The current love connection between Russia and North Korea is anything but unprecedented. The Kremlin has provided a succession of Kims with military and economic support. If Putin were ultimately to rely on so many North Korean soldiers and laborers, however, it would mark the first time that country had returned the favor in any significant way. As a down payment on the new relationship, Pyongyang is already reportedly assisting Moscow’s war effort with shipments of Soviet-era rockets and ammunition.

An even tighter alliance between Moscow and Pyongyang, now just one goose step from reality, suggests the possibility of a future Eurasian Union of autocracies, including China and several Central Asian states. Just a few years ago, an anti-Western alliance making up nearly 20% of the world’s landmass and roughly the same percentage of its population would have seemed unlikely indeed. For all its autocratic tendencies, Russia was still pretending to be a democracy then and, together with China, maintaining reasonable economic relations with the West. North Korea, on the other hand, was an isolated outsider, suffering under a hereditary dictatorship and tight sanctions that restricted its access to the global economy.

Now, instead of North Korea adopting the political and economic norms of the international community, it’s surging to the front of the illiberal pack as Kim waves his tour-guide flag to encourage others to walk his way. Putin, for one, seems ready to enthusiastically follow his lead. Over the last decade, after all, he’s taken steps to eliminate Russian civil society, while creating a top-down, corporatist economy. After ordering the invasion of Ukraine in February, the Russian leader now faces the same kind of sanctions regime that plagues Pyongyang, forcing his country to pursue its own version of juche, North Korea’s philosophy of self-reliance. Both nations have largely replaced their governing ideologies of the 1990s — communism in North Korea, democracy in Russia — with an ugly, xenophobic nationalism.

At a more fundamental level, North Korea and Russia are both exemplars of exceptionalism. From its founding after World War II, North Korea has generally considered itself an exception to any rules governing international conduct. Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, meanwhile, has cemented in place Putin’s version of a new Russian exceptionalism, meant to bury once and for all the efforts of Mikhail Gorbachev and Boris Yeltsin to bring the Soviet Union and its successor states into greater compliance with global norms.

Nor are Russia and North Korea exceptional in their exceptionalism. Thumbing a nose at international authorities has become an integral part of a growing authoritarian populism, which has manifested itself as anger at economic globalization and disenchantment with the liberal democratic elites who have supported that project. Although the assault on liberalism and the embrace of illiberal exceptionalism have taken an acutely violent form in the war in Ukraine, they can be found in less virulent but no less troubling forms in Europe (Hungary), Asia (Myanmar), Africa (Ethiopia), and Latin America (Brazil).

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Ground zero for modern-day exceptionalism, however, has always been the United States, where a longstanding bipartisan consensus holds that America has the right to do almost anything it wants to maintain its global hegemony. Of course, exceptionalism here is also on a spectrum, with liberal internationalists like Joe Biden at one end and Donald Trump, a Russian-style autocrat in the making, at the other. Put differently, there’s a growing struggle here over the degree to which this country should play well with others.

What’s taking place in Ukraine — an exceptionalist power trying to crush a liberal internationalist system — is a version of that very same power struggle. Indeed, the ongoing bloodbath there anticipates the kind of carnage that could ensue in this country if Donald Trump or some politician like him were to take the White House in 2024.

The End of Accession?

Nationalists hate globalization because they believe that international bodies should not be writing the rules that constrain the conduct of their governments.

In Brazil, Trump-style President Jair Bolsonaro has lashed out at U.N. agencies and transnational environmental organizations for their criticism of his laissez-faire approach to the destruction of the Amazon rainforest. Euroskeptics like Hungary’s Viktor Orban and the United Kingdom’s Brexiteers dislike having to abide by regulations from European Union (EU) headquarters in Brussels covering everything from the size of cucumbers to the freedom of the press. Trump famously pulled the United States out of every international accord that came within swinging distance of his MAGA machete, including the Paris climate agreement, the Iran nuclear deal, and the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty.

Ukraine has moved in the opposite direction. After the 2014 Euromaidan protests sent its pro-Russian president, Viktor Yanukovych, packing, the more-or-less liberal governments that followed certainly didn’t shy away from appealing to Ukrainian nationalism. Still, they were also willing, even eager, to submit to the rules and regulations of external powers, at least those further to the west. The Ukrainian political struggles of 2013-2014, after all, centered around a desire to join the EU, support for which has recently topped 90%.

Putin has, of course, held out a very different kind of membership to Ukraine — in a Slavic brotherhood. Whatever the pluses or minuses of any future tight partnership with Russia and neighboring Belarus, it would flow from compliance with the parochial dictates of the Kremlin. In other words, Ukraine has faced an all-too-stark choice: become an unwilling partner of Russian exceptionalism or willingly accede to the rules of the West. Given such options, it’s hardly surprising that Euroskepticism barely registers there.

