North Korea and the nuclear challenge

S P SETH

North Korea recently conducted its fifth and most powerful atomic test so far. Coming in the wake of its missile tests, it might soon have the capability to mount nuclear warheads to reach its targets. Its official news agency proclaimed that the nuclear test was retaliation against “US-led hostile forces” and showed “the toughest will of the Korean people to get themselves always ready to retaliate against the enemies if they make provocation.” North Korea is believed to have about 20 bombs in its arsenal. It is a terribly insecure country, fearing that the US, with its allies South Korea and Japan, is out to get it. Pyongyang senses danger from periodic US/South Korean military exercises. It is around such times that North Korea is more belligerent, even conducting its nuclear and missile testing.

The US-South Korea exercises, and other military maneuvers, create panic in Pyongyang that it might be the real thing, which leads it to magnify its rhetoric. And when this leads to testing at times, the condemnation from the US, Japan, South Korea and Australia is swift with calls for even more sanctions. South Korea’s President condemned the latest test as “maniacal recklessness”, which doesn’t seem to bother Pyongyang.  And as for sanctions, they don’t seem to be having the desired effect. In any case, according to Professor Tadashi Kimiya of the University of Tokyo, a specialist in Korean issues, “Sanctions have already been imposed on almost everything possible, so the policy is at an impasse.”

Which brings us to China, the country supposed to have the most clout with Pyongyang. North Korea is overwhelmingly dependent on China for its food and fuel supplies and whatever trade relations it has. It is annoying for the US and other countries, that are resolutely opposed to Pyongyang’s nuclear program, that China is not doing all it should to rein in its neighbour and ally; even more so when Beijing is also critical of its nuclear obsession. It duly criticized the recent test, urging Pyongyang to refrain from worsening the situation. Indeed, North Korea’s test created some panic on their border, when China reportedly began emergency radiation monitoring on its side.

Considering that North Korea is so heavily dependent for its essential food and fuel supplies from China, it can certainly make things a lot more difficult and uncomfortable for the Kim Jong-un regime. They don’t seem to like Kim much there. He hasn’t so far received any invitation to visit China. But North Korea is a very tightly controlled regime, with very little scope or opportunity for political manipulation, including for China. The Kim regime, starting with his grandfather who founded the dynasty, has very little patience or tolerance for internal dissent. A mere suspicion of it can land people in gulag/execution. The young Kim Jong-un, the present ruler, is said to be even more trigger happy that his father and grandfather before him. For instance, he started with the execution of his uncle, who supposedly was to act as his mentor/regent during the political transition after his father died. Apparently, the uncle also had contacts--nothing malicious as far as is known-- on the Chinese side and all this seemed enough to bring about his execution. In other words, there is no China lobby or any other lobby in North Korea. It is Kim Jong-un or the firing squad.

It is not surprising that in this seemingly hermetically sealed kingdom, China’s capacity to engineer political change is very limited. They sure can create havoc by limiting essential supplies but this can be counter-productive in more than one way. First, it will create chaos without a functioning government. Second, the resultant chaos and anarchy will send many people in China’ direction as refugees, thus destabilizing its border regions. Third, the ensuing chaos will likely create political space eventually for a democratic and economically successful alternative like the neighbouring South Korea. It is worth noting that Korea is a divided entity with both sides committed to its reunification. And China would be loath to see reunification under US-allied South Korea. For all these reasons, China would hate to see North Korea’s Kim Jong-un regime tumble, creating trouble and uncertainty on its border.

But, at the same time, it is against Pyongyang’s finger on the nuclear trigger. For Beijing, the only way seems to be the resumption of talks on the nuclear question to find a peaceful solution. The talks, earlier initiated by Beijing, didn’t go anywhere. And, as things stand, they are unlikely to make much headway, even with new diplomatic initiative, because there is not much scope for flexibility on either side. Those opposed to North’s nuclear program, like the US, Japan and South Korea, would like it to basically abandon it before it qualifies for economic aid, trade and investment, as well as political and military security. In other words, the price for international respectability and security is to get rid of its nuclear weapons and facilities and virtually start all over again.

