Finian Cunningham -- Why Trump is Winding Up Tensions with North Korea

Why Trump is Winding Up Tensions with North Korea

Finian Cunningham

December 25, 2019

© Photo: Flickr / whitehouse

After 18 months of on-off diplomacy with North Korea, the Trump administration seems determined now to jettison the fragile talk about peace, reverting to its earlier campaign of “maximum pressure” and hostility. It’s a retrograde move risking a disastrous war.

In a visit to China this week, South Korean President Moon Jae-in and Chinese leader Xi Jinping both urged for greater momentum in the diplomatic process with North Korea, saying that renewed tensions benefit no-one. The two leaders may need to revise that assertion. Tensions greatly benefit someone – Washington.

Why Trump is winding up tensions again with Pyongyang appears to involve a two-fold calculation. It gives Washington greater leverage to extort more money from South Korea for the presence of US military forces on its territory; secondly, the Trump administration can use the tensions as cover for increasing its regional forces aimed at confronting China.

Seth Ferris -- All Those Missiles Pointed at Russia: Who Are They Trying to Hit?

22.12.2019 Author: Seth Ferris

All Those Missiles Pointed at Russia: Who Are They Trying to Hit?

Column: Politics

Region: Europe

As the Serbs never tire of pointing out, international diplomacy is often driven by irrational prejudice. Whenever Serbs try and create a country of their own, which includes all the predominantly Serb population areas, the rest of the world thinks this is a bad thing and does everything it can to prevent it. When asked why it is so bad, no one seems to know – the usual excuse is “protection of minorities”, though this never applies to the protection of Serb minorities in the rest of former Yugoslavia.

The same applies to the Russian Federation. Its neighbours have longstanding grievances against it, dating from pre-Soviet times, and do not want to live under its shadow any more. Therefore they claim they need want protection from somebody else, and the West is happy to provide it for its own, not necessarily honourable, reasons.

This mind-set is a very common element of Post-Empire Syndrome. One reason the Orthodox Church has gained a lasting presence in Uganda and Kenya is that it is not associated with the old colonial power (the UK). However in parts of the post-Soviet realm, such as Lithuania, Orthodoxy is regarded as a relic of Soviet domination, despite the millions of Russians and others martyred by the Soviets for refusing to give it up.

But does this mean that Russia needs to be surrounded by bases armed with missiles pointed at it? It is true that modern Russia wants a loosely recognised “sphere of influence” that comes close to corresponding to the old Soviet republics – the very ones that fought long and hard to be rid of the Soviet. So bases in these countries might reassure their inhabitant, at least that is the story line that some might want us to think!

But if Russia is really that much of a threat, will missiles pointed at it do any good? Does the West really want to destroy the whole planet, as it will have to do to destroy 150 million Russians?