North Korea will copy Pak’s Thousand Cuts strategy (Sunday Guardian)

By M D Nalapat 

Kim Jong Un is strengthening clandestine networks in Japan, the United States and South Korea. 

Policymakers and analysts across both sides of the Pacific Ocean, who are familiar with and involved in policy formulation in both segments of the Korean peninsula, say that North Korean supremo Kim Jong Un “admires the way a much smaller Pakistan is keeping India on tenterhooks” through GHQ Rawalpindi’s Zia-era “Thousand Cuts” strategy. Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi—at that time focused on a peace treaty with Pakistan because of his close relationship with PPP chief and later Prime Minister of Pakistan Benazir Bhutto—declined secret approaches by Israel, which continued up to the initial months of 1989 to jointly carry out a ship and air-based missile strike that would destroy Pakistan’s nuclear infrastructure. Till around 2003, it was possible for India to take out Pakistan’s nuclear assets, given that these were not militarily operational until that period, despite hype from Islamabad. However, neither P.V. Narasimha Rao, nor any of his successors had the will to act decisively against GHQ Rawalpindi, until the window of opportunity passed. It was not a coincidence that 1989, the year the Israeli approaches were finally rebuffed, was also when Pakistan sharply accelerated its non-conventional war on India by openly lighting the fires of insurgency in Kashmir and set up terror infrastructure throughout India for future action, soon witnessed in locations such as Mumbai in 1993.

“Pakistan’s trajectory against India has inspired Kim to follow the same path, which is to strengthen clandestine networks in Japan, the United States and South Korea to, in future, launch a ‘thousand cuts’ strategy on the three powers”, of course “once immunity is secured through a credible nuclear deterrent” on the Pakistan model. Unlike his father Kim Jong Il, “who was hesitant to reach out in a systematic manner to Washington, preferring to focus his attention on Seoul”, the younger Kim is “open to a significant increase in contacts with the US, as he is not committed to a traditional state-monopoly model of the economy”. According to those familiar with the thinking within the higher echelons of the Pyongyang leadership, the youthful Kim Jong Un “understands the benefits that Pakistan gained as a consequence of skilful diplomacy towards the US”, in particular, “by gaining the space needed in order to build up nuclear assets to a critical level”.

Further, “as in the case of Pakistan”, the primary sponsor and protector of the North Korean military, China, “ favours a policy of conciliation on the surface, combined with vigorous prosecution of necessary action below eye level”, as was the case between the US and Pakistan throughout the 1980s and 1990s. Indeed, those who were close to Rajiv Gandhi, say that an important reason why he did not accept the Israeli offer was that the US frowned on any such action against Pakistan. The other was fear of retaliatory bombing raids on Mumbai and even Delhi, “although these would have been unlikely, given the certainty of retaliation by India on Karachi and Rawalpindi”. Interestingly, these sources add that General Sundarji’s military manoeuvres on the Pakistan border during that period were to ensure combat readiness in the event of an India-Israel strike against Pakistan’s nuclear assets.

THE THINKING IN NORTH KOREA

According to individuals familiar with the thinking of the higher echelons of the North Korean leadership, “if the DPRK is Pakistan, then Japan is India”. In other words, the primary target of a future non-conventional war by a North Korea made immune from significant retaliation by its nuclear weapons capability would be Japan. “The DPRK would show its teeth to South Korea and the US, but not with the intention of biting”, a policymaker across the Pacific shores revealed, adding that “the intention of a display of offensive capability would be to gain concessions” from Seoul and Washington. However, in the case of Japan, Kim “sees himself as the Korean leader, who will perform the historical task of humbling that country” through a ceaseless and escalating campaign of non-conventional warfare that Tokyo would be powerless to directly retaliate against. Such a campaign would be designed to “slow down the Japanese economy and remove any sense of safety and balance in the lives of citizens, especially in Osaka and Tokyo”, two cities where, according to several sources, networks have already been set up that can be made operational at short notice.

However, “should there be war, there will be no limit to the response” of the DPRK towards its foes as “Supreme Leader is aware that this will be a battle to the finish” and therefore “we have nothing to lose” in a context where “the only choice will be to either perish tamely, or after a bitter and deadly struggle”. They add that “Supreme Leader (Kim) is very smart and spends a lot of time in private study, contemplation and in discussions” about the overall situation from his close associates and from scholars, “whom (Kim) treats with great respect”. In particular, “Supreme Leader has studied the recent experience of Iraq, Libya, Syria and even Egypt” and seems to have reached the conclusion that “promises made by western politicians are written on water”. They claim that under the cover of removing WMD, “extensive investigation was done of the vulnerable areas of defences in Iraq and Libya”, information that was subsequently put to use in attacks directed against Saddam Hussein and Muammar Gaddafi. They have also seen how “help for anti-Assad fighters was increased by several times” after Syrian, i.e., Assad’s WMD stocks were removed “because of the agreement forced by Moscow” on Damascus. Hence, they add, Kim Jong Un will not allow roaming inspections of military facilities as a consequence of any agreement. Only the sites agreed upon and which relate to the nuclear forces under discussion will be made accessible, “after a comprehensive agreement has been reached”. The individuals contacted claim that over the past year, several North Koreans and others suspected of passing on information to enemy forces have been discovered and are being subjected to questioning in facilities set up for the purpose in the northeast of the DPRK.

‘INTEGRATION NONNEGOTIABLE’

Given the lessons of Iraq, Libya and Syria, the individuals located on the other side of the Pacific Ocean say that the integration of DPRK’s administrative and military structure within any future unified state is “nonnegotiable”. They add that contrary to the personal views of his father and predecessor Kim Jong Il, “who was not eager for unification and disliked the ways of the south”, Kim Jong Un has an “open mind on the issue and has no animosity towards the societal construct in the south”. Hence, they claim that the best chance for peaceful unification is the present dispensation in Pyongyang, although “agreement must be based on mutual respect, rights and benefits”. Also, that any intra-Korean talks towards such an outcome “must follow an agreement (of Pyongyang) with the US that protects the personnel” of the DPRK administration from future retaliation of the kind that took place in Iraq and Libya and which is now being pursued by the US and its allies in Syria.

However, absent any “honourable and co-equal” peace agreement, the DPRK will seek to develop its nuclear and missile technologies to a stage when “these can be used with deathly (sic) effect on cities in Japan, the south and the US west coast”. That would, in their view, strengthen the position of North Korea in any future negotiations. According to those familiar with the workings of the ruling group in the DPRK, “the military wants to, in all situations, go ahead with the nuclear program” as the army’s belief is that “the US is not interested in serious negotiations, but in putting the tiger (North Korea) to sleep by honeyed words before killing it”. However, the same sources add that Kim Jong Un believes that President Trump will keep his part of any deal made “as he is a businessman and not a politician”. According to the policymakers spoken to, “the aim of the DPRK leadership is to work towards a summit meeting (between Kim and Trump) that would result in a breakthrough in the negotiations. Only “intervention at this level would create the confidence within Supreme Leader’s high state council that would enable confidently to make the concessions required for honourable peace”. According to the individuals spoken to, Supreme Leader Kim has spent “much time going through speeches and events featuring President Trump” and has “developed respect for President Trump’s honest talk and unwavering focus on US interests”, in contrast to his predecessors, who are seen as “insincere and liars”.

THREE OPTIONS

There appear to be three possible options evolving within the Korean peninsula:

(1) The most likely scenario appears to be a massive first strike by the US and its allies, designed to neutralise the DPRK military machine, followed by occupation of the country and the creation of a sanitary zone 20 kilometres from the border with China, so as to ensure that Beijing’s security interests are taken account of in any deployment.

(2) The Trump administration goes the way of the Clinton, Bush and Obama eras and in effect permits the incremental progress of North Korea towards an operational nuclear strike capability that threatens not just Japan and South Korea, but parts of the US as well. This would be followed by the DPRK’s activation of a “thousand cuts” strategy, particularly against Japan, but very likely partially against the US and South Korea as well, the aim of actions against the latter being the wresting of concessions on trade and finance. The campaign against Japan would be with the same objective as that of the ISI’s war on India, the weakening and disruption of the country.

