The North Korean dictatorship is rather unprecedented and unparallel. But, when the Grand Eagle comes to roost in the rather sequestered and upended nest, the fat vulture has to lower its guard and submit before the all pervasive cackle of the Grand Eagle.
In the grandiloquent jungle of the anarchic international system, the regulator nation, the United States of America, and its larger-than-life-President Donald Trump call the sundry shots as the latter’s threatening Twitter calls and other assertions have worked with the North Korean dictator-par-excellence.
The, “I can shout and threaten louder” on the lines of the systemic mandarins has played out some sections of its part as the American Empire is here to stay. North Korea has few options other than to mend fences with its blood brother in the Peninsula and the onus now is on the United States and its Foggy Bottom to prepare the meadows for the diplomatic process which should not go waste as what happened in 2000 and 2007 when the twin leaders from Korea met twice but the declaration and the agreement on the thematic war manoeuvre could not be attained.
The joke which Kim Jong-Un advanced during the talks was that he would no more stymie the early morning sweet sleep of Jae-Moon with the flurry of missiles and nuke tests in the Korean seas. The Maoist suit which Kim-Un was wearing still serves as an ardent and astute reminder of the way in which the South Koreans and the Americans need to be wary about the dictator.
Maybe regime change in Pyongyang might have been one strategic option, but, now with the gates to the imperiled kingdom being opened at least emblematically, the western group of three interlocutors can fathom out a strategy for the North Koreans to feel conveniently inclined to initiate a larger and longer process of making up for a want of diplomatic transactions.
One can delve inside the dynamics of the purity of purpose of a crazy communist North Korea. It is the generally witnessed and often reported legerdemain in the Korean domesticity that the elites of the nation lead a fancied lifestyle with all their luxury goods and services coming from China through clandestine imports.
The rest of the North Korean hoi polloi is strictly regimented and forced to live a life as rituals, where-in, Mao suits and a dull and damp dampener always broods over a clean and clinically regulated human discourse and larger day-to-day life.
It is deft “spectacular diplomacy” on the show as part of the tradition of “summitry and summit diplomacy”. Few personages, the diplomatic community and the academics of international relations could have believed their eyes when they witnessed the declaration of a summit between Trump and the North Korean satrap. Can the Americans under the leadership of Trump usher in an idiom of democratisation, entrepreneurship, rule of law and much transparency within the confines of a locked out population in North KoreaIJ
Also, the theme is that would regime change cease to be a strategy in the context of the Korean peninsula like it was deftly attained in IraqIJ
Despite other voices, the maritime might and expanse of the America can conveniently belittle the Han strivings in the oceans around them, thus, the American security umbrella remains a key ingredient in the geopolitical and geo-economic rotor of the Asian pivot and the Asiatic space.
The content review of an ABC news report informs us that all North Korean resting sites will be dismantled by May 2018, which is nothing but an astute declaration and a proto-promise to emanate out of the portals of the North Korean establishment.
The North Korean premier also expressed optimal optimism concerning the upcoming meet with President Trump which is slated to take place after much atmospherics and ostentatious optics had become the nom-de-plume of the larger diplomatic declarations emanating from Pyongyang and the White House.
Also, we need to fathom out as international relations observers that Kim-Un can really temper down his rhetoric which might be appreciated by his American counterpartIJ
The mere fact that both the nations talked about the complete denuclearisation of the Korean Peninsula without a verifiable timetable is in itself a diplomatic success in the event of which optimism rules the roost in the region. The joint declaration reached by the Koreans is an appreciable achievement, but, the poser of the hour is how a stolid agreement can be reached with Western and American inclusion.
Though, Kim-Un has contended that both the blood brothers can do much better with “our” hands together. Sceptics too rule the part of the shaky roost. Some contend that nothing remarkable can be achieved with these negotiations.
The entire international system would appreciate and would be a much safer place with the nuclear disarmament doing the rounds in the talks but as Kim-Un perceives his homestead to be perennially threatened by an American overarch and an Armageddon, it might require a great deal of tough decision making for North Korea to make concessions.
The North Korean interests veer around to a need of more of aid in billions along with a culmination of the stultifying sanctions. Who knows that the North Korean premier has come down to the drawing table only because of the crippling sanctionsIJ
It is reported in a US media portal that, “around 2, 833 journalists have registered to cover the event at the border truce village of Panmunjon, which amounts to a collective entity of 168 South Korean correspondents along with around 160 personages from other nations.”
Thus, can the larger-than-life interest reflected in the international media be matched by the “spectacular extension of the Armistice into a declaration of the end of war in the Korean Peninsula”.
At the end of the day, the US can be instrumental in cajoling Seoul in being liberal with Kim-Un if he actually denuclearises; and one more weapon in the hands of the Chinese tact will be dysfunctional if the North Korean people can become part and parcel of the trail of a peace regime along with the stream of globalisation and convergence.
(The writer teaches International Relations at Indian Institute of Public Administration, Delhi)