The string of crises that erupted on the Korean peninsula over the last year, along with the ongoing confrontation between Korea’s leader Kim Jong-un and America’s Donald Trump remains of the most significant international trends in the world of geopolitics. There’s a number of reason why this trend has been occupying the minds of politicians, journalists and casual observers alike.
For sure, among them one can mention the overall unpredictability of the position that the sitting US president will be occupying tomorrow, as he seems to be kin to unleash chaos and destruction in pretty much every corner of this planet, seeking ways to rope those states that to this day have been managing to escape both the financial and military domination of the US. As tensions mount, one has no choice but to recognize that those steps are bringing us closer to new armed conflicts, in spite of the fact that Trump has an abundance of those on his hands.
Additionally, the world has been paying an excessive amount of attention to the actions of the young North Korean leader Kim Jong-un from the moment when he came in power back in 2011, trying to find miscalculations in the actions of the not-so-seasoned leader. This is a form of a test that all of the high-profile political figures have to pass in order to stay in power.
Further still, one cannot disregard the fact that Washington’s propaganda machine has been running in high gear for months now in a desperate bid to persuade the world that “North Korea represents a major threat to the international community.” And sadly enough, this monstrous machine is doing its job, bringing a considerable number of international players to the state of constant paranoia in respect of everything North Korea related. At this point we’ve even heard allegations that Kim Jong-un’s opponents are being executed with mortars, flamethrowers and all sorts of exotic weapons, while North Korean citizens are eating their children in preparations for a major war against other countries of this world…
In addition, reports of North Korea’s successful ballistic missile launches and nuclear tests have been making the world increasingly more nervousness. But no one in the West seems to be willing to recognize the fact that Pyongyang’s military race has been driven by the desire to protect its population from an armed intervention that was about to be launched by the United States and its regional allies on a number of occasions. Throughout the years those players have been accumulating massive military forces in the immediate vicinity of North Korea’s national borders, preparing for a well-calculated rush to bring down Pyongyang. It should not be disregarded that Washington’s treacherous policy of derailing the negotiation process on the Korean Peninsula has been increasing the tensions between the North and the South just as well. Similar strategies were employed by the West against Washington’s adversaries – Muammar Gaddafi and Saddam Hussein, that agreed to surrender weapons of mass destruction before being taken down and massacred.
All this resulted in Kim Jong-un and Donald Trump finding themselves engaged in an increasingly sharp war of words, with each of them downplaying the threat that the other represents. Looking at those verbal swings going back and forth many experts started believing that the United States and North Korea were locked on a collision course, with an impending military confrontation being the only option on the table. However, as one week of saberrattling was replaced by another, Trump’s entourage started growing frustrated with one string of empty threats after another coming from the mouth of America’s leader. Finally, American political figures grew so tired of Trump’s unrestrained behavoir that they decided to impeach Trump or limit the powers he would be able to exercise on his post.
It’s curious that once high-profile representatives of North and South Korea managed to conduct successive reconciliation talks at the border crossing of Panmunjom in the demilitarized zone, the absolute majority of Western analysts were forced to recognize that situation on the Korean Peninsula was taking a different turn due to a peaceful initiative that was brought forward by Kim Jong-un. While Washington was busy cursing Pyongyang for all sorts of alleged evils it was about to make, Kim Jong-un declared the need to improve relations with South Korea in his televised New Year’s greeting. Now both American and European media sources are busy discussing latest Putin’s statement that he made while commenting on the situation on the peninsula. The statement reads as follows:
I think that Mr Kim Jong-un has obviously won this round. He has completed his strategic task – he has a nuclear weapon, he has missiles of global reach, up to 13,000km, which can reach almost any point of the globe.
As it’s been noted by an influential Turkish media source Star Gazete, the peaceful initiative launched by North Korea can deprive all the steps Trump has been making in his confrontation with Pyongyang of any value.
This latest peaceful initiative can result in North Korea’s athletes being allowed to take part in the 2018 Winter Olympics in PyeongChang. This fact resulted in UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres stating that the Olympics can create an atmosphere of mutual understanding and peace between the North and the South, while the sitting President of the International Olympic Committee, Thomas Bach went as far as to describe the talks in Panmunjom as a big step forward for the Olympic movement.
Although it’s true that the actual reconciliation process on the Korean Peninsula will take a lot of time, while an official admission of North Korean athletes for the participation in the PyeongChang Olympics is hanging in the air, since international bodies have to decide whether their participations in those games is going to violate the existing sanctions regime against North Korea before allowing them in. Still, journalists across the world seem to agree that Russia and China have done a good job urging Washington to exercise restraint in order not to provoke a new conflict on the Korean Peninsula.
As for the evaluation of Kim Jong-un’s political skills, one can recall that Donald Trump publicly admitted that this young North Korean leader outplayed Washington on numerous occasions, while referring to the policies pursued by the Obama administration. This time, Kim Jong-un has beaten the Trump administration hands down, while showing the world community that bullying skills alone will not get you far on the international stage, but it will take a lot of time for Washington to learn this lesson.
Martin Berger is a freelance journalist and geopolitical analyst, exclusively for the online magazine “New Eastern Outlook.”