(3) President Trump enters into “breakthrough diplomacy” with Kim Jong Un and succeeds in mentoring a peaceful unification of the Korean peninsula that would result in a unified state that would be neutral between China and the US, the way Austria was for a time neutral between Moscow and Washington.

Success in Options (1) and (3), and ensuring failure on the part of the DPRK in Option (2), hinges on Beijing fully complying with a policy of sanctions against Pyongyang that would deny that country the present plentiful access to energy and food stocks from the PRC. While a “Bright Sunshine” policy needs to be followed towards North Korea, such a phase should come about only after a verifiable peace agreement has been reached that would begin the rollback of the nuclear and missile program. Should China refuse to impose such curbs, Option (1) may become inevitable.

http://www.sundayguardianlive.com/news/9280-north-korea-will-copy-pak-s-thousand-cuts-strategy 

President Trump battles the Washington Beltway (Sunday Guardian)

By M D Nalapat

Although Donald Trump was advised to reach out to the Washington Beltway, US’ Lutyens Zone, he has disregarded such counsel in several particulars. 

 

WASHINGTON: The relationship between New York and Washington is similar to that between Mumbai and Delhi. The first does not like, nor thinks highly of the second, and the sentiment is reciprocated. Both Delhi and Washington are the source of rule upon rule, restriction after restriction, on what Mumbaikars and New Yorkers do best, which is make money through business. Delhi and Washington spend the money that Mumbai and New York pay out in taxes, and constantly search for ways of getting more out of these commercial capitals, so as to meet the cost of the many schemes that are popular less with the people than with the officials and politicians who make money off them. These are, of course, eager to don a Robin Hood dress, professing to take from the wealthy to give to the poor. Except that it is not the underprivileged, but the well-connected who garner most of the benefits of policy decisions made in the capitals of the world’s two largest democracies. The 45th President of the United States, Donald John Trump, is a second-generation New Yorker and his family consists of third and fourth generation New Yorkers, a type of citizen as distinct from the Washington elite as quintessential Mumbaikars are from the self-obsessed, self-pampering denizens of the Lutyens Zone. In 2014, that location went into shock on 14 May when Narendra Damodardas Modi won the right to be the next Prime Minister of the Republic of India, but recovered its spirits on 26 May, when some of the most consequential names in the Modi government were from the very core of the Lutyens Zone.

The new Prime Minister of India had a transformational agenda to implement, and has sought to co-opt elements of the Lutyens Zone in this task. However, these habitués of the Lutyens Zone, while overtly pretending to be won over, have sought to derail and delay as many Modi initiatives as they could. They have succeeded in blocking the Land Bill and in delaying GST by two years. However, now that the UP elections have shown that only Narendra Modi has the trust of the voter, and not rivals who are residents of long standing within the Lutyens Zone, it is expected that the Prime Minister will accelerate implementation of reforms that are essential to push India onto a high growth track, and convert the country’s governance system into a 21st century, rather than the existing 19th century construct. However, completion of such a historically essential process may take two Modi terms, possibly a bit more. The good news is that after the 2014 Lok Sabha results, UP 2017 has given Modi all the tailwind needed to force through reforms on a scale never before seen in free India.

Although Donald Trump was advised after his inauguration to reach out to the US counterpart of the Lutyens Zone, the Washington Beltway, he has disregarded such counsel in several particulars. Even the US President’s “establishment” picks, such as Defense Secretary James Mattis and National Security Advisor H.R. McMaster may be termed friends of the Beltway, but not its members, while high-level choices such as Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin and Education Secretary Betsy DeVoss are far removed from the Beltway fraternity, as are many others including FCC chief Ajit Pai and Trade Commissioner Peter Navarro, both of whom are facing attacks from the traditional establishment for their counter-Beltway views, as indeed is President Trump himself. On 26 April, President Trump announced changes in the US government’s approach to taxation by suggesting alterations that are as consequential in their future impact as Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal was, although aimed in a different direction. Not at the people at large, but at the business community, in the expectation that these will power the economy into a 3% or higher rate of growth, so that jobs grow and the fiscal deficit shrinks. 

Unlike in India, where both the Home as well as the Finance Ministries have long been resistant to accelerated change, the US Treasury Department has, within a hundred days, begun implementing Donald Trump’s promise of lower tax rates, while the Defense Department has already thrown away several Obama-era restraints on the military. The differences between the approaches to governance of Modi and Trump are many. The former’s careful manoeuvres have ensured largely supportive press and television coverage, even as the Prime Minister has incrementally, but steadily, gone about changing the texture of governance. In the case of Trump, his public disdain from Day One for the Beltway and its policy choices has resulted in a blizzard of negative press reports on a scale seen in the past only in the case of Richard Nixon in his final months in the White House. This is partly the consequence of Trump’s own decision to bypass the media, including by breaking hallowed Beltway traditions such as attendance at the annual White House Correspondents Dinner. 

Narendra Modi had thirteen years as Chief Minister of Gujarat to acclimatise himself with the machinery of government before taking over the most powerful post in the country, while Donald Trump had no such exposure before taking charge of the US government. However, the byproduct of this lack of familiarity in the case of Trump has been a willingness to quickly impose changes in policy on a level unprecedented since the 1930s. In particular, President Trump has mandated that two existing regulations must be removed before any new regulation comes into effect. Should he survive the campaign designed to ensure that he be removed through impeachment before 2020, and given his fighting spirit, this seems likely, the US is going to be a very different place in less than four years than it was before Trump took charge. In the case of Narendra Modi, transformational change within the governance system and its policy matrix is taking place at a much more measured pace than that set by Trump. Therefore, completion of the “Modi-fication” of Government of India will require a second Modi term, and BJP president Amit Shah can be expected to deploy all the weapons in his armoury to ensure that this takes place.

http://www.sundayguardianlive.com/opinion/9264-president-trump-battles-washington-beltway 

Billionaires should pay for ‘Trump Wall’ (Pakistan Observer)

M D Nalapat | Geopolitical Notes From India

The week is being spent in Washington, the city whose most important inhabitant is Donald John Trump, the 45th President of the US. The evening before departing on the Etihad flight from Delhi en route to Washington, this columnist was warned by close friends coming from Miami that he and his wife’s visits to Iran (and in his case, even to Syria) may result in both being denied access to what is still the world’s most powerful country. Abu Dhabi has the facility of allowing passengers to the US to check through customs and immigration at the airport itself, so that the flight lands in the domestic terminal. As in the past, neither the Iranian nor even the Syrian visas displayed on the passport deterred a courteous immigration officers from once again stamping their clearance for this columnist and his spouse to spend the next six months in the US, if desired.

The usual length of stay, is of course less than ten days on most trips. Should Delhi, Bangalore or Mumbai secure the same pre-clearance facility as Abu Dhabi has for US-bound trips, that would be welcomed by passengers. Etihad flight EY 0131 from Abu Dhabi to Washington was way better in quality of service than any North American or European airline flown, although it may get some competition from a few carriers based in Asia. Hours after landing, it was clear that the Beltway establishment would not surrender on its policies to President Trump without a very stiff fight, which is playing out in Washington, especially in the US Congress, where the Democratic Party, especially its “Sanderistas” (Bernie Sanders followers), have launched an all-out war against the billionaire who bested Hillary Clinton on January 20. Angered by Trump proving wrong their near-unanimous forecast of a Hillary Clinton sweep, the media in particular are attacking Trump with a zeal previously displayed only in the case of Richard Nixon soon after he won a second term.

