Donald Trump, who has aspirations to be a military leader - parades and all - has been escalating his rhetoric to support some or other strike against North Korea. (If The Don wants to prove whose button is bigger military parades are not the way to go as the North Korea’s totalitarian dictator is the real deal when it comes to military circuses).
The South Korean Pyeongchang Winter Olympic Games was to be the backdrop for consolidating opposition against the rogue government of Rocket Man and dynamo Vice President Mike Pence was entrusted with the project.The POTUS was frustrated by diplomatic maneuvers by Kim Jun Un and his historic deal with South Korea’s Moon Jae -In. The small man from across the Korean border lead his charge with a large North Korean delegation dominated by his attractive sister Kim Yo Jung, one of his closest confidants. He was aided in his counter to Trump by the conciliatory symbolic gesture of South Koreas’s Premier who agreed to a combined Korean Olympic Team participating under one flag thereby according North Korea acceptance, status and respectability on the world stage.
The miscalculation our testosterone loaded leader made in his quest for martial recognition is that the real existential threat the dictator, with the small button, poses is to his immediate neighbor South Korea then Japan and not America. South Korea’s Moon Jae - In was not about to sacrifice his security to bolster the insecure American’s loud mouth. Even less was he going to allow his showpiece games to act as a backdrop for the preparation of aggression that could decimate his half of the Korean Peninsula. The Olympic host’s objective was to broker a truce and his ruthless Northern counterpart was, for the moment, more intent in blunting the POTUS’S influence in this region.
What happened in Pyeongchang is bound to have a profound impact on the world stage.
BACKGROUND TO PENCE’S QUEST
The very fact that Trump had nominated such a high profile member of his Administration to sit in the cold was indicative of the top priority that coalition formation against Kim Jun Un represented. The Vice President made it embarrassingly clear that he was not in favor of the symbolic rapprochement of a combined Korean team. Normally wisely in the background, Pence was responsible for the one sour note in the colorful spectacular opening ceremony. This he achieved by remaining seated with his good lady midst the standing exuberant and ecstatic spectators and athletes from all countries who were celebrating the entry of the combined South and North Korean Olympic team. In truth he had been given an impossible assignment, under the circumstances - go declare war when the prevailing sentiment was celebration and to give peace a chance.
Trump had drawn a line in the sand with regard to North Korea’s missile testing. He had introduced the most devastating sanctions to date and there was no hint at diplomacy. Typical of the Trump doctrine, it was his way or the highway. As Jay H. Ell discussed in his last blog, “Will Trump The Street Fighter Survive?”, all pointers were for launching an attack of sorts on North Korea. He was not leaving any way out if the small buttoned Kim predictably pressed his button to unleash yet another missile. When challenged on the dangers of his tactic in typical style The Don flashed back, “Past experience has taught us that complacency and concessions only invite aggression and provocation. I will not repeat the mistakes of past administrations that got us into this dangerous position”.
The POTUS’S bombast forced the withdrawal of his nominee as Ambassador to South Korea, the well respected, former Bush appointee, Victor Cha. Cha disagreed with the Trump’s approach to “bloody nose” the North Korean leader. Cha feared that Trump’s State of the Nation speech was a portent to attacking North Korea without South Korea’s Moon Jae -In’s buy in. This dread he shared with the South Korean Premier, so like scores of others in the one year old chaotic Trump Presidency, Cha was marched out the revolving WhiteHouse door. North Korea responded to Trump’s threats in an attack dripping with irony. They referred to the rampant homelessness, gun violence and rife sexual assault ravaging America, and straight out of the Marxist playbook added, “In the US the absolute majority of working masses, deprived of elementary rights to survival, are hovering in the abyss of nightmare”.
Pence’s main weapon was to try and provide a reality check as to who they were all dealing with - a coldblooded murderer and ruthless dictator. The narrative was underscored by resorting to human props. Included as a key member of the US delegation to the games was the father of Otto Warmbier, a twenty - two year old University of Virginia student who had been tortured to death by the North Koreans. He was seated in the President’s box with the President of the IOC and leaders of participating countries. The devastated Warmbier was no stranger to the American public having been featured in Trump’s State of the Union, (SOTU), speech. Pence, like Trump in his SOTU oration to the nation focussed his attention on North Korean defectors to further underline what a totalitarian regime the world was dealing with.
While the South Koreans have to be ambivalent about all this there is little doubt, gaging their euphoric response, they are supportive of their recently elected leader’s peace initiatives.