Nor, of course, is Ukraine the only country eager to knock on the EU’s door. Several others are already in the queue, undoubtedly including — if it votes to separate from the United Kingdom and its Brexiteers — Scotland. For Europe, in response to the challenges of economic globalization, including pressures to privatize and a potential race to the bottom when it comes to environmental and labor regulations, the response has been to establish a transnational system that preserves at least some social-democratic features. And that seems like an attractive compromise to a number of countries huddling outside the EU’s door, exposed to the harsh winds of free trade and onerous debt.

But Brexit has hardly been the only challenge to the power and breadth of the European Union. A refusal to abide by the democratically determined policies of Brussels has united right-wing populists in Hungary, Poland, and the Czech Republic, even as it’s generated a strong current of Euroskepticism in countries like Romania. Support for the far right — as well as the Euroskeptical left — remains strong in France, particularly among the young. A coalition of far-right parties historically allergic to European federalism is poised to take over the governance of Italy after elections later this month. In fact, the EU faces a threat even greater than its possible fragmentation: a hostile takeover by right-wing forces determined to destroy the system from within.

Such authoritarian nationalism is on the rise elsewhere as well. According to the metrics of the largely government-funded research institute Freedom House, only 20% of the world’s population now lives in “free” countries. (In 2005, it was 46%.) And of that 20%, many are in countries where authoritarian nationalists — Trump in the United States, Marine Le Pen in France, Benjamin Netanyahu in Israel — have a plausible chance of taking or retaking power in the near future.

What a far cry from the 1990s when much of the former Soviet sphere scrambled to join the EU after the Warsaw Pact dissolved. In that decade, too, even China lobbied hard to join the World Trade Organization, finally gaining Washington’s support in 1999. It was such a golden age of United Nations conferences and international agreements — from the U.N. Conference on Environment and Development to the Rome statute establishing the International Criminal Court — that the name the U.N. chose for the 1990s, the Decade of International Law, seemed extraordinarily apt. Unfortunately, today it seems more like ancient history.

Of course, the need for international cooperation has hardly disappeared. Think climate change, pandemics, and the loss of biodiversity, to mention just three urgent crises. But any enthusiasm for creating binding international commitments has dwindled to the vanishing point. The 2015 Paris climate accord was voluntary. Transnational cooperation during the Covid pandemic, beyond scientific circles, was minimal and often undermined by export restrictions on critical medical supplies. Nuclear arms control agreements remain at a standstill, while the”modernization” of such arsenals continues apace and military budgets rise as the weapons trade hits new highs.

The 2020s are shaping up to be the Decade of the International Scofflaw. Ukraine’s tragedy lies not just in its geography, so near to Russia and so far from God, but in its timing. Three decades ago, after the Soviet Union imploded, Ukraine’s desire to accede to international norms was unremarkable and its willingness to relinquish its nuclear weapons universally applauded. The worst response an EU application could have engendered back then was a cold shoulder from Brussels. Today, the desire to join Europe has led to war.

Whither Autocracy

Autocrats often hide behind sovereignty. China argues that what’s happening to its Uyghur minority in Xinjiang province is simply none of the international community’s business. North Korea insists that it has the sovereign right to develop nuclear weapons. And, of course, in the U.S., Donald Trump’s MAGA crew stoutly rejects snooty foreigners passing judgment on the American attachment to fossil fuels, border walls, and guns of all sizes.

Sovereignty was once the king’s prerogative; he was, after all, the sovereign. Today’s autocrats, like Vladimir Putin, are more likely to have been voted into office than born into the position like Kim Jong-un. The elections that elevate such autocrats might be questionable (and are likely to become ever more so during their reign), but popular support is an important feature of the new authoritarianism. Putin is currently backed by around 80% of Russians; Orban’s approval rating in Hungary hovers near 60%; and while Donald Trump could likely win again only thanks to voter suppression and increasingly antidemocratic features baked into the American political system, millions of Americans did put Trump in the White House in 2016 and continue to genuinely believe that he’s their savior. Bolsonaro in Brazil, Nayib Bukele in El Salvador, Narendra Modi in India, Kais Saied in Tunisia: they were all elected.

Yes, such leaders are nationalists who often act like populists in promising all sorts of handouts and feel-good nostrums to their supporters. But what makes today’s autocrats particularly dangerous is their exceptionalism, their commitment to the kind of sovereignty that existed before the creation of the United Nations, the earlier League of Nations, or even the Treaty of Westphalia that established the modern interstate system in Europe in 1648. Both Trump and Xi Jinping harken back to a Golden Age all right — of rulers who counted on the unquestioned loyalty of their subjects and exercised a dominion unchallenged except by other monarchs.

Sovereignty is the ultimate trump — sorry for that! — card. It can be used to end every argument: I’m the king of this castle and my word is law inside its walls. Autocrats tend not to be team players, but increasingly democracies are playing the sovereignty card as well. Even Russia, in so obviously violating Ukrainian sovereignty, has done that by arguing that Ukraine had always been part of Russia.

