Why is the world going berserk?

Donald Trump has been on a warpath. He has challenged Russia – not as badly as he did DPRK, but challenge he did by stricter sanctions in league with other Nato counterparts who seemed to have gone along just to keep face of unity in place. Trump – ever the one to work through deals with anyone especially those that the world says are impossible, like Putin – did this to reinforce his patriotic credentials in the face of ongoing investigations of his possible, and his team’s probable, contacts with Russia prior to his election. In the US there isn’t a bigger red flag than Russia around which patriotism increasingly gets defined.

Trump has also taken on China, but mildly. This is usually the state when a deal is in the works with a promise that one will be made. Now where did Xi Jinping fall short when the two met may only be known to Trump, but he did say he made famously with Xi. Trump, as the practitioner of the art, must have his own markers. There are a few things that Trump may like China to do for him, in return for keeping a more amenable American company, like keeping DPRK reined, like not getting too close to Russia to make a two-on-one on him, and not test the US much on its promise to win the South China Sea for its friends in the region.

The US may also like to keep a handle on nations such as Pakistan and its nuclear programme by incorporating China to exercise some control on their behalf and to simply make nice when it comes to friends of the US like India. Doklam was an irritable issue for many reasons but then whimpered into nothing when the Indian steam had escaped. The US kept its cool throughout the fracas. To them, that was the best course. If India and China had opted to struggle the cost was only to the two, and if they did not Trump would have one less to worry about. But the two knew their limits and only resorted to physical grappling in the rarefied air of those heights. In the end, it all fizzled away like a bad drama.

So China is still valid and kosher because trillions in the Greenback keep the two united. American jobs wouldn’t accrue if Chinese didn’t consume. Just a little while ago it used to be the reverse. It is only now when the DPRK seems to have escaped Trump’s China-dragnet that the world has its first and most pernicious challenge with Donald Trump at the helm. Responding to the DPRK’s fusion processed H-Bomb challenge, the first by a minnow, he still had his secretary of defence in the company of his chairman joint chiefs give a statement. Trump’s astute dealmakers mind failed to realise he was walking a step further into a trap of his own making.

For what will a secretary of defence and the military chief say: “We will negotiate our way out of this”? That would need a negotiator, the chief diplomat. And were that even not to be said to appear tough, just the person who leads the reaction should mean to be the one who can convey some space for the world to negotiate its way out of this self-destructive bind. Kim otherwise may soon have this entire global hierarchy dancing to the tune of his little finger.

To reflect then, Trump began bullying little Kim Jong-un and found he just wouldn’t submit. He flew his planes a few times over his territory to scare him but he held defiant. He sailed a carrier group into the seas around him but then recalled them when told that once there they would also have to do something. He then began doing exercises with the poor South Koreans across the DPRK who instead want to simply get along and have a dialogue with their estranged brothers to find ways to coexist hoping to wean Kim away from the edge of the cliff. But exercising they are willy-nilly with insurers of their security. It isn’t easy at all for the Kim Cousins to escape this ‘bigly’ superpower-hug.

In it then there is that fleeting moment of applying pressure on the Chinese to deliver. Failing which if the Korean Peninsula was to become an inferno, or a nuclear hellfire, those that burn will be on the peninsula and on the neighbouring mainland of China. Does that slow down China and its economic march around the world? Sure does. Doklam may not have delivered, little Kim might; though by default.

It was just a couple of weeks back that Trump had put Pakistan on notice on Afghanistan hoping Pakistan might stumble into delivering, or falter, to the US’s benefit. Pakistan defied. And before Trump could knock the ball back to the court of a nuclear Pakistan, he had Kim irked enough to blow a blast. Everyone has condemned including China; what else could they do? A direct attack on the DPRK and its nuclear sites would only mean the world enters the nuclear warfare age with the greatest bang-for-buck the world would have known. And if not – the chances of which are brighter – you have just handed a kid a knife and a blade after having taught him how scared everyone is that he will cut someone up.

Trump and Kim may just have met their parts, but what it has left the world with is the hottest potato ever known. How will Kim sheath the knife and put it away? How can he be weaned away to being a normal, good human. Human, even if not good. That will be the real test. The world will avoid the war, by giving in – plain and simple. A regime change will be the American way but when it hasn’t worked elsewhere why and how could it here? And it will not. Giving in will be the only option. Yes, an Iran and a Saudi Arabia might follow, but all that comes later. For the moment it shall have to be little Kim.

Even giving in has panache to it. It will need some hard thinking, some redrawing of nuclear borders, of creating structural domains which are as much inclusive as they are exclusive; of inclusion to ensure seclusion. Painting people or nations or their leaders in a corner is no way to get them to do what the world expects of them in common good.

The remedy? Review the NPT; create inclusive nuclear regimes to offer equal opportunity to share the benefits of technology; don’t demonise nations if you seek good of them; and finally, create a more inclusive global order in domains of trade, technology and opportunity. This is sure to wean away Kim from his destructive disposition. Notice how he has explained his thermonuclear device: ‘a gift to the US’. Steer away from trouble Sirs, or else we may all go down with the Humpty Dumpty(-ies) that fate has thrown our way.

Email: shhzdchdhry@yahoo.com