In particular, they are pointing out that Trump has not been able to persuade the US Congress to approve even a start in funding for the wall that he is eager get built on the border with Mexico. Aware of the toxic nature of such a project on Latino voters, the Democratic Party opposes the wall, as do several Republicans, although the latter mostly in private. There is much criticism that the Trump Wall as yet exists only in the mind of Donald Trump. Now that Donald Trump is President of the United States, he needs to shift focus from making money to securing an honoured place in history, if needed at the expense of some of the vast wealth he has. A good start would be to announce a donation from his personal wealth of $ 1 million towards the estimated $ 36 billion cost of the Trump Wall. Should just 3499 other High Net Worth individuals in the US donate a million each to project, the wall would be off to a winning start. In a country of tens of thousands of hyper-rich folks, it should not be difficult for Trump as well as his billionaire colleagues in the administration to give a million dollars each for a scheme that they say is vital for the interests of citizens of the United States. A million dollar cheque, followed by a challenge to his fellow multi-millionaires in the world’s richest country, would remove much of the sting in the almost hysterical volleys against Trump by both the media as well as his political detractors. The wall that is proposed to be built on the Mexico border will be named the Trump Wall, and if it were to be funded through private donations, that would be a gesture worthy of the statesperson that Donald Trump intends to be. Such a move may even facilitate the tax plans of the 45th President, which involve the lowering of taxes so as to boost growth. Public opinion would be less hostile to tax cuts for the wealthy were they to pay out of their own pockets for Trump’s signature project, with President himself being Donor 1.

Each country has the right to protect its own borders, unless of course that country is part of the European Union, an entity that is borderless within itself, and the US ought not to be faulted for doing the same along a border that has always been porous and almost as prone to illegal migrant flows as the India-Bangladesh border. The project is, however, controversial in view of the fact that the proposed wall is seen as affecting only the Mexican community, a pool of individuals that contains some of the finest minds and characters in North America. Now that the head of the Trump family is holding the world’s most consequential position, the children and business associates of President Trump need to appreciate that the more money they make, the greater will be the risk of prosecution, especially of Jared Kushner and Ivanka Trump, who have had the moral courage to formally join the Trump administration as advisors to the President despite the much higher risk of legal jeopardy that such a change in title entails.

Bith Eric as well as Donald Trump Jr are young, as indeed is the other ace businessperson in the family, Jared Kushner. They can comfortably wait out the four or eight years of the Trump presidency before resuming their full throttle sprint towards making more billions. Indeed, the bigger the bottom line of the Trump business empire becomes during the period when Donald and Melania are in residence at the White House, the higher the risk of not simply bad publicity but worse. This is the time to shed some of the wealth made over the decades, so that President Trump retains the goodwill of the people that he needs in order to be viable as a transformational leader. It is not money but the moral force created out of using personal wealth for public good that can make the Trump presidency shine in history. President Trump should start this process by being the first patriot to give over a million dollars of his own money towards building the Trump Wall along the border with Mexico.

http://pakobserver.net/billionaires-pay-trump-wall/ 

China's renaming of six regions in South Tibet & the growing menace of commercial drones (CGTN)

After China announced new standardized names for six places in South Tibet, near the disputed eastern section of the Sino-Indian boundary, India announced moves to improve its defense infrastructure with the upgrading of two airfields. Is there a ratcheting up of tensions between the two neighbors? And last week dozens of airplanes scheduled to fly to the Chinese city of Chengdu had to be diverted after drones were sighted flying in the clearance protection zone near the airport. What makes drones so popular and what measures should be implemented to minimize their risks? 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uefeb19v2-Q&feature=youtu.be 

After Reform 2.0, time for Modi’s Reform 4.0 (Sunday Guardian)

By M D Nalapat

A characteristic of high growth is a steady inflow of the poor into the ranks of the middle class, and of the latter into the ranks of the wealthy. 

Indira Gandhi had a far better grasp of politics than her rivals in the Congress, the hapless Siddavanahalli Nijalingappa and others in the sinister, albeit self-named, “Syndicate”. She first extinguished the vestigial symbols of privilege retained by the former princely families of India, who had handed over their fiefdoms in 1947 on the condition that a few of the benefits they had enjoyed as a consequence of their having been rulers would be retained, a promise made by Jawaharlal Nehru that was broken by his only child. During her reign (and the thoroughness and majesty of her regime deserves no lesser description), India underwent a cultural revolution almost as comprehensive as that witnessed by China some years previously. Not only were the princes neutered, and indeed some of them packed off to prison later during Indira Gandhi’s period in office, but the large-scale private sector was brought to the ground in a prone position by the 1970s, after having already been brought to its knees by Nehru in the 1950s. Large tranches of the economy such as banking and coal were expropriated from their owners, of course entirely in the public interest. As for government officials, Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru as well as Deputy PM Vallabhbhai Patel had a rare moment of unanimity when both favoured the retention of the vast powers acquired by the government during the British raj. Hence, the strangely similar regime set up after “post-colonial” independence. Under Indira Gandhi, all remaining doubts were quelled that the government had the power and usually the will to insert itself in practically all spheres of individual activity. 

India was changed comprehensively by the Nehrus, father and daughter. And most people adored them for that, barring Indira Gandhi’s 1977-79 years of banishment from power caused by the Union Health Ministry during the previous three years seeking to reduce the population of India substantially through the expedient of making it a biological impossibility for millions of otherwise able-bodied males to procreate. Indira Gandhi would have won another term by 1985, although not by the margin secured by Rajiv Gandhi. In 1984, the shock assassination of the Prime Minister created a perception of insecurity—especially within the majority community—that brought back memories of the chaos of 1946-47. The Congress won at the expense of the BJP through winning over the core vote of the latter, just as Indira Gandhi did in 1971, because of the flaring up of tensions with Pakistan, which culminated in the division of that country within that same year.

Even a glancing acquaintance with the history of India will reveal the correlation between prosperity and stability. Periods of peace were those of relative plenty, while periods of unrest and conquest were followed by sharp declines in the living standards of most of the population. Which is why any fear of approaching chaos leads to a coalescing of support around a leader seen as strong enough to reverse the descent into mayhem. Had it not been for the rise to national primacy of Narendra Modi, it would have been Anna Hazare and lieutenants such as Arvind Kejriwal who would have gained exponentially in the 2014 Lok Sabha polls. Now, although the economy is still not out of the hospital, Modi has removed it from the ICU, helped in some part by factors such as a sharp fall in the price of oil and other commodities during his tenure. Unlike Manmohan Singh, who seemed to wake up from a trance-like state only while pushing the India-US nuclear deal (and going back to somnolence afterwards, not even signing during the succeeding five years the three foundation agreements that would integrate the US and Indian militaries in the manner visualised by votaries of the deal). It is a consequence of the lack of faith of voters in India in any national leader other than Modi that even problematic steps such as demonetisation or the deterioration in Kashmir’s security environment caused by the alliance with the PDP have not affected the immense popularity of Modi. Exactly as took place with Indira Gandhi during the 1971 confrontation with Pakistan and with Rajiv Gandhi after the murder of Prime Minister Indira Gandhi, the core vote in the Republic of India has once more clustered around a single leader. Because of his keen sense of the mind of the voter, Modi is holding on to it in a manner indicative of a greater longevity in office than even Indira Gandhi. This columnist believes demonetisation to have been problematic, given the fact that much of even undeclared cash gets spent on items that are taxed. Added on to this was the dampening effect of the measure on the jobs-creating velocity of cash. Much pain (because of ridiculous regulations imposed mostly by the RBI and its incompetence in ensuring liquidity after the 8 November hypershock) was caused, and yet the public backed the move, because of their faith in the intentions and integrity of the leader from a humble family of Vadnagar, who has become their hero. Kashmir is in a ferment foretold by this columnist because of the BJP-PDP alliance, and yet each act of sabotage by pro-Pakistan elements only strengthens the voter’s conviction that only Prime Minister Modi can rescue the nation from the chaos attempting to be created by its foes, both domestic and foreign. 