From Pyongyang’s viewpoint, though, once it has given up its nuclear option the Kim regime might as well commit hara-kiri. Its nuclear deterrence, in its view, is all that stands between its survival and extinction. While critical of North Korea’s nuclear program, China seems to believe that the regime is unlikely to give up its nuclear option. And the more it comes under pressure, the greater its need to envelope itself with the nuclear flag. Pyongyang probably draws some lessons from the fall of the Saddam Hussein and Gaddafi regimes in Iraq and Libya respectively, where they might not have been so vulnerable with a nuclear option. And it probably considers Iran’s survival too due to its work on nuclear research and technology.

North Korea tends to renew its paranoia/fear every time the US and South Korea conduct military exercises. The presence of US troops and weapons only magnifies the paranoia. The so-called de-militarized zone between the two Koreas is a live wire situation, with both sides seemingly all set for a showdown. And lately the situation has been further complicated as South Korea has reportedly agreed to station a US missile defence system on its territory as a security precaution against North’s nuclear brinkmanship. But this has angered Beijing, which regards it as part of the US policy of containing China and a security threat. North Korea’s nuclear issue keeps becoming more dangerous, with no easy prospect of resolution.    

Note: This article was first published in the Daily Times.

Contact: sushilpseth@yahoo.com.au 

Poverty, violence and globalized indifference

S P SETH

The recent European Commission finding that the US corporate giant, Apple, had paid almost no taxes on the sale of their products in Europe over the last decade highlights how the rich and the powerful can get away with murder, metaphorically speaking. On surface, of course, it all appeared legal because they were paying tax at the rate of 0.005 per cent in 2014 in Ireland under a deal negotiated with that country, thus avoiding paying 13 billion euros in tax over the past decade. The ‘sweetheart deal’ between Apple and Ireland, a member of the EU, “enabled Apple to avoid taxation on almost all profits generated by sales of Apple products in the entire EU single market.” And: “This is due to Apple’s decision to record all sales in Ireland rather than in countries where the products were sold.”

The Apple, and other large corporations like Amazon and McDonald that might be next in line for similar adverse findings, are unlikely to comply, with Apple warning that the decision would “have a profound and harmful effect on investment and job creation in Europe.” The Apple says that the decision would “upend the international tax system” and the company is confident that it would be overturned on appeal.

These kinds of tax arrangements, tax havens and other similar deals are part of the international financial system, under which corporations, rich people and prominent ruling elites can conduct their affairs without prying eyes. For instance, Panama Papers that recently disclosed the murky world of shady deals, which, I believe, even features Pakistan’s Prime Minister, Nawaz Sharif, was another, though unrelated, side of it.

Among other things, these corporate giants and their murky financial world have led to global inequality and fostered poverty on a scale, perhaps never seen before. By ‘legitimizing’ greed as economic ideology operating independently of ethical and social norms, it has somehow made poverty acceptable by blaming the poor for their own misery. But it has now reached a point where some well-meaning organizations are drawing attention to the gravity of the situation. For instance, an Oxfam report made this extraordinary finding that just 85 of the world’s richest control as much wealth as half the world’s population-- that is 3.5 billion people. It warned that, “This massive concentration of economic resources in the hands of fewer and fewer people presents a significant threat to inclusive political and economic systems.”

In a world that is gone mad with civil wars, insurgencies, terrorism, sectarian conflict, proxy wars, it is often not realized that at the base of such conflicts, though not always visible, has been the economic deprivation of vast numbers of people thus making them prone to exploitation by extremism of all sorts. And it is capitalism that sanctifies greed, which leads to concentration of wealth among fewer and fewer people. With the collapse of the Soviet Union, which tended to advertise itself as a classless society, the US-led capitalist system became a model of sorts to follow. And it was not until the global recession of 2008 that serious questions started to be asked about what and where things had gone wrong? Even then the criticism has been largely in terms of rectifying its problems but not questioning the model itself.