The war in Ukraine boils down to a conflict between two conceptions of world order. The first is defined by a one-against-all exceptionalism, the second by an all-for-one transnational cooperation. Unfortunately, the latter has become associated with economic globalization (which is really about ruthless competition, not global cooperation), Davos-style political elitism (which is usually more focused on collusion than transparent collaboration), and trans-border migration (which results from wars, the miseries of global economic inequality, and the ever more devastating nightmare of climate change). Anger at these three elements of “globalism” pushes voters to support “the other side,” most commonly an authoritarian exceptionalism rather than an authentic internationalism.

The dismal endpoint of such political devolution could be a Russia with North Korean characteristics: isolated, belligerent, and tyrannical. Today, countries that take such a path risk the outlaw status North Korea has enjoyed for 75 years. The question is: What happens if, in some future moment, the outlaws constitute the majority?

What’s truly frightening, however, is that this larger geopolitical conflict is a two-front war. Even as the West unites against the Russia that Putin built, it finds itself fighting homegrown variants of authoritarian exceptionalism, from Trump to Orban. Think of this as the geopolitical version of that commonplace horror-film twist: the phone call from the serial killer that turns out to be coming from within the house.

Can the heroine of this story, true internationalism, survive the onslaught of lawless maniacs bent on reviving a world of unaccountable sovereigns and promoting a war of all against all? We can only hope that our heroine not only survives these harrowing challenges but goes on to star in less horrifying and more edifying sequels.

Copyright 2022 John Feffer

Via ( Tomdispatch.com

Kim Jong Un’s parades are monumental, with choreographed crowd actions and plenty of opportunity for people to breath on one another.

Why are Trump and Kim Jong Un behaving this way? Because both are authoritarians. In political systems with a cult of personality, the great leader performs his dominance and authority by speaking to crowds from impressive buildings or balconies. The Soviet leaders used to appear above a massive wall. Mussolini and Saddam Hussein both liked balconies.

Thus, Trump’s triumphal return from Walter Reed on a helicopter and his determined ascent, despite his obvious pneumonia, to the White House balcony so he could look strong and in control to his acolytes.

Embed from Getty Images
U.S. President Donald Trump holds his protective mask on the Truman Balcony of the White House in Washington, D.C., U.S., on Monday, Oct. 5, 2020. Trump’s aides will try to keep him confined to the White House residence after being discharged from the hospital with Covid-19 but are unsure they can limit his movements. Photographer: Ken Cedeno/Polaris/Bloomberg via Getty Images.

The pandemic is especially inconvenient for fascists and authoritarians because it makes crowds dangerous and interferes with public idol-worship of this sort.

Mussolini, 1930. German Federal Archives. h/t Wikimedia.

Since fascism cannot function in the absence of this mass affirmation of the object of the cult of personality, it must deny the existence and virulence of the pandemic. Hence, Trump dismissed COVID-19 as “like the flu,” and depicted his contracting it as a “blessing” that made him stronger. He advised his zombies that they must not let it rule their lives. What he meant is that they should not avoid gathering in large crowds to adore him.

Embed from Getty Images
Iraqi President Saddam Hussein waves to supporters from the balcony of the mayor’s office in Mosul, located in the north of Iraq(Photo credit: INA/AFP via Getty Images)

Kim Jong Un likewise denied that North Korea had any coronavirus cases all the way into April, even though that was highly unlikely and government officials were eventually constrained to confirm them.

Kim Jong Un likewise attempted to distract from the coronavirus by firing missiles to rattle the nerves of the country’s adversaries.

Fascism isn’t that complicated. The leader is strong. The leader will save you and make you prosperous. The leader is always right. The leader demands ritual, mass affirmation. Anything that detracts from the leader’s power is a conspiracy or a hoax. It has no reality. Only the leader is real. Pandemics must be concertedly wished away and the crowds must behave as though they are not risking their lives to gather beneath the leader’s balcony.

All you have to do is stand Trump next to Kim Jong Un and you can see the logic of authoritarianism operating similarly. And, you have to ask yourself if this is what you want for your country.

He’s failed on COVID-19 and the economy is tanking. Could a military adventure in Afghanistan, Iran or North Korea be coming soon?

By Paul Rogers | –

( OpenDemocracy.net) – With the US presidential election less than four months away, Donald Trump trails Joe Biden in the polls by a substantial margin. His strategy as his ratings decline has been to concentrate on his core vote, which amounts to a little more than 30% of the population together, and another 10% that is less assured. The task now is to harden support from that 10% and also to extend it towards a majority, an expanding economy being essential for that.

Hence much of the motivation around ending lockdown has been to counter the multitude of economic impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic. New cases surging to over 65,000 a day has really knocked back this key aim.

