KIM-TRUMP PUNCH & JUDY SHOW

With all the idiocy going on around N Korea it is emotionally difficult even to read the news at the moment. The real possibility of nuclear or even conventional war breaking out is just too horrible and the seeming irresponsibility of those who cast about such threats beggars belief. It has become commonplace in the West to think of N Korea as a country ruled by a madman, but if you were a small country so threatened by the most powerful country on the planet I don't think you would leave anything to chance. One would have no choice but to run one's country like a military camp. When one sees how quickly civil liberties disappeared in the USA after 9/11, which was nothing like so existential a threat to the country as a whole, one can see how there is a predictable relationship between polity and circumstance. N Korea has the cheek to defy America and the US responds as though it already rules the world. The notion that other countries are independent entities seems not to enter into American thinking.

I'm writing this in Seoul, S Korea. I'd rather not be incinerated. I'd rather that a process of reconciliation between the two halves of this country were under way. For that to happen it would actually be better for the Americans simply to stay out of it, but keeping a low profile does not seem to be in the American repertoire. The Koreans left to their own devices would be much more likely to get something worked out.

Of course, the current US regime needs an overseas problem at the moment to draw people's attention away from the almost total chaos in the White House. I'm not sure there has ever been quite as incompetent a presidency. Let's hope that this does not get out of hand and that Trump backs off as he usually does after a lot of sound and fury signifying not much. However, even if this tension does eventually settle down it surely cannot help but contribute to a weakening of US prestige around the world and with it a weakening of the international arrangements that have supported peace and trade ever since WWII.

Crises of this type are primarily a symptom of deep conflicts within the USA and those are not likely to go away soon and may well worsen. Even if (let's hope) the Korean fracas blows over it almost certainly won't be the last. Trumps assertion "There will never be a time that we are not the most powerful nation in the world!" is really a sign that that position is already on the slide. America remains the most powerful militarily on the planet (though even that did not enable them to beat little Vietnam) but the cost of remaining so is probably unsustainable in the medium term. We are going through a dangerous period of transition.

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