However, the French economist, Professor Thomas Picketty, recently raised some serious questions about its working in his book, Capital in the Twenty-First century. His argument goes like this: as the rate of return on capital (in the form of corporate profits, dividends etc.) outstrips the rate of growth, this will lead to greater accumulation of inherited wealth among fewer people, thus creating a highly unequal society, which is already happening. And this might see a return to Dickensian levels of poverty of the 19^th century in rich countries.

One can already see this with corporate executives awarding themselves obscene wages and benefits in millions, if not billions of dollars in some cases, while the wages of ordinary workers remain stagnant and even fall further. At the same time, there is a greater trend to part time jobs, with full time jobs becoming harder to come by. Picketty’s book has raised some fundamental questions about the workability of the capitalist system in the twenty-first century. Reviewing it in the New York Review of Books,  Paul Krugman, said that, “The big idea [of the book] is that we haven’t just gone back to the nineteenth century levels of income inequality, we’re also on a path back to ‘patrimonial capitalism’, in which the commanding heights of the economy are controlled not by talented individuals but by family dynasties.”

AT another level, the system came under attack from US Senator Elizabeth Warren, considered presidential hopeful at some point. She took issue with the notion that the rich in the US or, for that matter, anywhere else in the world, have acquired their riches because of their own creativity, entrepreneurship and merit. Warren sought to puncture this myth during her 2011 congressional campaign pointing out that, “There is nobody in this country who got rich on his own. Nobody. You built a factory out there? Good for you. But I want to be clear: you moved the goods to market on roads rest of us [taxpayers] paid for you. You hired workers the rest of us paid to educate. You were safe in your factory because of police forces and fire services the rest of us paid for.”

And she sought to put all this in a social context, pointing out that, “Now look, you built the factory and it turned into something terrific, or great idea… Keep a big hunk of it. But part of the underlying social contract is you take a big hunk of that and pay forward for the next kid that comes along.”  In other words, “For capitalism to work we all need each other.” But as we see in the case of massive tax evasion by corporations like Apple, Google and many rich and powerful people all over the world, there is a deliberate and calculated attempt to manipulate the system to make the rich richer, which often also ends up making poor poorer. Or else, they will have to wait for the trickle down theory to work, if it does.

The most trenchant critic of the capitalist system is Pope Francis. He has talked about the “tyranny” of capitalism. He has called it the “dictatorship of an economy, which is faceless and lacking any true human goal.” According to Pope Francis: “In this [capitalist] system, which tends to devour everything that stands in the way of increased profits, whatever is fragile, like the environment, is defenceless before the interests of a deified market, which becomes the only rule.” It fosters, promotes and entrenches a system that is free of ethical values and equity. And: “Inequality [it fosters] eventually engenders a violence, which recourse to arms cannot and never will be able to resolve.”

He has made the point that, “In this globalized world, we have fallen into globalized indifference. We have become used to the suffering of others.” And this is the reason why there is no real global action to eradicate human sufferings of all sorts that we are witnessing everyday on our television screens, and many are living it everyday in strife torn societies while others are trying desperately to escape in boats that are carrying human cargo in search of a destination to nowhere.

Note: This article first appeared in the Daily Times.

Contact: sushilpseth@yahoo.com.au

     

US-Russia confrontation

S P SETH

Russian President Vladimir Putin once described the collapse of the Soviet Union as the “greatest geopolitical catastrophe” of the 20^th century. It seemed rather sudden because the US intelligence had no clue that the rot in the Soviet Union had reached such an advanced stage. Therefore, when in the nineties, the last rites were read, so to say, it alternated between disbelief and euphoria among the United States and its allies. The resultant euphoria was apparent when the collapse of the Soviet Union was not only declared as victory of the US-led ‘free world’ but was also proclaimed as the end of history. There was no need now to go looking for a perfect system.  The entire world now would be cast in image of the US. It was now the ultimate and only superpower. As we know that it didn’t happen quite like that.   Not long after, the US was grappling with all sorts of problems at home and abroad. China, for instance, is now emerging as a competing and contending superpower, which is another story.