Rapid development is not a choice between rich or poor, but is necessarily a process in which both gain. A characteristic of high growth is a steady inflow of the poor into the ranks of the middle class, and of the latter into the ranks of the wealthy. The conversion into an everyday reality of Narendra Modi’s call for “Minimum Government” can ensure that the economy get freed of the constraints placed on it by the colonial Lutyens model of governance. Over the years and counting, a blizzard of regulations have fallen as rain on the heads of citizens, designed for instance to stop drunk driving by shutting down businesses that employ 6 million people, or sending to jail hapless administrators of websites, so that no tech entrepreneur will want to set up shop in this country. Narasimha Rao gave us Reform 2.0, and now what must take place under Modi is Reform 4.0. A reform that gives the citizen and not the bureaucracy primacy through policies designed to ensure success within a decade of our country’s quest for middle income status.

http://www.sundayguardianlive.com/opinion/9181-after-reform-20-time-modi-s-reform-40 

Offer honourable peace to Kim Jong Un (Pakistan Observer)

M D Nalapat | Geopolitical Notes From India

A smaller war soon is often better than a much bigger war later. However, this should only be after all viable options for a peaceful settlement have been exhausted. This should particularly apply to the Korean peninsula. It is obvious that Presidents Bill Clinton, George W Bush and Barack Obama failed in their mission of ensuring that Pyongyang abandon its nuclear weapons program. Instead of doing that, the secretive regime has accelerated its WMD programmes since the youthful Kim Jong Un took charge of the administration of the Democratic Peoples Republic of Korea (DPRK). Not only in appearance but also in temperament, Jong Un seems to take after the founder of the North Korean state, Kim Il Sung, the grandfather of the current leader.

 
The elder Kim was willing to take huge risks to achieve his objectives, such as launching the Korean war in the 1950s. Kim saw the corruption and unpopularity of the Syngman Rhee government in Seoul and would have succeeded in unifying Korea under his rule but for the intervention of the US. However, President Harry Truman was not willing to allow his commanders to use the full range of weapons systems available to him. When General Douglas MacArthur gave indications that he would refuse to accept the restraints placed on him by Truman, especially after the Peoples Liberation Army entered the fray on behalf of the DPRK, President Truman dismissed the recalcitrant commander and replaced him with the cautious Mathew Ridgway, who stopped his forces from crossing the 38th parallel the way MacArthur had done.

 
Of course, it had been the US rush to the Yalu river that had led to intervention by China, a move that led to US forces being pushed back almost to Seoul, before MacArthur turned the direction of the war with the brilliant tactics and use of firepower that were his signature tunes on the battlefield. However, he was prevented by the hesitation of President Truman from unifying the Korean peninsula once again, a task not even attempted by his military successor. Given the US need to ensure that minimal damage gets done to Japan and South Korea in any military action against the North Korean forces, it is clear that the US-led strike will need to be sufficiently devastating in its effects to prevent a significant response from the other side. Before the attack, it would be helpful if the neutrality of Russia could be ensured that Donald Trump was talking about on the campaign trail but which his top personnel picks seem to have overturned once in office.

 
Still more desirable would be a “Hands Off” approach by China, now the world’s second most powerful country and on track to become its top power within 15 years at most, given present trends. Both China and the US have extensive economic linkages, although their strategic goals diverge much more than they converge. President Xi Jinping and his colleagues face a situation very different from the 1950s, when Chairman Mao sent his troops across the Yalu river to beat back MacArthur’s forces. Given the poverty and turmoil in China at the time, the Pentagon had evidently expected only a formal Chinese protest to their rolling up of Kim Il Sung’s troops. However, Mao was as fearless as he was ruthless, and mathematics was seldom a consideration in his moves.

 
As we know, the entry of China into the Korean war panicked President Truman, who soon reined in his military before the objective of unifying the peninsula was achieved. This time around, however, not only is China very different, but so is the chemistry of its relationship with Washington, thereby making it possible for skilful diplomacy to ensure that Beijing stays out of a future Korean war involving the DPRK and the US. Such an outcome would be most likely were the Trump administration to go the extra kilometre in seeking to work out an honourable peace in the Korean peninsula, through offering Kim Jong Un generous terms for the rolling back of his nuclear and missile programme. Such a move would be followed by a calibrated process concluding in unification of a country that has nearly 6000 years of history and the lofty tradition of “Hongkik Ingan” ( working for the whole world).

 
An honourable peace would include (1) protocol guarantees to Kim Jong Un and the rest of the North Korean leadership, such as the lifetime designation of “President Emeritus with the full protocol and emoluments of that job. It would also include (2) integrating the DPRK military and bureaucracy with that of South Korea’s rather than disbanding them. A useful model to follow would be Germany, where in the 1990s the two parts of Europe’s most consequential country were united in a process driven entirely by the Germans themselves. Rather than a hostile takeover, what is needed in the Korean peninsula is a friendly coming together of the two sides in a manner consistent with the needs of democracy.

 
It is reasonable to expect all outside powers to stop transfer of financial and other resources to North Korea until Pyongyang accepts the platinum handshake offered to it. Transferring resources to the DPRK the way it has happened through the periods in office of Clinton, Bush and Obama would reduce the chance of a peaceful resolution of the Korean problem. Once Kim Jong Un agrees, the tap can get turned on again, but not before he does. Before unleashing war, it is necessary to undertake a sincere search for peace. This can only be through the offer of a settlement that retains the self-respect and several of the privileges of the Pyongyang administration. Those that are fixated on a punitive peace offer to North Korea are making war inevitable, just as the peace of 1919 led to the conditions that helped cause the 1939-45 conflagration which so changed the world.

 

http://pakobserver.net/offer-honourable-peace-kim-jong-un/ 

‘Kim Jong Un ready for peace at the right price’ (Sunday Guardian)

By M D Nalapat

Any peace offer would need to include 100% guarantees of the safety of Kim, as well as of his governmental associates. 

Contrary to conventional wisdom, North Korean regime head Kim Jong Un represents a better chance for peace on the divided Korean peninsula, than was the case under his grandfather and father, both of whom ran the country before the start of his own period in office. This is according to analysts in the troubled peninsula, who claim to be personally aware of the thinking of the young supremo of the Pyongyang regime. However, to incentivise Kim into making such a move, “an attractive peace offer will need to be made”. The option to such a move “would be war, as Kim is as ready to take to the battlefield as his grandfather Kim Il Sung, whom he resembles in both appearance and character”, according to these individuals. According to those familiar with the thinking within higher level groups in North Korea, any peace offer would need to include “100% guarantees of the safety of Kim, as well as of his governmental associates, given the unhappy history in the Middle East of promises made to leaders there (who were persuaded to surrender their WMD stockpiles) being broken and they themselves getting eliminated in a brutal manner”. Hanging in the case of Saddam Hussein and death by torture for Muammar Gaddafi, with a similar fate being sought by the regional allies of NATO for Bashar Assad. Such a guarantee “would include the giving of a state position to Kim”, albeit of a ceremonial sort, “that would protect his protocol privileges as a national leader”. According to those who are familiar with the workings of the North Korean governance mechanism, status and protocol will be pre-dominant in any acceptance of a peaceful conclusion to the DPRK nuclear issue. Hence, they add, “it needs to be at the level of the US and the DPRK” and not any lesser power on the other side of the negotiating table. They claim that “the intention of Supreme Leader Kim is to make the territory of the DPRK as advanced as is the case south of the 38th parallel” and that he has “steadily been loosening the constraints on private industry” in the DPRK.

 

It needs to be added though that some analysts, based not elsewhere in East Asia but in Beijing, are sceptical of claims that Kim Jong Un is prepared for a peace settlement. They say that the “atmosphere of mistrust and paranoia within the North Korean leadership makes it impossible for them to be satisfied with guarantees that would entail their giving up the security believed to be provided by possession of WMD”, including a nuclear arsenal. However, others claim that Kim Jong Un is an aficionado of what is described loosely in East Asia as “the American way of life”, and that he “regularly listens to jazz and even to country music”, while his personal tastes “often coincide with those of the elite in neighbouring countries”.