So far, Trump’s response has been increasingly strident speeches and tweets that may well appeal to that core 30% but will be much less effective with the flakier supporters he desperately needs. If anything, opposition to his presidency is hardening.

One obvious way forward is to look for international threats that require a strong presidential response, preferably a small war in a far-off place, and this may well be a choice in the run-up to the election. There are three main candidates for the theatre of action: Afghanistan, North Korea and Iran. All, though, are problematic in different ways.

In Afghanistan, the clear plan until a few months ago was to conclude a peace deal with the Taliban and ‘bring our boys back’, or at least most of them, before the election. It would fulfil a 2016 promise and would be popular with his supporters, but there are two difficulties.

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One is that the Taliban are already stepping up their attacks on government forces and, even by November, they will have chalked up plenty of wins. Biden will therefore be able to present the removal of troops not as a success but as an ignominious retreat.

The other problem for Trump is the current furore over claims that Russian agents have offered bounties to Afghan paramilitaries to kill US troops. Whatever the truth of the accusations, they are difficult for Trump because of his many links with Russia.

So, as things stand, he is unlikely to focus electioneering on Afghanistan, leaving him with Iran and North Korea.

Just over a week ago, a large new structure at Iran’s nuclear plant at Natanz was somehow badly damaged. Israeli and US sources hinted that this was a new facility for producing advanced gas centrifuges for Iran’s nuclear programme. Iranian sources claimed it was a fire, but satellite data points to an explosion.

Furthermore, it followed a large explosion that lit up the night sky a few days earlier at a missile production plant at Parchin near Tehran.

These may have been unhappy coincidences, although Iranian government sources have now admitted that the Natanz incident will affect its nuclear programme. There is considerable speculation that, if these were not accidents, foreign elements are at work, possibly through cyberattacks, sabotage or even stealthy cruise missiles. The finger points at Israel, with or without US involvement.

Benjamin Netanyahu certainly has an interest in engineering a US-Iran confrontation. There are several reasons for that, but helping Trump’s popularity in the US is certainly one of them. If Trump, his key ally, loses in November, Biden might come in aiming to revitalise the international nuclear deal that Trump ditched two years ago. Iran is therefore certainly a candidate for an engineered pre-election crisis.

As to North Korea, the Kim Jong-un regime appears to be already in considerable difficulties thanks to the COVID-19 pandemic. The regime had no option but to close the border with China in January, being woefully unprepared to handle a pandemic, but the economic impact has been dire. International sanctions had already made the regime highly dependent on China for trade, tourism and income from North Koreans working there, so it was a desperate measure.

In these circumstance, Kim has few cards to play other than his nuclear missiles. Back in 2016 Trump pledged that he would never let North Korea develop the ability to launch intercontinental ballistic missiles powerful another to threaten the continental US with a nuclear strike. Yet in the past three years the Pyongyang regime has quietly continued its nuclear and missile programmes to the point that a single ICBM test would be enough to threaten just that.

To do that in an attempt to reopen negotiations with Washington would be hugely risky, but Kim might just take that risk. It could backfire, though, and turn out to be a gift for Trump, giving him a huge if deeply unstable diversion right in the middle of an election. US-Iranian relations may be a source of diplomatic concern in western Europe, but North Korea is the one issue that, we can be sure, is already worrying officials in many capital cities.

Paul Rogers is professor in the department of peace studies at Bradford University, northern England. He is openDemocracy’s international security adviser, and has been writing a weekly column on global security since 28 September 2001; he also writes a monthly briefing for the Oxford Research Group. His latest book is ‘Irregular War: ISIS and the New Threat from the Margins’ (IB Tauris, 2016), which follows ‘Why We’re Losing the War on Terror’ (Polity, 2007), and ‘Losing Control: Global Security in the 21st Century’ (Pluto Press, 3rd edition, 2010). He is on Twitter at: @ProfPRogers

Via OpenDemocracy.net

This article is published under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International licence.

————-

Bonus Video added by Informed Comment:

Al Jazeera English: “US killing of Iran’s Qassem Soleimani ‘unlawful’: UN expert”

Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – The genre of the Hollywood Romantic Comedy has fallen on hard times, in part because it became so formulaic (and unrealistic). Trump, however, is attempting to revive it with some twists. You throw a few atomic bombs in, make it part thriller and part P. T. Barnum circus act, and you’ve Made the Romantic Comedy Great Again (MRCGA). Except you can’t really say MRCGA. It would sound like you were throwing up. Oh wait . . .

Speaking at Wheeling, W. Va., Trump told his audience that “there was once tough talk ‘back and forth’ between him and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un . . . He added,

“He wrote me beautiful letters and they’re great letters. We fell in love.”

Judd Apatow or Seth Rogan *has* to make this film. Oh, wait, Seth can’t do it since he already killed off one of the protagonists. You’d have to reboot with a whole new producer and director. It’s like the next Avenger movie where they didn’t really all die.

