Cool It, Trump And Kim
Belligerent talk, sabre rattling, movement of weapons and endless posturing by both US President Donald Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un have brought the world nearer to a nuclear conflict than at any time since the end of the Cold War. Both men are mercurial and unpredictable but given what is at stake for their two countries and for mankind as whole, world leaders must rise to the occasion and reign in the two men before they do something really foolish.
Dispute between the US and North Korea is not new and has been on continuously since the Korean War ended in 1953. The row has persisted under twelve US Presidents and under three generations of North Korea’s Kim rulers. At issue currently is North Korea’s robust nuclear weapons program, occasioned by regular nuke and missile tests. The US, which has more nuclear weapons than any other country, hypocritically finds the North Korean nuclear arsenal to be unacceptable because it endangers its two close allies, South Korea and Japan. Kim Jong Un boasts that his country has missiles with enough range to deliver nukes to Hawaii. Other experts say North Korea could explode a nuke over the US on the back of a satellite.
Bad as relations were between North Korea and the US under successive administrations including Barrack Obama’s, Kim Jong Un welcomed the Trump administration with heightened activity on the nuke and missile front. During Trump’s first 100 days in office, North Korea attempted at least nine missile launches and has conducted five nuclear tests since October 2006. Trump responded to Kim Jong Un’s “provocation” with belligerent words and moves. He warned that “military action is a possibility” if North Korea conducts another nuke test, and he moved an anti-missile system, submarines and the aircraft carrier USS Carl Vinson into waters off the South Korean coast in a major show of military might.
Such moves unfailingly elicit more belligerence from Kim Jong Un, who was recently seen inspecting a defence detachment on Jangjae Islet and the Hero Defence Detachment on Mu Islet located in the southernmost part of his country’s coast, very close to South Korea. Kim was also seen inspecting a large missile launcher and talking to military personnel inside a gun shelter. Kim also test fired a mid-range missile last week that exploded over land shortly after being launched. North Korea has said it will carry out a sixth nuclear test soon. The United States has said it would not tolerate this and could resort to armed attack if the test goes ahead. US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson said diplomacy has failed in the region, meaning war is an open possibility.
President Donald Trump is not the world’s most reasonable ruler but he ought to know by now that he has more than met his match in Kim Jong Un in terms of instability, sheer recklessness and dangerous brinkmanship. Only that lives, a lot of lives, are at stake here. Some experts calculate that a war in the Korean Peninsula could cost up to one million lives--before it goes nuclear! Hence the need for all parties and for the world as a whole to speak up and reign in Donald Trump and if possible Kim Jong Un. The one country that is thought to have influence over North Korea is China but Kim has taken the unbelievable step of severing diplomatic relations with Beijing because Chinese President Xi Jinping tried, at the behest of Trump, to put pressure on Kim to curtail his nuclear activities. If Kim could so shabbily treat the one country that supplies him with food, machinery and some weapons, it is hard to imagine anyone else that can moderate his behaviour.
Yet, there is a ray of hope. As some American and Chinese experts recently pointed out, the main reason why years of diplomatic engagement between the two countries, either directly or through China, failed to make headway was because the US pursued a double policy of seeking nuclear disarmament on the Korean Peninsula as well as regime change in North Korea. Both the arch-conservative George W. Bush and the liberal Barrack Obama regimes pursued these contradictory policies. The experts point out that North Korea’s rulers pursue their nuclear policy essentially because they see it as their last survival weapon, their guarantee against a US attack. The Trump Administration however indicated recently that its priority in Korea is denuclearisation and not regime change.
If that is true, then perhaps North Korea could be persuaded to halt its nuclear program in return for a guarantee that the US will not attack it to remove the Kim dynasty from power or to force a German-style unification of the two Koreas. It will not be easy for North Korea to believe an American guarantee because Libya’s long time leader Muammar Gaddafi gave up his nuclear program in return for a promise not to pursue regime change. Yet, the US and its Western allies later turned around and aided Libyan rebels to overthrow him. Now it is paying the price for such duplicity.
The political problems of the Korean Peninsula are not insurmountable with time and patience. If the Cold War could end peacefully, Vietnam could return to peace and apartheid could end peacefully in South Africa, there is no problem in this world that cannot have a peaceful ending. We urge the belligerent leaders in the Korean Peninsula to cool it, lest they bring the world to a nuclear catastrophe.