TRUMP – KIM JONG-UN : THE WAR THROUGH OTHER MEANS
English Version
The diplomatic process between the two Koreas and the United States, especially, from the Olympic Games in Seoul, gathers together, in appearance, all characteristics of a circle quadrature – and, certainly, of a extortion. Until soon before the unexpected travel of Kim jong-Un’s sister, the president of North Korea, and another pair of diplomats, to South Korea, the international press titles announced repeatedly the imminence of a North American attack against nuclear and missile launching installations of North Korea, and the display of aircraft carriers of the United States.
The Security Council on the UN had voted severe economical sanctions against North Korea, unanimously. This extreme position, contradictorily, is the background of the turn hit by the ulterior diplomatic relationship, because the military solution to the crisis had not yet matured, would it be in single unilateral form by the United States, or in conjunct form by the United Nations. The impact of the sanctions on the North Korean economy is object of disagreements among observers: while some state that they were the wider and best accomplished of all former ones, others show an increase in the country’s GDP, in this period, to sustain the contrary.
From one impasse to another
The circle quadrature that faces the diplomatic stage that has just begun shows itself in the incompatibility in the positions in struggle. The Trump’s government claims for the “denuclearization” of North Korea, besides of the destruction of bacteriological weapons and the dismantling of its missile arsenal. Kim Jong-un interprets the “denuclearization” in a different way. An so he claims for all Korean peninsula and Japan to be “denuclearized”, and the retreat of the North American troops from the region. A majority of analysts foresee that the negotiation of these positions in dispute will be unexpectedly long.
Trump is condemned by the past, because Khadafi the Libyan didn’t save his regime nor his life when accepted to dismantle his nuclear arsenal against guarantees of security in paper, nor Iran has attained to normalize the international economical relationship after signing an agreement of nuclear contention for more than a decade with six states, which includes Germany, Russia and China –besides the US, Great Britain and France, the band that protects with bombardments the groups financed by Saudi Arabia and Turkey which operate in Syria. It also didn’t survive the guarantee of a status of no alignment and neutrality for Ukraine, which committed Bush Senior with Gorbachov- the ex prime minister of Russia.
This starting impasse for the promised three-band diplomatic negotiation (US and the two Koreas) and a fourth on the prowl (China) imposes the need of a more general characterization of the strategies at stake. This could potentially arise at the end of a long process of negotiations –as happened with the, approximately, two decades that took the talks between the United States and China until they normalized their relationship. Or the even longer ones with Cuba, several times interrupted, and now in a relative impasse.
Seismic Region
One peculiarity of the situation in northeast Asia is that North Korea was not dragged, as happened with Vietnam and the rest of Indochina, in the wave of capitalist restoration started by China and the diplomatic ‘normalization’ with the ‘west’. One reason was the resistance of North Korea to fall under the orbit of Peking o the resistance of Russia to that possibility. A capitalist restoration in great scale by North Korea, under the direction of the State would have unleashed a fierce competition in the Korean peninsula and with Japan, and the dispute in the hegemony in the case of a unification of the two Koreas on a capitalist basis.
This is the fundamental strategic consideration which presides the present negotiation, which at the end of the road puts forward a reorganization of Nort5h Korea in capitalists’ terms. The alternatives that are presented are: 1. One North Korea of capitalist restoration, allied to China; 2. A unification of North and South, but in which conditions; 3. The place of the United States and Japan in this restructuration, which would have broad incidence in Central Asia and Russia. Trump had left clear already that the North American military presence in Japan and South Korea is not even on the table.
Far from an attenuation of contradictions and antagonisms, the attempt of changing the political scenario in the region poses a complete sharpening. In the eve of the talkings, Trump has blocked numerous Chinese companies’ incorporation to the capital of strategic technological American companies. Starting a commercial confrontation; and pressuring for an opening of the capital markets of China. He has reinforced the pressure against Iran and the support to the expulsions policy of the Zionist state.
It calls the attention that Trump has reviewed his exit from the Transpacific Treaty, conceived to compete with China, and asked for re entering. The Japan case is fundamental, because it faces an enormous setback and banking crisis, in the frame of a public debt that is the largest of the world – a 300% of GDP.
The measurements against the large Russian companies has been brutal – they’ve been excluded of the world market, even without care they broke (the aluminum giant Rusal and another twelve monopolies). Any arrangement that strategically margins Japan will only accentuate an internal crisis that profile itself huge. Something similar could be said about the future of Taiwan. In a more general way, it is possible to advert that a strategic reorganization of the region will awake a enormous political interest and an unrest with no equal among the workers of all countries involved.
“Ultra-imperialism” and war
For several scholars, one of the routes of this process could disembogue in a great international agreement USA-China (Le Monde, 4/21), and would be useful to avoid a world war. Some economists assure that the central banks of the US and China had already agreed a common monetary policy –the ‘great coupling’. We would be in presence of a ‘revival’ of the “ultra-imperialism”, which theorized the German revisionist Karl Kautsky. Actually, antagonisms come priming, especially in Central Asia, that has just manifested in the crisis that has burst in Armenia. An ultra-agreement USA-China, non viable, would unleash a fabulous crisis in the European Union. The “silk road” that China builds is a source of conflicts, even with India.
For several North American politologists, the diplomatic decision of Trump is little less than an improvisation, moved by the need of detouring its government political crisis, harassed by judicial denounced of all colors. It contradicts, on the other hand, the nationalist demagogy with which he wants to settle his social and electoral base. The Korean matter, in the end, relives the clashes in the field of the world capitalist crisis and wars.
nota publicada en: https://prensaobrera.com/politicas/42038-