Tension is gradually building up in two geopolitical regions – the Korean peninsula in the East and Iran in the Middle East, both predictably aiming arrows at Big Brother the United States as also regional rivals.
The fragile peace between Iran and the US seems shattered after a brief lull, while the “rogue” nation North Korea has progressively scaled up its rhetoric against America and followed this up with missile and nuclear bomb threats. Clearly, ‘megalomaniac’ President Trump has his hands full, battling problems with internal administration on one hand, and trying to fend against the snowballing, separate-but-in-tandem nuclear threats from two sides.
With the US bombers and fighter escorts flying off the coast of North Korea Sunday in a warning against Pyongyang’s defiant pursuit of its nuclear weapons programme, a warlike scenario is developing in the region. This happens at the height of bellicose rhetoric by the US and North’s leader against each other.
Expectations were that the demise of ‘Dear Leader’ Kim Jong-il in 2011, after 17 years of despotic rule in a family succession saga, would see a change in the attitudes of a nation that drew little attention in terms of global development indices and more concern regarding its periodic threats against South Korea and the United States.
Cuba, on the other side of the geographical reach, mostly shed its anti-American postures after the exit from power of Fidel Castro and instead courted the theme of development under the new leader Raul Castro. A similar thaw is unlikely in the case of North Korea, as the new ruler Kim Jong-un is seen to be more ballistic against the Americans than his deceased father.
In other words, from among Cuba, Libya and North Korea — the three, small, self-styled, left-of-centre nations that challenged America — the fire is kept alive now only by North Korea, despite generational changes.
All the three nations were ideologically oriented in their fight against ‘imperialist’ America, not a bad idea altogether. But fact is also that populations in these countries have been suffering through generations while much of the rest of the world has moved on into more modern and tech-savvy times.
Tragically in the case of North Korea, a sense of realism is failing to catch up with it even as its new ruler is a young, energetic youth in his thirties. His latest threat: to explode a hydrogen bomb in the Pacific Ocean. This comes close on the heels of a nuclear test by the North earlier this month, which reportedly caused an earthquake measuring 3.5 on the Richter scale.
Notably, both China and Russia — from which North Korea drew moral and material support in the past — are advising caution to Kim Jong-un but with little effect. The imposition of new sanctions on North Korea by the US Friday, over and above the series of US-inspired UN sanctions against it in the past, is bound to raise the North’s fury to a new high.
President Trump has, rightly or wrongly, raised the heat to a level where it will now be difficult for him to backtrack in respect of North Korea. If he does so, it would mean a serious loss of face for both Trump and the US.
What adds to Trump’s predicament is the simultaneous act of provocation from the Middle East. Iran’s testing of a new medium-range missile in utter defiance of warnings from the Trump administration this past week also raised the possibility of an annulment of the landmark nuclear deal the US alongside UK, Russia, Germany, France and China entered into with the Shia-ruled Islamic nation in 2015.
Trump himself had set the tone for such a turn by terming the pact signed by his predecessor as an “embarrassment for the US”. The latest test is a major step forward for Iran in its nuclear ambitions for military purposes. Just days before that, Trump had upped the ante against Iran at the UN, calling it a “rogue state whose chief exports are violence, bloodshed and chaos”; but China for one seems eager to save the deal.
Trump may have some room still left to handle the Middle East crisis, but it would appear that time is running out in relation to North Korea. A sense of unpredictability is looming, which is of serious concern for the international community.
