Trump trips over Korea

Trump's claims of triumph over North Korea's 'Rocket Man,' a term much more appropriate to the Commander-in-Chief Trump himself as he accelerates the US's nuclear hardware are, thank goodness, completely the opposite. Trump has fouled up. And the rest of the planet, including Korea, can breath a sigh of relief.

Trump and his coterie believe that he has forced and frightened North Korea's 'Supreme Leader' and his regime into de-nuclearisation. Republican under Bush and ex secretary of state (in charge of US foreign affairs) Condoleezza Rice warns America and Trump that North Korea has previously offered disarmament under the pressure of sanctions. She harbours doubts about the regime, but she still 'salutes' Trump's 'success.'

In reality the US's ultra-bellicose foreign policy has been trumped - by China. Most of the West's politicians have been so mesmorised by Trump's rhetorical and military manoeuvres and their own media's juvenile japes and hysterical fears that they entirely lost sight, if they ever had a serious view, of Korean and East Asian fundamentals.

Kim Jong-un has never ventured out of North Korea since his rise to power in 2011; except for two recent and relatively lengthy, initially secret, trips to China, followed by a short show in South Korea. North Korea depends on China for 80% of its trade. More importantly, during the early 1950's Korean war, an exhausted Red Army lost nearly 200,000 soldiers, nearly 400,000 if the wounded are included. The US broadcaster CNN estimates China's death toll as 600,000.  (Official figures have only recently been issued by China.) They cannot step away.

On April 27 the South Korean President, Moon Jae-in, and Supreme Leader Kim Jong-un, made a pledge to formally end the Korean war. Kim has further stated that he meets Trump on June 12 'to denuclearise.' Kim can still mess up in the negotiations to come but Trump has already been ambushed.

The Supreme Leader had to go to China. His breach with the Chinese leadership has to be resolved - for China's sake. Trump threatened nothing less than the re-start of the Korean war, beginning with whatever it took to destroy North Korea's nukes. This was a potential disaster. But once the Supreme Leader was reigned in by the Chinese government, China could take the initiative to organise a big step forward in respect of its own aims for the Korean peninsular.

For its own safety, and to deepen its leadership in South East Asia, China needs the de-nuclearisation of the whole of Korea and the potential removal of the US military from the South. To get anywhere near this China needs to turn the 1953 Korean armistice, which has supplanted any long term peace treaty up to now, into a formal treaty between the two Koreas and their watchful body guards. Such a treaty has to accept the two Koreas as sovereign and independent states (which, in reality, would be the only long term route to any sort of unification in the future.) This would in turn be associated with mutual and binding peace treaties, where besides local disarmament, foreign military intervention would also be (nominally) ruled out.

China, so long as the Supreme Leader keeps to his script, has realigned the cards. Certainly China, North and South Korea and Japan would accept the new position over Korea, a position that US foreign policy has been trying to prevent for 65 years.

And what has Kim got in return from the unwiring and dismantling of his bombs and missiles? He has made a secret treaty with China that he will receive defence, including nuclear defence from China - should North Korea come under military attack (a policy that China would have to have used in any case.)

Trump's bombast (so long as the Supreme Leader can keep his mouth shut) has potentially destroyed a key US bridgehead in its efforts to extend its domination over the Pacific and most importantly, over China.