Diplomats based in East Asia claim that the Korean Peninsula is “closer to war” than at any time since the end of the 1950s war between the US and China for control of the territory, a contest that ended in a stalemate because of President Harry S. Truman’s refusal to use the full range of US military power in order to unify Korea after it had split into two separate countries. Boosted by clandestine assistance from Pakistan, which itself has been given help in the nuclear field by China, the regime of Kim Jong Un is within four years of developing both a missile system, as well as a nuclear weapon capable of devastating Seattle or San Francisco, and within seven years of a missile that can reach New York, on the east coast of the US. Even the first is intolerable for Washington, which is why a second Korean war has become inevitable, unless North Korea voluntarily and verifiably disarms its nuclear and missile arsenal. Presidents Clinton, Bush and Obama have each embraced the Atlanticist playbook on North Korea, which involves the brandishing of both carrots and sticks that are puny in size.

The tiny carrots on intermittent offer to Pyongyang have been derisory in scope, being mostly cosmetic in their potential effects on the Democratic People’s Republic of North Korea (DPRK), which is what the Kim family calls its fiefdom. As for the sticks, these are mostly related to financial punishments, it being an Atlanticist article of faith that policymakers in countries outside the charmed circle of Atlantic Alliance partners are, at the core, motivated entirely by considerations of cash. It is, therefore, no surprise that each such effort by the US and its allies to ensure that the DPRK disarm, has met with failure. Since President Donald John Trump took office on 20 January 2017, there has been a change in policy, in that the carrots have almost entirely disappeared, while the stick used to coerce the regime into compliance is larger. The emphasis on the stick, rather than the carrot, reflects the reality of President Trump’s diplomatic, defence and national security picks being overwhelmingly Atlanticist thus far, despite his own efforts during the 2016 campaign to embrace a strategy more in line with the Indo-Pacific realities of the 21st century.

An Indo-Pacific strategy would give the first priority to an effort at changing North Korean behaviour by offering carrots of a size sufficient to persuade Kim Jong Un to exchange his nuclear weapons and missiles for an honourable and guaranteed future that would include the unification of both halves of Korea into a single democratic entity. What has been termed as a “Bright Sunshine” policy, would substantially reward the present leadership of North Korea in order to persuade them to agree to surrender their nuclear weapons and proceed towards a political settlement that would end in unification. Should such a generous peace initiative be rejected, “the public in South Korea, Japan and the US would fully back kinetic action” against North Korea. During the period of negotiations, “anti-missile defences would be boosted in South Korea and Japan to the levels built up in Israel under the Iron Dome system begun by Barack Obama. At the same time, intensive intelligence operations would ensure a complete picture of the DPRK’s military capabilities”, so that these can be taken out in a pre-emptive strike, should the peace talks fail. The period of good faith negotiations under a “Bright Sunshine” policy rubric would be accompanied by co-ordination between the militaries of Japan, the US and South Korea, while efforts would be made to persuade capitals such as Hanoi, Manila and New Delhi to join in a pre-emptive strike, “because North Korean nuclear and missile capabilities threaten them as well”.

Analysts linked to the South Korean military say that they have “the force needed to devastate the defences of North Korea in a first strike”, and that coordinated strikes by Japan, the Republic of Korea (South Korea) and the US would succeed in ensuring that the offensive weapons in the North Korean arsenal would be unable to do more than “acceptable” damage to the RoK, most notably its capital, Seoul. This they define as casualties below 5,000. They, however, admit that casualties in North Korea will be “many times more”, and that a first strike has to be of a level that is devastating enough to destroy almost all its weaponry within an hour of launch, if casualties in South Korea are to be held to the “acceptable” level of 5,000 or less, including deaths of military personnel engaged in operations against the DPRK.

A question mark floats over Beijing’s response to any such highly kinetic strike by the US and its allies. According to an analyst in favour of elimination through military means of the North Korean arsenal, “so long as a Zone of Quarantine is established along the (Chinese) border, Beijing would likely leave the DPRK to its fate”, especially if such an attack follows a period of diplomacy that would offer a generous exit to the Kim Jong Un regime. Those in favour of an Indo-Pacific strategy towards the Korean crisis ask that China be asked “to curtail its shipments of essential materials to the DPRK”, so that Pyongyang has a bigger incentive to come to a settlement during the window of a little over three years before Kim Jong Un has a nuclear bomb and missile system capable of threatening the west coast of the US. The period ahead is likely to see “intense pressure on China to cut back on its assistance to North Korea” and thereby “join the rest of the international community in refusing to assist the DPRK, until it surrenders its nuclear ambitions”.

The Atlanticists have confidence that Beijing will cooperate in the tough measures needed to persuade Pyongyang to surrender its weapons, while the Indo-Pacific theorists are more sceptical, with some even raising the possibility of Chinese assistance to North Korea to defend itself against a US attack. However, such assistance would rupture most ties with the US “and would be an international catastrophe”. The clock is ticking on North Korea and its nuclear weapons program, the outer limit for a pre-emptive strike being around three years from now, with several (especially those sceptical of negotiations offering any hope of transformation) advising action “much sooner”. All are agreed that (1) China needs to join hands with its major trading partners in sharply cutting back on its power, fuel and other shipments to the DPRK. This would help create a climate conducive to serious negotiations. Also (2) should Kim Jong Un decline within a defined time period to surrender his nuclear weapons, a pre-emptive strike against him becomes inevitable. This needs to be devastating enough to prevent a response other than a weak riposte that would hold down the level of South Korean casualties to below 5,000.

http://www.sundayguardianlive.com/news/9115-kim-jong-un-ready-peace-right-price 

Trump’s personnel picks will set his policy course (Sunday Guardian)

By M D Nalapat

US’ Atlanticist establishment will not surrender without a fight.

 

Given that three of the top four economic powers of the world (US, China, Japan and India) are in Asia, it ought to have been a given that the only non-Asian power in this list smell the coffee and re-calibrate its policies to reflect geopolitical reality, rather than cling on to the myth that the immediate post-1945 global order is still a valid construct. Certainly the United Nations, which was born out of the 1939-45 war, continues the architecture of 1945, with India and Brazil, for example, still being excluded from the permanent membership of the UN Security Council, while the UK and France still retain their membership, despite being overtaken in most metrics that count in global influence by Japan and Germany. Given the lack of unanimity about exactly which country should be given the privilege of joining with the present five UNSC permanent members (P-5), it is unlikely that there will be any change in its composition for quite some time, the exertions of wannabe powers such as India, Japan, Brazil and Germany notwithstanding. As has been pointed out by this columnist, India’s chances would have been higher were it to have acted solo, rather than along with the other three powers. Given that the four have presented themselves as a package, it is difficult to see the US push for India separately from its longer-term allies, Germany and Japan. As for Tokyo, while there may be some situations in which China would accept India as a non-veto wielding permanent member of the UNSC, there is zero chance of Beijing agreeing to a similar boost for Japan. As for Brazil, despite its size making it the most deserving candidate in South America for membership in the UNSC, this is not a view shared by Argentina or Chile, both of whom believe themselves to be at least as deserving as their bigger neighbour. And it is unfair should Africa be entirely left out of an expanded permanent membership of the UNSC, and in the continent, South Africa is the lead candidate, although this will be disputed by Nigeria.