You can imagine the treatment.

He’s an uncouth Queens billionaire real estate shark with a bad temper and worse hair.

He’s a secretive tinpot dictator with an equally bad haircut who has female ninjas poison his enemies at airports.

SCENE: The two are in their gaudy silk bathrobes in a Trump penthouse, staring daggers at one another.

“You called me Rocket Man! I’m not a cartoon. I rule 25 million people with an iron fist.”

“You kept threatening to nuke my country. Do you know what that would do to real estate values? I’ve already been bankrupt six times. I’m tapped out with even the Russian banks. Do you know what the vig is for the Russian Mafia? A whole country! I can’t be having that kind of talk.”

“I’ll talk however I like. Enemies of ours like you are working with bloodshot eyes to infringe upon our dignity, sovereignty and vital rights. If we push the buttons to annihilate the enemies even right now, all bases of provocations will be reduced to seas of flames and ashes in a moment!”

“Get out! Get out! I never want to see you again.”

CUT TO: Kim Jong Un bored in his presidential palace, playing a video game involving nuking the other players. He sets off numerous explosions, recalling the end of Dr. Strangelove, but in color and with Ramstein playing in the background. He throws the control at the wall. “It’s too easy! They always let me win! The seas of flames and ashes come too fast!”

Kim’s sister Kim Yo-jong enters in black Ninja pyjamas, doing handsprings. “Brother! You are sad.”

“I want to nuke something real. I am tired of games!”

“Is that really the problem? There are tears in your eyes. You are missing him.”

“I don’t need anyone! I have Bugattis. I have as many golden toilets as he does!”

“But do you have a friend?”

Kim Jong Un stares at her in realization.

“You are lonely. Let me write him a letter for you.”

“I can’t look weak.”

“Love is always strong, never weak. Here, let me write: “If you come back to me after many years/ ‘I forgot you not’ is my answer to your fears.”

CUT TO TRUMP TOWER, NYC

IVANKA: “Dad, you’re usually psyched after a rally in a cow pasture in West Virginia. You seem down”

“It’s not the same.”

“You’re missing Rocket Man, aren’t you?

“I’m not missing anyone! Do you know how many whor– I mean, friends, I have? Besides, I want to nuke something. Why the hell do we have all those nukes if we can’t use them?”

“Dad, don’t be too proud to reach out. It’s like when Angela Merkel used to hate you and then you refused to shake her hand.”

“She still hates me.”

“Not as much.”

BELL RINGS.

“Who was it, Dad?”

“DHL special delivery from Pyong-Yang.” OPENS ENVELOPE. “Oh, it is the most beautiful letter.”

“Here, let me see. I’ll write a reply.”

CUT TO BEACH RESORT. Kim Jong Un and Trump frolic on the beach, holding hands with Playboy bunny Karen McDougal, who is between them and looks uneasily from one to the other. The men wear speedo swimsuits love handles bulging and clearly priapic.

KAREN: “You guys said that the devil’s triangle is just a drinking game, right?”

Occasionally watching them from a beach towel are Kim Yo-jong and Ivanka, who are reading each other love poetry. They turn to each other eagerly.

THE END

Obama never met with Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, never joked around with him, never got friendly with him.

2. During his meeting in Singapore with Kim, Trump committed to cancelling joint military exercises with South Korea in two months.

Obama did not cancel any joint military exercises at all, including with Iran’s arch enemy Saudi Arabia.

3. Trump praised Kim Jong Un, saying, “Well, he is very talented. Anybody who takes over a situation like he did at 26 years of age and is able to run it, and run it tough. I don’t say it was nice.” He also allowed as how the North Korean people are very enthusiastic about his rule.

Obama never called Ayatollah Ali Khamenei “talented” or praised him for “running Iran” “tough” or said that he is much beloved of the Iranian people.

4. In the joint communique contains the language, “Reaffirming the April 27, 2018 Panmunjom Declaration, the DPRK commits to work towards complete denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula.” The statement contained no specifics at all, and analysts warn that Pyongyang interprets “denuclearization” as removing the US nuclear umbrella from South Korea and Japan.

In the Iran deal, Iran committed to actual specific steps guaranteeing that Iran would not develop nuclear weapons.

5. The communique says:

” The United States and the DPRK commit to hold follow-on negotiations led by the U.S. Secretary of State, Mike Pompeo, and a relevant high-level DPRK official, at the earliest possible date, to implement the outcomes of the U.S.-DPRK summit.”

The Iran deal or Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action concluded in 2015 required no follow-up meetings because it was actually a, like, deal (at least until Trump violated the treaty).

6. North Korea can use its centrifuges to produce six new nuclear bombs each year (it already has 60). Nothing in the communique commits it to cease doing so.