As for Russia, it is a diminished power and under former president Boris Yeltsin it looked like struggling to get a grip on the domestic situation. Yeltsin brought in Putin as his successor. Since then, in his brief role as premier first and later president from 2000, Putin has presided over Russia, with an interruption of four years when Dmitry Medvedev became president as the constitution didn’t allow for more than two successive terms. Medvedev now is the prime minister under President Putin. Putin was relatively more successful. He brutally crushed the Chechen rebellion and, in the process, established his image as a strong leader. At about the same time, the rising price of oil helped to stabilize Russia’s economic situation from oil exports and investments in that sector.

As time passed, Putin started to be assertive about Russia’s national interests, independent of the US as the new and the only centre of global power. Among points of disagreement, two particularly stand out as continuing to poison their relations. First is the US moves to establish missile and radar stations in the neighbouring states of Poland and Romania. This was a matter of contention from the of the Bush administration when it was seriously mooted, as Moscow considered it a security threat. For a while, it seemed to have gone off the radar actively under the Obama administration, possibly, as a placatory gesture, but now it is becoming a reality. And not surprisingly, it has created a strong reaction from Russia indicating counter measures, possibly targeting the host countries of Poland and Romania. Moscow doesn’t buy the ludicrous US argument that such missile defence is designed against threat from Iran, even more so after the nuclear deal with Iran virtually freezing its nuclear program.

In the meantime, all this has got inextricably tangled with North Atlantic Treaty Organization’s (NATO) expansion to Russia’s borders, Russia’s occupation of Crimea, crisis in Ukraine where Moscow has fostered rebellion/separatism, resultant fear in Baltic states and Russia’s other neighbours about its designs in the wake of developments in Ukraine, the stationing of US forces in Baltic states to reassure its NATO allies and so on. After the end of the Cold War and the dissolution of the Soviet Union, it was hoped that the resultant peace dividend would stabilize Europe, thus benefitting the world. But it was a forlorn hope. The US and its allies regarded the Soviet collapse as tantamount to Russia’s defeat and expected Moscow to behave like a vanquished enemy and follow the US lead. Under Boris Yeltsin’s presidency, it was a chaotic period leading to financial bankruptcy, making Russia look like a third world country. But as earlier pointed out, things started to look up under Putin and Russia refused to fit into any kind of a US-designed role.

Tensions mounted as NATO expanded to take in members of the now defunct Soviet-led Warsaw Pact, once a counterweight to the US-led NATO. At the time of the dissolution of the Soviet Union, there was an understanding that the rival military pacts, NATO and Warsaw Pact, would cease to have any rationale in the post-Cold War period and that, by and large, the world will become a peaceful place. This was not to be and the old foes, now the much-diminished Russia and a newly energized and pumped up US-led western world, were unable to overcome their deep-rooted distrust of the long Cold War period. The basic problem is that, even with its diminished political boundaries of the old Soviet Union, Russia is still too big to fit into a managed role. And this has been a historical problem with its separate Orthodox Church and its “Eurasian” boundaries. This has been an important constraint even when there was a desire, at times, to be more like Europe.

Under communist rule, it took more the character of ideological and power imperatives. And after the end of the Cold War, after a tentative exploration of mutual reconciliation and accommodation, the old distrust has resurfaced, with the west expanding the boundaries of NATO to encircle Russia and Moscow hitting back seeking to push back the western advance. The ongoing civil war in Ukraine, arising out of Russian fears of Ukrainian inclusion in European Union and eventually in NATO, is an example. Which has led the US to station military assets in Russia’s neighbouring Baltic states. And the worse still is the US missile and radar stations in Poland and Romania. Not surprisingly, Russia fears its encirclement and sees it as a security threat.

The problem with Russia, as it was with the Soviet Union before it, is that even though it has a powerful military machine commensurate with the US, its economy is not able to sustain an ongoing confrontation especially after wide-ranging economic sanctions from the west coupled with a plunge in oil prices. The danger, though, is that either side might make a serious miscalculation leading to a deadly war, which somehow escaped during the long Cold War period.  And the involvement of both Russia and the US in the ongoing Syrian conflict is only adding to the complexity.

Note: This article was first published in the Daily Times.

Contact: sushilpseth@yahoo.com.au