The only way the permanent membership of the UNSC will get expanded will be if the existing P-5 unanimously recommend a short table of names to the General Assembly, which would then vote its preferences. Should deft diplomacy get carried out with China, India would be among that list, given that the other four members back its bid. However, should Delhi insist on moving in tandem with Brazil, Japan and Germany, our wait will be long. Each year that goes by without expansion of the permanent membership of the UNSC lessens the credibility of that group as representative of the international community. Of course, the P-5 largely meets NATO’s definition of the “international community”, given that the organisation sees only its own membership as worthy of that title. The United Nations and affiliates such as the World Bank and the IMF cannot for long avoid the reforms that would make it as representative of global realities as the three were in 1945, without getting replaced by more representative organisations. The Atlantic era is the past, while the Indo-Pacific age is the present. However, this would mean the US replacing Europe with Asia as its global pivot. It would also mean the switching of Moscow with Beijing as the main challenge to US primacy, and in that case, it would not be Germany and France that are the core US allies (apart from the UK, which seems permanently linked to the US, irrespective of which continent’s century it is), but Japan and India. During his months of campaigning, it was clear that Donald Trump understood this new reality, and the need for the US to focus on Asia, a continent with which it already had three times the trade carried out with Europe. He was particularly clear about the need to work together with Russia, rather than cast it in the role of permanent foe. However, the Atlanticist establishment will not surrender its predominance in the policy calculus of the US without a fight, and for this, the weapon of choice has been the “Russia smear” on Trump. The allegation that the New York businessman was prepared to sell out his own country to Vladimir Putin in Moscow is laughable, but unfortunately, has been taken seriously by both politicians and the media. Rather than any assessment of the reliability of the charge against President Trump, it seems clear that personal pique and hatred of the man is still giving the “Russian agent” falsehood wings, despite the fact that from Reince Priebus to James Mattis, from H.R. McMaster to Nikki Haley, most of his high-level picks are wholly Atlanticist in their thinking. However, the 45th President walked into the oft-repeated chemical weapons trap of the Ankara-backed rebels, and believed that it was Assad who was responsible for the Khan Sheikoun deaths. The subsequent launching of cruise missiles at an Assad air base has shown the falsity of the Russia smear against Trump. Atlanticists will now be hoping that President Trump will forget his campaign promise to lead the US out of an outdated policy matrix into a formulation better suited to present-day realities. However, whether such an expectation gets fulfilled or not will depend on the administrative picks of President Trump. If these continue to be dominated by unapologetic Atlanticists, expectations of the Indo-Pacific replacing the Altantic as the main US sphere of interest will fade. However, and despite a Clinton-Bush belief that Beijing will save the US from the North Korean missile and bomb threat, facts on the ground are likely to ensure a set of policies that accepts the realities of the 21st Indo-Pacific century. Even the Atlanticists in his Cabinet are of a calibre such that they are likely, within a few months, to make their policy peace with Indo-Pacific reality, rather than Atlanticist romance. However, this is only if staff selection at the assistant secretary, under-secretary and director level places into position mostly those free of the intellectual chains of a policy matrix grounded in the 1939-45 World War and its immediate aftermath.

http://www.sundayguardianlive.com/opinion/9086-trump-s-personnel-picks-will-set-his-policy-course 

White House’s Spicer Whitewashes Hitler (Pakistan Observer)

M D Nalapat | Geopolitical Notes From India

Sean Spicer, the Official Spokesperson for the White House (ie the President of the United States) is commonly regarded as being among the numerous appointees of the Trump administration who came courtesy of Reince Priebus, the Chief of Staff of President Trump. Priebus is a traditional Republican, but had the wisdom to ignore advice from almost the whole of his flock, all of whom publicly opposed the New York billionaire. Priebus, in contrast, was silent and indeed deferential towards Candidate Trump, moving to the “Supporters” column only after the Republican Party nomination was finalised at the party convention. Even after Candidate Trump because Nominee Trump, many of the traditional Republicans opposed him, in effect hinting to US voter that Hillary Clinton would be a better President of US than Trump.

Both House of Representatives Speaker Paul Ryan as well as Senator John McCain were in this bracket, as also former President George W Bush and a multitude of others. Reince Priebus was not very successful in ensuring that these worthies publicly recant their earlier comments on Donald John Trump. Of course, it must be said that these have overall shown their loyalty to the President as an individual, even while openly signalling their opposition to several of the policies that he favoured during the 2016 campaign for the Presidency. Both UN Ambassador Nikki Haley and Defense Secretary James Mattis belong to this group. Chief of Staff Priebus is a masterful practitioner of the influence game in Washington, being a prominent and highly regarded part of the Washington Beltway, the exclusive establishment club similar in its chemistry to the Lutyens Lok who still command overwhelming authority in Delhi, although Prime Minister Narendra Modi does not at all have a Lutyens Zone mentality. Nor does Donald Trump have a Beltway mindset. Yet both their administrative establishments are filled with Lutyens and Beltway products, the effect of whom in policy is obvious.

It is not clear whether White House Spokesperson Sean Spicer is a Prebus appointee or was chosen by some of the others close to the US President. Judging from his performance over the period that he has been in his current post, it would appear that Spicer is way over his depth, and that it may have been a better idea to have made him the Spokesperson of the Republican National Committee instead. However, even when judged by the less than stellar standards of Spicer, what the White House Spokesperson said about Adolf Hitler was off base, so much so that it should result in an immediate reassignment of the current face of the Trump administration. Hitler was a psychotic whose depths of evil were far greater than that of any modern leader and to give Hitler higher marks than Bashar Assad in the human rights department is grotesque. Spicer was clearly unaware that chemicals such as Zyklon B were used promiscuously by Hitler’s minions in order to asphyxiate to death a small community that has from the dawn of recorded history been a credit to the world. At least for such a display of ignorance about history, Spicer needs to be kept far away from the White House lectern. His value, indeed his very commonsense, has been put in considerable doubt by his effort at airbrushing away the misdeeds of Hitler by comparing them favourably to Assad’s. While the Syrian dictator is no model of saintly behaviour, fact remains that Christians, Alawites, other Shias, moderate Sunnis and Druze are safe only within territory controlled by Assad, while they are at risk of being killed even in areas controlled by armed opposition groups that have been funded and armed by US and its allies, and which contain large doses of radicals from Al Nusra and ISIS.

These take refuge in such “moderate opposition” groups, even while keeping an eye out for Christians, Alawites and others for them to torture and kill out of sight of television cameras. To the surprise of those who expected a more contemporary approach from the team around 45th President of the United States, almost all the statements coming out of Washington are almost the same as could have been expected in a Hillary Clinton administration. The US voter took Donald Trump at face value when he spoke in terms that acknowledged that the Atlantic era was no longer in existence, in a period when US trade with Asia is three times the size of trade with Europe. That this was Indo-Pacific age, and main challenger to US primacy was no longer Moscow but Beijing. 

Indeed, by his bold and conceptually brilliant “One Belt One Road” plan, China’s leader Xi Jinping is clearly intending to make China commercial backbone of global economy. Once the OBOR system gets completed, and already the first train from London to Beijing has left the station, China will be the hub of global commerce in the way that the US was until George W Bush landed the country into the quicksand of wars that his military was clearly not organised to win. In Iraq, Libya and Afghanistan, irregulars have managed to reduce NATO soldiers to irrelevance on the ground. Mastery of the skies is of little use unless the ground below the fighter jets and the bombers can be held, and this the NATO divisions are unable to do. All they have achieved is the destruction of cities and countries, at a cost that has put economies of several countries at risk of bankruptcy.

There is a need for a 21st century policy on global geopolitics, such as was articulated by Candidate Trump despite his being attacked for his views by the very establishment whose policies have now been embraced by key members of his team. Hopefully President Trump will engineer a course correction so that the drift towards a Bush-Clinton basket of policies gets reversed. But in the meantime, every day that Sean Spicer walks up to the White House lectern is a posthumous insult to the millions of lives lost because of the horror of the Hitler years. Apologists for Hitler do not belong in the hugely consequential role of Spokesperson for the President of the United States, who from January 20 is Donald John Trump. Indeed, they belong nowhere in the world of high policy.

http://pakobserver.net/white-houses-spicer-whitewashes-hitler/ 

Don't go squidgy on Kim Jong Un, Prime Minister May (The Conservative)

By M D Nalapat

Theresa May, the UK Prime Minister has warned US President Donald Trump against any action concerning North Korea, except through the Peoples Republic of China and the UN Security Council, in which of course Beijing has a veto. Mrs May is presumably not among those who favour Kim Jong Un developing nuclear weapons and delivery systems that have the destructive power and range to take out much of San Francisco and subsequently, New York or indeed London. However, the course of action recommended by her would lead inevitably to such a result in under ten years, while within five at most, the North Korean regime would have a nuclear weapons and delivery system sufficient to reduce much of Tokyo or Guam to radioactive dust. That would be the stage at which the North Korean WMD program would in effect be immune to assault, given the level of its destructive capabilities. It is only within the present term of President Trump that a decapitating military strike against the Kim Jong Un regime would be feasible. In case such an operation gets carried out with the full power and ferocity available to the US, Japan and South Korea ( given her faith in China, it is unlikely that Prime Minister May would consent to be part of such a coalition), it would be possible for South Korea (RoK ) to be spared any except eminently bearable damage during such an exchange of hostilities between itself and North Korea (DPRK). Of course, significant damage would be caused within the DPRK, with casualty totals that would send Amnesty International into hysterics. However, when weighed against the possibility of Kim Kong Un unleashing a more extensive nuclear arsenal against South Korea, Japan and the US, such loss of life would be a much lesser price to pay than doing nothing  while Pyongyang crosses the nuclear threshold to acquires a usable weapon and delivery system.