ROCKET MAN’S MOVES
To anyone who believes that this Korea thing just happened let Jay H. Ell hastily disabuse them of that thought. This whole choreographed production must have taken high level sophisticated ongoing tedious diplomacy with give and take. To send over his cheerleaders, his high powered delegation and his women ice hockey players while downsizing a military parade in return for one flag and no joint military exercises with America, did not happen over night. Nor did the two hour meeting between Moon Jae - In and Kim Yo Jung occur in a vacuum. The ostensible outcome of it all, an invitation to the South Korean President to visit North Korea also was not sprung on the host. All this added to the discomfort of the Enabler in Chief Pence and to the fury of the Commander in Chief.
The thought of which events to blend in the North Korean athletes took much thought. There was no way that most of the North Koreans qualified for any of the individual events. In any case it was too late to enter them. The South Korean women’s hockey team had qualified as a team and nobody can dictate who can be in a team. To the dismay of the South Korean women’s ice hockey team, not to mention their American coach, Sarah Murray, who had been working with them for ages, several were to lose their places to the North Koreans. They weren’t asked they were told just over a month ago that some of them would drop out to accommodate the twelve young North Korean players that had been selected by the political accord. So with Kim Yo Jung and Moon Jae -In in attendance, while 120 North Korean cheerleaders pranced in the background, it mattered not that the combined Korean team were trounced eight nothing in their first game.
So the young dictator, who starves his people in favor of producing military hardware, orchestrated a worldly gambit that has changed the political landscape of the region and the world.
UPSHOT OF THE OFF STAGE DIPLOMACY AT PYEONGCHANG
If Donald J. Trump was banking on Mike Spence garnering world support behind the scenes at the Winter Olympics to attack North Korea just the opposite happened. The blunderbuss utilized to bring home the bacon was human evidence of the North Korean atrocities in the form of the bereaved Mr. Warmbier and Mike Pence’s embrace of North Korean refugees. What resonated in the Republican dominated State of the Union speech was drowned by the rapprochement of the two Koreas. The enthusiastic crowds did not relish using this joyous celebration to face the dark reality of the North’s world. Rather they basked in the success of the South Korean story and the prospect of detente with their Northern brothers after nearly a century of war. While Moon Jae - In was careful to include an exhortation to the military dictator in the North to entertain talks with his American allies he obviously realized that a new paradigm in Asian political life had been born.
To sum up if Donald Trump is to attack North Korea militarily in this backdrop he is on his own. If he persists with his belligerency what will be the outcome if he continues his rhetoric with or without aggression?
THE NEW WORLD LINE UP
In case anyone had missed it the center of gravity in world power is shifting away from the North American - European axis to an Asian - Russian axis, even in sport. The 2020 Olympic Games are in Japan and in 2022 the Winter Olympics are back in China. In the financial sphere Obama recognized the reality of the rising Asian markets with their billions of people. This was the basis of his administration’s embracing the Trans Pacific Partnership which Trump has trashed. China cheerfully has stepped into the vacuum.
So where does this leave Trump’s America in the emerging powerhouse of Asia? To put this all into the Korean context what is to stop the China/Russian axis backing South and North Korea teaming up? China is currently reluctantly backing the USA in their sanctions on North Korea. Periodically Trump berates them for not doing enough. Now China is not worried to the same extent about Kim’s nuclear program and neither would be South Korea if an accord could be reached. If America went ballistic at the latter Moon Jae - In would be reassured if he could swop China’s support for the unreliable quarrelsome Trump. The day of American imperialism is over.
So Trump is skating on even thinner ice after the Winter Games and if he goes off on a rant or unilaterally attacks North Korea, besides the fall out, he could surrender what remains of the US influence in the Northern Pacific.
AT THE END OF THE DAY
No - one should underestimate the significance of what has transpired on the Korean Peninsula with the Pyeongchang games as a backdrop. This sports event has even greater significance than the Nixon/Kissinger ping pong match with China. The new South Korean leader has risked all taking on Trump’s America - a decision he could have not come to lightly. He could not have proceeded in this direction without at least consulting the Chinese. This should make the POTUS pause before he carries on his bating of the paranoid North Korean dictator. If he had any insight he would realize how dangerous it could be to annoy a megalomaniac who has his finger on a nuclear button, even if it is a small one. Mercifully, the Vice President seems to have absorbed the message if his Washington Post comment that diplomacy has not been entirely jettisoned is anything to go by.
Whichever way you look it the diplomatic moves accompanying the Pyeonchang Games have heralded an irreversible dive of American influence in the region.
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