Grown-ups' of the world must rein in the bullies

North Korea’s deliberately provocative firing of an intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) last week has been billed as the most dangerous juncture in international relations since the Cuban Missile Crisis 55 years ago.

That’s largely hyperbole, but to the extent that there is some veracity in the claim, it may have less to do with the troubling mindset in Pyongyang than with the policy incoherence that has accompanied Donald Trump into the White House.

Back in 1962, John F. Kennedy held back his belligerent generals from attacking Cuba, which in all likelihood would have sparked a nuclear exchange with the Soviet Union, while he pursued back-channel contacts with Nikita Khrushchev. The strategy worked. Although Kennedy subsequently lost his life and Khrushchev his job in what were, in all probability, related developments, they succeeded in averting what might have turned into the third world war.

This time, hopes hang on the prospect of US generals holding back their President from potentially disastrous misadventures, rather than the other way around. One can only hope there are roughly equivalent grown-ups in North Korea keeping an eye on how far their nation can go without becoming a party to unleashing Armageddon.

The image of Trump and his North Korean counterpart, Kim Jong-un, as recalcitrant toddlers with eccentric hairstyles, twiddling with lethal knobs while competing for title of chief playground bully, is hard to dismiss. One of them has more playthings than he could possibly handle. The other considers his toys crucial to his survival.

During his sojourn in Warsaw last week, where Trump talked about existential threats to Western civilisation, he also talked up the possibility of doing “some pretty severe things” in response to North Korea’s “very bad behaviour”, but then added: “That doesn’t mean we are going to do them.”

On the sidelines of the subsequent G-20 summit in Hamburg, he appears to have broached the issue with Chinese President Xi Jinping whose country is widely seen in the West as the key to keeping Kim in check. Just a few days earlier, Xi and his Russian counterpart, Vladimir Putin, had agreed to pressurise Pyongyang into freezing its nuclear programme, provided the US abandoned its military exercises with South Korea and pulled out from setting up its THAAD anti-missile system on the South’s border with the North.

Although China ostensibly sustains North Korea as a vaguely viable state, and there appears to be little love lost between Xi and Kim, choking off the lifeline could trigger a collapse with dire consequences not just for the so-called hermit kingdom but also its neighbours, China and South Korea. The latter recently elected a President, Moon Jae-in, who favours dialogue over belligerence as a means of resolving differences. In the present circumstances, though, it’s hard to imagine his relatively conciliatory tendencies bearing fruit in the short term.

A key component of any crisis that emerges in the region is, of course, the continued US military presence in a region far from its shores, with large, seemingly permanent, bases in South Korea and Japan, among other countries. The 1951-53 Korean war, which cost millions of Korean lives, ended in a truce that has never been upgraded to a peace agreement. Over the decades, there have been plenty of indications that direct dialogue between Pyongyang and Washington could conceivably lead to some kind of closure.

Sure, one would hesitate to place Kim and Trump in the same room without strict supervision. On the whole, however, this option should not be written off until it has been tested. In the meanwhile, let us hope Trump’s short memory span and plethora of other distractions will prevent any precipitate action on America’s part that could trigger a firestorm on the Korean Peninsula.

Kim evidently sees his nation’s nuclear programme as key to his appalling regime’s survival: he could, if push comes to shove, be persuaded to freeze it, but is unlikely to abandon it. The fate of leaders who gave up the nuclear option — notably Saddam Hussein and Muammar Gaddafi — remains front of mind in Pyongyang.

And the attitude of the other nuclear powers towards disarmament, as manifested at the UN recently, makes it hard to single North Korea out as a rogue state. Doubts surround its capabilities, but whatever their potential, Pakistan can lay claim to some of the blame. North Koreans may or may not have been familiar with Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto’s declaration that his nation would be willing to eat grass as long as it went nuclear, although they appeared to follow its illogic. Their annals might, however, contain evidence of the nuclear designs Bhutto’s daughter apparently conveyed to Pyongyang in exchange for missile technology.

By arrangement with Dawn