Prime Minister May is evidently among those who like to see the good in every human being. It would be obvious to her that the PRC has thus far done little to restrain the DPRK, for the reason that (as in the case of Pakistan), its own technical staff - including from the military - remain close at hand in any North Korean facility. They can turn off the tap at will, should they choose to ever do so. Of course, fake news is regularly repeated that Beijing's relations with Pyongyang are not just cool but resemble winter in the Arctic. Reconciling the latter hypothesis with the reality of China continuing through its alleged falling out with the DPRK with supplying almost all the power consumed by that country, and almost all the food, may sound difficult for a logical mind to accept. Strangely, however, the claim that Beijing is as helpless as Washington and Tokyo in influencing Pyongyang has been repeated by so many "experts" that this has been adopted as truth by the media and the public in most countries. However, the geopolitical reality is that Beijing has little to fear and much to gain from a situation in which Pyongyang effectively acquires immunity from retaliation by the Us and its allies for its actions. A consequence could be a ramping up of Kim Jong Un's shenanigans, including very possibly the gifting of nuclear capability to extremist groups now under siege from the West. Given the gentleman's proclivity for violence, expressed for example in the way in which his uncle or others falling foul of him were executed, it would be folly to permit the North Korean dictator to acquire weapons that would make him immune to punitive action.

The good news for Prime Minister May would be that Pyongyang would reward her good behavior by most probably desisting from similar actions directed against the UK.

As for relying on Beijing to roll back the DPRK's WMD programs, Communist  - repeat, Communist - China little to fear from a fully nuclearized North Korea under the Kim family. Why?  Because rule by that family would ensure that the DPRK remain dependent for its very survival on the PRC, a situation not very conducive towards hostile action against it by Pyongyang. Of course, a DPRK now made immune from retaliation could well decide to accelerate its activities against the US and its allies, now that its sole lifeline China would be in what may be described as the "Theresa May position" of being the sole controller of action on North Korea. Such moves could prove intensely troubling and perhaps even destabilizing for South Korea, the US and Japan in much the same way as another of Beijing's nuclear proxies, Pakistan, is for India. Thus far, barring anodyne admonitions to both sides to "observe restraint", Beijing has done the opposite of blocking the development of Pakistan's nuclear and missile program, either of which would be severely affected were the PRC to withdraw its support systems. Both Pakistan as well as North Korea play the role of lightning rods, attracting retaliation from specific geostrategic rivals of China while leaving Beijing in the comfortable position of being the referee in the boxing ring. It is therefore hardly a coincidence that both are steadily scaling up their nuclear and missile capabilities, courtesy a country which shall remain unnamed, in view of Theresa May's evident affinity to it.

It was Lee Kuan Yew who said that much of his ideas for developing the Singapore economy into a global powerhouse originated in a study of where Jawaharlal Nehru and Indira Gandhi had gone wrong in their policies for India. In much the same way, it would be possible for other countries to look at the errors made by India so as to avoid such pitfalls. In 1948, the Indian army was on the cusp of freeing the whole of Jammu & Kashmir from Pakistani occupation when Prime Minister Nehru agreed to a ceasefire. The consequence was not simply the loss of strategically vital territories such as Gilgit-Baltistan to India (thereby, for example, making it possible for China to begin to carve a corridor through the length of Pakistan bypassing India) but the creation of a sore that has oozed trouble for Delhi for close to seven decades. Again, in 1988, informal approaches were made by Israel that it would assist India in taking out Pakistan's (then very limited) nuclear facilities, notably at Kahuta. This was turned down by Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi, who was fearful of the consequences of a conventional air attack by the Pakistan Air Force on Mumbai. When word of the lack of retaliatory spirit within the Indian leadership reached General Zia-ul-Haq, he ordered the launch of the non-conventional war in Kashmir that still continues to take lives nearly three decades later. Subsequently, once GHQ Rawalpindi believed that it had built up a sufficient nuclear head of steam to deter any except token kinetic responses from the Indian side, the terror and insurgency campaign against India was steeply accelerated. Once North Korea gains immunity from a decapitating first strike through its nuclear assets, it is a given that the intensity and frequency of non-conventional and indeed unconventional sword-pricks into the security and societal tissue of South Korea, Japan and the US would rise by magnitudes. The good news for Prime Minister May would be that Pyongyang would reward her good behavior by most probably desisting from similar actions directed against the UK.

Prime Minister May is a quick learner, and therefore must be aware of the futility of either expecting the Chinese to rein in a force multiplier designed to enervate their rivals, especially Japan and the US. She must know that there is zero chance of Beijing not vetoing a UNSC resolution authorizing action sufficient against Pyongyang to ensure that the threat from Kim Jong Un does not reach an intolerable ( albeit incurable) level. Or that given such realities, the only option that could prevent a future catastrophe would be to offer Kim and his accomplices a sweetheart deal, and be ready to decapitate them should such an offer be turned down. In the meantime, THAAD and other offensive-defensive deployments need to get speeded up, even as the neutrality of Moscow in a fresh Korean conflict be secured, not through treating Russia as a pariah but as a potential partner. Similarly, Taiwan needs to be incentivized to join the coalition against the DPRK, while a menu of sanctions needs to get implemented against all entities feeding the Kim Jong Un military machine, especially its nuclear and missile component. All this can come about only through the unilateralist approach of Donald Trump rather than the Sino-centric, UN-reliant policy articulated by the UK Prime Minister. Now that North Korea is just a few years away from gaining the immunity that would enable it to be a hideous running sore on the strategic hides of South Korea, Japan and the US in the first instance, now is not the time for such policy recommendations on a matter of existential import for the globe, least of all from a successor to the Iron Lady.

http://theconservative.online/article/dont_go_squidgy_on_kim_jong_un_prime_minister_may

Pragmatists prevail over ideologues in President Trump’s Syria strike (Sunday Guardian)

By M D Nalapat

That the US and Russia are once again becoming deadly foes, is a geopolitical gift to Beijing.

According to US-based analysts tracking policy in that country, Jared Kushner (the soft-spoken counsellor to the President of the United States) was “the force behind the cruise missile strikes” on the Al Shayrat air force base held by the government of Bashar al Assad in Syria. “Within minutes of getting the news of the chemical weapons attack on a location controlled by anti-Assad groups, Counsellor Kushner was emphatic that the US needed to move against Assad for the outrage”. There was “no hesitation or ambiguity in his stance”, an analyst based in Maryland, who is tracking the Trump administration, claimed.