Iran never had a nuclear bomb and had never made a commitment to developing one, though before 2003 its scientists did some experiments relevant to constructing one. In the nuclear deal with the UN Security Council plus Germany, largely negotiated by the Obama administration, Iran pledged to reduce the number of its centrifuges from 20,000 to only 5,000 older machines, too few to create a bomb in less than a year even if Iran went for broke.

7. North Korea has not made a specific commitment to reduce its stockpile of enriched uranium, with which it can freely construct bombs.

The BBC says, “Iran’s uranium stockpile was reduced by 98% to 300kg (660lbs), a figure that must not be exceeded until 2031. It must also keep the stockpile’s level of enrichment at 3.67%.”

8. North Korea’s bomb-making centrifuge facilities have never been inspected by the UN’s International Atomic Energy Agency and nothing in the joint Singapore communique requires any such inspections.

The BBC notes,

“Inspectors from the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), the global nuclear watchdog, continuously monitor Iran’s declared nuclear sites and also verify that no fissile material is moved covertly to a secret location to build a bomb. Iran also agreed to implement the Additional Protocol to their IAEA Safeguards Agreement, which allows inspectors to access any site anywhere in the country they deem suspicious. Until 2031, Iran will have 24 days to comply with any IAEA access request. If it refuses, an eight-member Joint Commission – including Iran – will rule on the issue. It can decide on punitive steps, including the reimposition of sanctions. A majority vote by the commission suffices.”

—–

Bonus video:

USA Today: “Will North Korea really give up nuclear weapons?”

It was 1991 in Seoul, and I was on assignment for the Christian Science Monitor newspaper covering the widespread protests against the authoritarian South Korean government. Demonstrators protested increasing poverty and the continued U.S. troop presence in their country. Many Koreans saw those troops as an occupying force.

Twenty-seven years later those issues have not gone away. During the June 12 U.S.-North Koran summit, President Donald Trump even called for the withdrawal of the 30,000 U.S. troops at some undetermined time.

“I want to bring our soldiers back home,” he said. “But that’s not part of the equation right now. I hope it will be eventually.”

Far from being a defensive force, the U.S. troops project U.S. power in the region aimed at challenging China and making sure pro-U.S. regional governments stay in power, according to Christine Ahn, co-founder of the Korea Policy Institute.

“The bases insure U.S. political, military and economic interests,” she told me. “There’s always the threat of a U.S. military incursion to advance corporate interests.”

The withdrawal of troops is just one of many contentious issues that must be resolved in negotiations between the United States and the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK). The summit didn’t resolve that or any other issues, although the two sides took a small step forward by simply holding the meeting.

A joint United States-DPRK statement declared, “President Trump committed to provide security guarantees to the DPRK, and Chairman Kim Jong Un reaffirmed his firm and unwavering commitment to complete denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula.”

But neither side defined what those commitments mean. And the Democratic and Republican hawks in Washington are already trying to make sure there’s no meaningful peace accord. After all, that’s what happened with every previous peace effort.

Over the past 30 years, the United States and DPRK have held numerous talks and agreed to denuclearization several times. But all ultimately failed because Washington hasn’t been interested in guaranteeing DPRK’s security. The North Koreans want to keep some nuclear weapons as a deterrent against a U.S. attack or attempt at regime change. Unfortunately, a very strong faction in Washington doesn’t support any peace agreement and instead seeks to overthrow the DPRK government.

In the 1990s North Korea had not yet developed nuclear weapons. In 1994 President Bill Clinton negotiated the “Agreed Framework” that guaranteed the DPRK would not build nuclear weapons and, in return, the United States would help North Korea develop nuclear generated electric power.

The DPRK agreed to stay within the Non Proliferation Treaty, which prohibits development of nuclear weapons. North Korea shut its Yongbyon reactor as verified by international inspectors. The United States agreed to facilitate building two light water nuclear reactors, which could generate nuclear fuel for power generation but not weapons. The United States agreed to lift economic sanctions and provide heavy fuel oil to operate the DPRK’s electric power grid.

But Republican and Democratic hawks in the U.S. Congress thought the president made too many concessions and wanted to sabotage the Agreed Framework. They refused to fund the fuel oil. The Clinton administration also slow walked lifting of sanctions.

When George W. Bush administration took office in 2001, hardliners such as Vice President Dick Cheney, Secretary of Defense Don Rumsfeld and Under Secretary of State John Bolton opposed the deal. By 2002, the Agreed Framework was dead.

That year Bush declared North Korea to be part of the “Axis of Evil,” which also included Iran and Saddam Hussein’s Iraq. After the U.S. invasion of Iraq in 2003, Korea feared it could be the next target for regime change. The DPRK withdrew from the Non Proliferation Treaty and began a sprint towards developing a nuclear weapon.

In the mid 2000s, negotiations resumed, dubbed the Six Party Talks. Participants included both Koreas, the United States, China, Japan and Russia. In September 2005 the parties agreed that DPRK would “abandon all nuclear weapons and existing nuclear programs.”

