Trump enters the Korean misadventures, betrayals and specter of Machiavelli – 01/03/2019

The hours are low for Donald Trump. The US president had to admit that his will had not been enough to change the fate of North Korea and the crisis in Northeast Asia. The failure of the Hanoi negotiations came at the same time as a rain of statements by his personal attorney, Michael Cohen, before Congress, revealing many reasons to drive the president to a political trial. Bad moment when the democratic opposition controls the influence of the House of Representatives and presides all the commissions of inquiry of this strategic enclosure. Nothing else to add to this panorama, the data of a world dislocated with Unexpected wartime tension between India and Pakistan, two nuclear powers as in the ancient times of East and West, the first under the protection of the United States. and the other from China. Any fire can set the entire forest on fire.

Here in Europe, Norcorea and Cohen have occupied much of the morning news on Italian television and in other countries of the center. This interest has a logical basis, but also reveals a jubilant glance at the bursts of the strong American man, who is perhaps one of the most antipathetic figures in the Old World. Even among the countries that have built their own populist, xenophobic and isolationist version. Trump has this rare merit of negative centrality baduming that Europe, as well as North Korea, would easily fit in his fist.

The second chapter of the dialogue between the North American leader and the dictator of Pyongyang, Kim Jong Un, ended abruptly when the US delegation left the table. Trump's press conference in which he was trying to explain as a pretext that "fast trading is not the most important thing", only lasted 40 minutes. His argument was that the North Korean side is laying down the conditions for denuclearization, that is to say the complete lifting of the sanctions that weigh on the dictatorship. But, in addition, without that Pyongyang departs from the criterion according to which the axis of the negotiations is the whole of the peninsula and not only the north. In any case, what happened in Hanoi should not be surprising. Whitewashing of the unrecognized failure of the first summit in Singapore on June 12 of last year that in the midst of the seductive gestures of the two parties and the "love" proclamations uttered by the North American leader, they produced no conclusions. This first meeting ended with a statement in which it was clearly stated that any progress towards denuclearization was with respect to the entire peninsula, that is, Kim's vision, with the departure of US troops from South Korea.

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The final statement did not include goals. But Trump announced without warning that he was preparing military exercises in the surrounding waters that he described as provocateurs, a usual term in the history of the North Korean dictator. Thus, the whole menu of what, without saying it, claimed to be China, which sponsors the extravagant regime of Pyongyang, was filled. Meanwhile, Kim continued his investigations on nuclear and missiles, aware that there was no reason not to do so. And, by the way, with the advantage he had now, with the hierarchy that Washington had granted him, he could more easily break the isolation that preceded him with obvious success.

One fact that reveals the fragility of all these armed elements is North Korea's willingness to permanently dismantle the Yongbyon nuclear plant in exchange for alleged "equivalent measures" from the North American side. The already mentioned of the lifting of the sanctions and the departure of the military forces. But again, as the BBCthis plant is no longer critical in the architecture of the atomic plane of the dictatorship, as it was, so that its elimination does not mean the cessation of the nuclear program this has turned North Korea into a military power with a great capacity for global destruction. Perhaps a more complex agreement was missing, with milestones defined with a timetable including the closure of this plant, the declaration of other nuclear sites and, in turn, equivalent movements from the United States and Seoul, with sufficient time for digested, all of which were missing at the first summit in Singapore.

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The paradox of this development is that Trump must now rely much more on China which controls to a large extent the springs of the North Korean challenge. The victory of the American in this space will depend on an earlier gesture of the People's Republic. What is interesting is that this observation comes at a time when Washington and Beijing are negotiating with great progress the end of the trade war in which they are involved and before an imminent summit between the leaders of the two largest powers of the United States. world. The date of the first of March that ended the truce concluded in Buenos Aires after the G-20 summit has been postponed and the meeting between Trump and Xi Jinping should be convened soon to perpetuate the relaxation. USA caused this shock but declined because its spread over time slowed down the global economy, but also accentuated the deceleration of North America, where strikes are not multiplied by chance, and a Promising scenario is implied for re-election intentions of the incoming year tycoon

The Cohen Assault is another spot on this path. Trump blamed his former lawyer and intimate man for trusting the timing of the statement against him when he was trying to spin his destiny with dictator Kim. The truth is that it's the least of the details. For seven long hours, this key man, who for ten years managed the president's financial and personal program, revealed that Trump knew in advance Wikileaks' intention to boycott Hillary Clinton's campaign; fueled suspicions of ties with Russian capitalists or the Kremlin by the tycoon and, the juiciest for those who are excited by an improbable impeachment, the payment to two women, one of them a bad actress , so that they do not reveal their contacts with the current president, who violates the law on electoral financing without mitigation measures. "It's a racist, a fraudster, a cheater"summarizes the lawyer about his former boss.

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No matter what scenario may result from this volcano, although it hardly leads to a political trial. The Senate is the chamber of decision and is under Republican control. The ruling party has already expressed a certain weariness vis-à-vis the president. The legislators of this force have joined the Democrats to block the initiative to use funds for national emergencies to fund their controversial wall at the Mexican border, but they will not tolerate political exhaustion that would imply an impeachment that would overthrow the leader. of State. The big question is how this will affect Trump's election opportunities. Do not forget that the tycoon lost by the record 3 million votes in the general election, but won the poll at the polling station for a handful of votes that left it to the majority. The crisis in Venezuela and its unrepresentable dictatorship can play a serious role if the president adopts Machiavelli's advice on the benefits of an external conflict to mitigate their own woes. In this sense, the Florentine did not set any limits and Trump could be fully reflected in this mirror. In the end, he said, "politics has nothing to do with morality". We will have to be vigilant.

Rome. Correspondent

Copyright Clarín, 2019