However, the analysts spoken to were of the view that “a simultaneous attack on ISIS targets in Mosul and Raqqa ought to have been carried out” at around the same time as the attack on the Syrian air force base, else “an impression may grow internationally that President Trump is walking away from the policy of giving priority to the destruction of ISIS”. They claimed that “advance information about the strikes was made available to Turkey” and that “some elements in Ankara alerted ISIS and Al Nusra units operating in Syria about the impending strike, so that within an hour of the attack on the Syrian air force base, ISIS and Al Nusra launched six coordinated attacks on Assad government troop positions”. They warn that “elements of ISIS and Al Nusra are embedded within the opposition groups” backed by Turkey, Saudi Arabia, the UK and the US and that “territory taken over by these groups immediately become unsafe for Syria’s minorities, especially Christians and Alawites, which are therefore clustered within the zones still under the control of the Assad regime”. And although Atlanticists are hailing the strike’s capability to panic Kim Jong Un into abandoning his WMD programs, the reverse is true. It is fantasy to believe that 59 cruise missiles aimed at a target from which Russian anti-missile fire was deliberately avoided can have any positive effect on the North Korea situation. Instead, the Syria strike will reinforce the lesson of Iraq and Libya, that handing over WMD simply makes a future attack by the US and its allies inevitable.
Interestingly, the same Clinton-era intelligence channels that have for close to a year been supplying defamatory titbits of disinformation about Donald Trump, have been “completely believed by the Trump administration”, in much the same way as data on suspected WMD stockpiles in Iraq were relied upon by George W. Bush in his 2003 war against Saddam Hussein. “From the very first minutes of the news of the (chemical) attack, any information contrary to the narrative of the Assad government being wholly culpable was dismissed as false” by Jared Kushner and others in the Trump core team. These included reports that the stockpiles destroyed in the bombing were, in fact, those stored by anti-Assad groups operating in the vicinity. In the hours following news of the attack, Kushner talked “multiple times” with the 45th President of the United States, “warning him that his administration would look as weak as that of Barack Obama unless there was a robust and immediate response to the chemical weapons attack”. His recommendation was that the attack be directed against the Assad government, which he held to be guilty of the chemical attack. According to an analyst, “Kushner works closely with Chief of Staff Reince Priebus, Defense Secretary James Mattis and National Security Advisor H.R. McMaster, with the four forming a formidable wall of influence around President Trump”. Over the past weeks, “a quiet but energetic effort has been going on, especially by Priebus, to replace hardcore ideologues with those seen as pragmatic”. Of course, the definition of “pragmatic” adopted by what may be called “traditionalist Republicans” within the new administration refer to their being committed to policies that have been in vogue since the 1990s, and which were largely continued by George W. Bush as well as Barack Obama, especially in his first term.
A prime target of the White House/NSC/DoD/State Department “pragmatists”, according to these analysts, is Deputy National Security Advisor K.T. MacFarland, who is sought to be removed through “assigning her an ambassadorial post in a country in Asia that is an ocean away from the US”. Counsellor Steve Bannon too is marked for removal as “too ideological” by the pragmatists within the Trump administration, who are also allied with Secretary of State Rex Tillerson.
Despite, or perhaps because of, his very low-key manner, Chief of Staff Reince Priebus has emerged as an effective policymaker in the new administration. The analysts spoken to claim that the hard-working Chief of Staff is looking towards a political future for himself, hopefully in the US Senate, once his White House tenure ends. “Priebus has succeeded in seeding the administration with several who are equally committed to his traditional and pragmatist worldview”. He has also “overseen several bureaucratic moves to ensure that ideologues with what he defines as hardcore policy positions be prevented from entry into an administration” still largely in the process of formation more than a hundred days after Trump’s inauguration on 20 January.
“Essentially, the pragmatists have ensured that staff selection at senior policy levels gets slowed down until the ideologue picks drop out of the contest and get replaced by pragmatists”, a senior analyst claimed, adding that “in the initial days of the Trump administration, Steve Bannon sought to infuse the administration with a large number of like-minded ideologues” and would have succeeded in this, but for the intervention of Chief of Staff Priebus. Much of US policy gets worked out at the Assistant Secretary level, and most of these posts remain unfilled even as the newly ascendant pragmatists in the administration battle it out with their ideologue foes to ensure that their own people get in.
“The frequent contact of Jared Kushner with the ‘pragmatist’ camp has been decisive, as he has a force multiplier named Ivanka Trump on his side”, a source said, adding that “Ivanka is devoted to Jared and usually backs him in internal policy disputes”. And if there is an individual whom President Trump trusts absolutely (and with reason), it is daughter Ivanka, who has quickly distinguished herself in Washington both for her idealism as well as her commitment to the success of the Trump administration.
The analysts spoken to for information on the evolving situation within the new administration were early converts to the “Trump Revolution” of 2016. After the Syria strike, they are concerned that the ascendant pragmatist lobby within the Trump administration is placing too much reliance on the very intelligence operatives who worked hard to derail Candidate Trump during the 2016 Presidential elections. They fret that too much attention is being paid to following the counsel of those Republicans in the US Congress, who were publicly opposed to the 45th President of the United States “and still are”, although these days in a more camouflaged way. They add that “the Trump Revolution is very different from the traditional Republican platform”, and “the way in which party traditionalists were responsible for the failed legislative effort to replace Obamacare with Trumpcare, showed the pitfalls of relying completely on people whose dearest wish is to see President Trump removed from office”. The replacement would be Vice-President Mike Pence, “who has established a close and comfortable relationship with the Trump pragmatists, while keeping away from the Trump ideologues. It needs to be added that Vice-President Pence has shown himself to be fully loyal to his boss, the US President, and can therefore be relied upon to reject any effort by anti-Trump Republicans together with Clinton Democrats to get the 45th President impeached, so that he himself becomes the 46th President.
Those who were early signatories to the “Trump Revolution”, place their faith in the President himself and in his “instinct for danger” to ensure that Trump “walks back from a path that would shred to bits the policy constructs that he has been espousing” for more than a decade, and which he held on to during the 2016 campaign, despite efforts by the “pragmatists” around him to let go. At the core is whether the US administration accepts and acts on the transformation in global geopolitics caused by the replacement of the Atlantic Ocean with the Indo-Pacific as the pivot of the globe. “Obama saw this, even while the Clinton people around him derided his efforts of moving away from an Atlanticist focus”, a senior analyst pointed out, adding that Trump, with his businessman’s logic, has understood the centrality of Asia in the future of the US. In such a process, ensuring the support of, or at the least the neutrality of, Russia is vital to US interests. “What the missile strike on Syria represents is a move that could torpedo any rebooting of US policy towards the Indo-Pacific for the remainder of President Trump’s tenure in office”, an analyst claimed, adding that this would certainly be the case, “were the logic of the strike to be followed up by further steps” in that theatre of operations that would pit the US completely on the side of Qatar, Saudi Arabia and Turkey against Russia, Iran and (what is left of) Syria. Expectedly, Trump has earned praise from those who have been pressing for his impeachment for the missile strike, which has also been hugely popular with the Benjamin Netanyahu government in Israel, which has moved close to Saudi Arabia over the Syrian conflict in a way never before seen in the region.
The greatest beneficiary of the US missile strike on Syria is China. President Xi Jinping has played his hand with customary dexterity, and has made vague promises to the US President in the same way as he and his predecessors have to Trump’s predecessors. That the US and Russia are once again becoming deadly foes is a geopolitical gift of a very high magnitude to Beijing, exactly as was the case during the 1970s, when Richard Nixon reached out to Mao Zedong to help box in Moscow. Not only will China be the sole refuge for Russia, but Xi will also be in the position of being the only effective interlocutor between Trump and both Putin as well as Kim Jong Un. With the support of what till now had been viscerally anti-Trump media outlets, the pragmatists within the new administration can be expected to push forward their advantage. Although bested by ideological elements in the Republican Party in the Obamacare debacle, they have drawn first blood in Syria in a manner that they hope will ensure a reversal of the policies supported by Candidate Trump. Or in other words, the policy shifts from the past that are still being backed by the diminishing number of ideologues within President Trump’s inner circle and in his broader administration. However, the analysts spoken to say that “there is no way the US President will walk away from policies he knows to be correct”. In fact, they say, “the opposition witnessed from the start of the new administration has only made the President more convinced of the need to be firm on basics”, although “tactical adjustments may be made, for example as shown in the Syrian strike”.
As for Jared Kushner, these analysts say that the President’s son-in-law is “neither an ideologue nor a pragmatist, but simply, like Kellyanne Conway and a very few others, entirely committed to the success of the Trump administration”. They, therefore, expect President Trump to return to the Indo-Pacific and counter-terrorism focus that he remained committed to on the campaign trail “in the face of the same degree of hostility that he is facing now that he is in office”.

http://www.sundayguardianlive.com/news/9035-pragmatists-prevail-over-ideologues-president-trump-s-syria-strike