Promises of Incineration: The Nuclear Playground Gets Busy
“I don’t know what he’s saying and I’ve long ago given up trying to interpret what he says.”
Senator John McCain on President Donald J. Trump, Aug 8, 2017
Moral equivalence is the enemy of the noble and the exceptional, and the screeching rhetoric currently being fired
across the diplomatic bows of Pyongyang and Washington have become mirrors of brute behaviour.
The reasons for this spike came after another round of spanking sanctions on the North Korean regime, a move that did
have the reluctant blessing of China on the UN Security Council. Such a move would effectively strip Pyongyang’s coffers
of $1 billion, making the point that Washington may well not so much bomb North Korea to the negotiating table as
bankrupt it into a bargain.
The evident flaw in this strategy is simple: sanctions have succeeded in reducing a desperate population to an even more
impecunious position while entrenching the regime. All the while, these moves have boosted the nuclear weapons drive.
The note on sanctions marked a particularly aggressive mood of participants at the ASEAN foreign minister’s summit over
the weekend, one flavoured by the combative sprigs of Philippines’ president Rodrigo Duterte. North Korea’s Kim Jong-un,
spat the potty-mouthed, drug pusher killing strongman, was a chubby faced “son of a bitch” prone to “playing with
dangerous toys”. It was soon evident to reporters that a self-portrait was being sketched. (It takes one to grudgingly
know one.)
Duterte did, however, make the needless point that any nuclear confrontation on the peninsula was bound to inflict a
geographical calamity of some consequence. “A limited confrontation and it blows up here, I will tell you, the fallout
can deplete the soil, the resources and I don’t know what will happen to us.”
Chinese delegates had been keen not to put too many noses out of joint, given South China Sea tensions and the vast
elephant in the room that is Beijing’s ambitions. The final joint communiqué of the ministers on August 5 called for
“non-militarisation and restraint” regarding the contested area while avoiding any specific mention of Chinese actions.
Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi’s cup of praise brimmed, describing the summit as a “successful meeting with [a] very
positive and friendly atmosphere”. In rather jejune fashion, Wang claimed that the China-ASEAN strategic partnership had
“entered a new stage of comprehensive development.”
On Sunday, Susan Thornton, acting assistant secretary for East Asian and Pacific affairs, expressed her satisfaction at
Beijing’s warming to the US position. “The fact that the Chinese were helpful and instrumental in setting up this really
sweeping set of international sanctions shows how they realize that this is a huge problem they need to take on, that
it’s a threat to them and their region.”
In absentia, albeit very much present, was the regime of the DPRK. Having effectively gathered a noose, the US-led
effort generated a predictable response. “Packs of wolves,” went a statement carried by the Korean Central News Agency,
“are coming in attack to strangle a nation. They should be mindful that the DPRK’s strategic steps accompanied by
physical action will be taken mercilessly with the mobilisation of all its national strength.”
It took a matter of hours for the White House occupant to respond. “North Korea best not make any more threats to the
United States,” exclaimed President Donald Trump to reporters at his golf club in Bedminster, N.J. “They will be met
with fire and fury like the world has never seen. He [Kim] has been very threatening beyond a normal state and as I said
they will be met with fire and fury and frankly power the likes of which this world has never seen before.”
It did not take long for the Kim regime to put out word that it was considering the possibility of a military deployment
using the Hwasong-12. One suggestion was a missile strike on Guam in the Western Pacific, home to the Anderson Air Force
Base.
This would involve, in the bombastic wording of a spokesman for the Korean People’s Army, initiating a plan that would
be “put into practice in a multi-current and consecutive way any moment once Kim Jong-un, supreme commander of the
nuclear force of the DPKR, makes a decision.”
The nuclear playground is proving busier than ever. Ballistic missile tests are met by air-force fly overs and further
military exercises. These, in turn, are met by more tests, spruced with the necessary, inflammatory rhetoric of
incineration. The sand pit is being turned over.
Instead of pushing an agenda of recognition that would entail the survival of the Kim regime, rather than its
annihilation let alone more genteel overthrow, asphyxiation is being pursued. Desperation is being fed its disturbing
rations.
What matters now is which bully will call the other’s bluff. Will the ghost of pre-emption be made a blood-spilt
reality? Pyongyang remains the better placed one, noting the old adage that leopards don’t tend to alter their indelible
spots. (Remember Iraq, remember Libya.) But it is Trump who persists in showing that a bully’s restraint and measure of
self-control is taking a heavy toll.
Dr. Binoy Kampmark was a Commonwealth Scholar at Selwyn College, Cambridge. He lectures at RMIT University, Melbourne