But the following month, the Bush administration accused Banco Delta in Macau of money laundering, which froze $25 million in DPRK funds. U.S. hardliners saw this as a pressure tactic; North Korea saw it as another example of U.S. bullying.

“The U.S. policy led to North Korea withdrawal from the talks,” said analyst Ahn. The DPRK held its first atomic test in 2006.

Today Trump faces a similar problem because leaders of the opposition party oppose a peace agreement with the DPRK

Seven Democratic Party hawks, including Senate Minority Leader Chuck Shumer and Senator Dianne Feinstein, indicated they would vote against any agreement unless the DPRK eliminates all nuclear and biological weapons, dismantles all ballistic missiles, and allows intrusive inspections anywhere in the country.

The DPRK is not going to accept such demands and the Democratic leadership position guarantees no agreement will be reached, noted Jonathan Granoff, president of the Global Security Institute.

“I am very concerned partisanship undermines our national security,” he told me. “It’s a toxic approach. They should favor diminished tensions and bringing North Korea into the family of nations.”

Today the DPRK has an estimated 15-60 nuclear bombs. It has short and long range ballistic missiles capable of hitting Asia and the continental United States. It’s not clear if North Korea has been able to fit nuclear warheads on the missiles.

In my view, the United States should guarantee the DPRK’s security by signing a peace treaty ending the Korean War, establishing normal diplomatic relations and accepting a limited number of North Korean nukes with guarantees that no more will be produced. We should get busy pulling all U.S. troops out of Seoul.

Official Washington would ask how can we trust a brutal dictatorship that oppresses its own people and failed to live up to past commitments?

“The government of North Korea is tyrannical,” said Global Security Institute’s Granoff. “But should we be in a state of war with all tyrants?”

Signing agreements with the DPRK “won’t make them a progressive state.” But it will help set the conditions for progress. Political change and eventual reunification of North and South Korea can’t be imposed from the outside, he said. “The process must be led by the Korean people themselves.”

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Bonus video added by Informed Comment:

Channel 4 News: “President Donald Trump’s full Singapore press conference after historic North Korea summit”

One of the concerning developments on the internet is that hypocrisy, which was probably the ultimate Cool Meme in the zeroes of this century, no longer rules. Maybe it is just scandal fatigue from the combination of profound corruption and attention deficit disorder characterizing Washington under Trump. But, well, we have to keep on slogging.

There was that time when Sen. Ted Cruz and other Republicans lambasted Obama for visiting Cuba while there were still political prisoners in that country. So the principle is, no talks with leaders who have prisoners of conscience in their jails? Trump has broken that principle every which way from Sunday. Sen. John McCain even compared Obama’s handshake with Castro to the Hitler-Chamberlain meeting. Seriously. That’s what he said.

Then there was that time when prominent Republicans slammed Barack Obama’s Secretary of State John Kerry for his direct talks with Iran’s foreign minister Mohammad Javad Zarif. Sen. John Barrasso, R-WY and a member of the Foreign Relations Committee, said, “I have a lot of concerns about Secretary John Kerry and his buddy-buddy relationship with Zarif and other people around the world.”

In 2008 when Obama was still running for president, one of his foreign policy advisers, Daniel Kurtzer, went to Damascus and met with Bashar al-Assad’s foreign minister. Sen. John McCain slammed Obama for the overture to the al-Assad regime: “If one of Senator Obama’s advisers has been to Damascus, we just wonder how many have been to Tehran.”

And, of course, when Barack Obama was running for president in 2008 and pledged unconditional talks with North Korea among other countries, he was pilloried by conservatives– the same ones who now demand a Nobel Peace Prize for Trump for meeting with the North Korean president without preconditions.

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Bonus video:

Guardian News: “President Donald Trump and Kim Jong-un meeting in Singapore”

It does not.

The Iran deal in particular was closely negotiated over the course of years. Iran gave up 90% of its nuclear enrichment program in return for an end to economic sanctions. While the other member states of the UN Security Council did lift UNSC sanctions, the Republican-controlled Congress not only did not lift unilateral US sanctions but actually slapped more on.

And then along came Trump, who violated the treaty entirely. Since the US economy is a fourth of the world GDP, likely Trump can use the Treasury Department to destroy what is left of the Iran deal by imposing heavy fines on firms that deal with Iran.

Or take Canada. As I wrote on Friday:

Trump also repeatedly insists that the US runs a large trade deficit with Canada, importing more goods from that country than it sells to its northern neighbor. Those in the US who make that argument are typically counting third party goods imported into the US through Canada, which Ottawa considers an unfair accounting. The fact is that the US-Canada trade is almost equal, and if you count both goods and services, it is the US that runs the surplus.

Time says that the Office of the United States trade representative concludes that in 2016 the US exported $320.1 bn. of goods and services to Canada but only imported $307.6 bn from Canada. But let’s face it, in a $628 billion mutual trade relationship a $12 bn surplus on either side is trivial and certainly not worth having a trade war about.

