because of his own ego and the shifting global relations in the face of a dying empire.
TLDR: The “tankies” are against American Imperialism. American Imperialism is losing its power and is forced by material circumstances to take actions that “tankies” would consider good. Trump is appealing to the “strong man” in Kim to make his weak move (failed Iran war causing troops and weapons to be removed) look like strength.
On paper they are “anti authoritarian”. But, it’s not an ideology that actually has the ability to maintain itself. It’s like the right wing version of Anarchism in that there is no good historical example of it being able to maintain its structures.
For anarchist, the failure comes from pressure of external forces and is not able to defend from imperial powers.
For libertarians, the failures are internal. Without a capitalist state to maintain it; the contradictions of capitalism are overwhelming. The “ancap” systems can’t even reach a “true ancap” stateless society before it’s capitalist are begging for the state to defend them and bail them out. Which often just shifts into a state run under an “authoritarian” like dictatorship that serves the interest of capital.
The real material result of libertarian thought just devolves into capitalism with no liberal democracy. With no liberal democracy to absorb the frustrations of the masses; the remaining state turns to more direct militant measures to maintain itself.