Trump agreed to the G7 memo and then after he left, he reneged and insulted Canadian premier Justin Trudeau, and then Trump’s henchmen came out to smear the Canadian leader.

So if the US proved so feckless with regard to Iran and the G7, why should N. Korea now trust any deal Trump makes?

The answer is that N. Korea doesn’t trust Trump at all and is not planning to make any deal with him to give up its nuclear weapons entirely.

Kim Jong Un wants the prestige that would come from a two-way summit with the world’s sole superpower. Even if the talks go nowhere, Pyongyang will have seen a permanent rise in its world standing.

Sanctions on N. Korea are stronger than those placed on Iran by the UN Security Council. Even a slight improvement in that country’s trade profile would matter, whereas

N. Korea has a more authoritarian government than Iran by orders of magnitude. Although Iran’s parliamentary and presidential elections are not fully free, inasmuch as the regime vets candidates for ideological adherence to the values of the 1979 Islamic Revolution, the polls are otherwise relatively aboveboard and can produce surprises when the public swings toward a dark horse and away from the Establishment candidate.

No element of Kim Jong Un’s government has to face an electorate. He does not have any constituents that he needs to please.

Thus, while Trump’s destruction of the Iran deal deeply harms the government of President Hassan Rouhani, Kim Jong Un might actually be strengthened by an open act of American perfidy.

N. Korea can afford to play with fire in a way that Iran could not.

Featured Photo: A working group session at the G7 summit.

North Korea does not have the slightest intention of renouncing its nuclear weapons. Its leadership might be willing to scale back some programs and act less provocatively in some ways, but denuclearization is a fantasy. Those who point to past successes in this regard neglect one key variable: No country that has ever actually developed a bomb has ever given it up. Countries have given up programs which had the potential ultimately to produce a weapon. Iraq renounced its experiments with nuclear enrichment in 1991. Argentina and Brazil pulled back from the brink when civilian governments replaced the old military juntas. South Africa mothballed its small, ineffective program with the coming of a post-Apartheid democracy. Libya traded some old blueprints and a few rusty pieces of equipment for sanctions relief in 2004.

The Republican Party’s ridiculous exaggerations, then and now, about what actually happened in Libya, fed into the current hype. National Security Adviser John Bolton suggested the 2004 process with Libya as a model for the negotiations with North Korea. He was misunderstood by everyone, including Trump and North Korea, as having referred to the very different 2011 Libya Revolution, backed by the United Nations and NATO, in which dictator Moammar Gaddafi was overthrown and killed. The latter was not relevant to Bolton’s comments. Having a nuclear bomb would not have protected Gaddafi from a popular revolution, though it might have forestalled a UN no-fly zone of the sort the Security Council imposed at the instance of the International Criminal Court.

In fact, Libya was never within a light year of having a nuclear weapons capability (the nearest solar system to earth, Alpha Centauri, is four light years away). The old false claims of 2004-2005 that George W. Bush’s illegal invasion and occupation of Iraq had scared Libya and Lebanon straight was not true then, and is not true now. Bolton put his foot in his mouth by living with the lies of the last decade instead of the present one.

But given what ultimately happened to Gaddafi, Pyongyang at least feigned to be extremely offended at the comparison, one that was repeated by vice president Mike Pence when he said that if North Korea did not give up its nukes, Kim Jong Un might end up like Gaddafi. North Korea responded by calling Pence a “political dummy,” thus angering Trump.

It may be that the two sides misunderstood the rules of permitted political rhetoric. In authoritarian regimes, it is often allowed to criticize officials below the president. Pence violated that rule by comparing Kim Jong Un to the very dead and disgraced Gaddafi. North Korea responded by criticizing Pence, not Trump, which they may have believed was a way to deliver a message without causing Trump to lose face. Trump, however, took the attack on Pence as a sign of disrespect. Trump doesn’t have the slightest idea what he is talking about.

The petulant tone of Trump’s letter to Chairman Kim, for all the world like a jilted lover (“you still have my phone number if you, like. . . wanted to call..”) itself demonstrates how personalistic and unserious the whole affair was.

A successful summit with North Korea would have required recognition that Pyongyang routinely engages in cartoonish agitprop. It would have had realistic goals, not denuclearization and a Nobel prize for Trump. It would have been carefully planned by senior state department officials (hundreds of whom have already fled the department in horror at Trumpism and fear for their jobs, which Trump is abolishing.)

It was all vapor, like Trump himself. If it weren’t for the Murdoch press and television and the army of Russian, United Arab Emirates, Saudi and Israeli internet robots, and if it weren’t for the pusillanimous character of the Republican Party, which is afraid to call out Trump on his horse manure, no one would ever have taken this thing seriously to begin with.

Bonus Video

CBC: “Trump calls off North Korea summit in letter to Kim Jong-un”