Between old foe and aggressive ally, no honeymoon for South Korea’s Moon
August 14, 2017 by admin
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SEOUL (Reuters) – Just over three months in office, South Korea’s president is finding little room to maneuver between old enemy North Korea and increasing combativeness from long-time ally, the United States.
North Korea has snubbed offers for talks from President Moon Jae-in, the South’s first liberal leader in a decade. And U.S. President Donald Trump has alarmed Seoul with his warnings that the United States will unleash “fire and fury” if threatened by North Korea’s nuclear and missile programs.
Any confrontation between the two will inevitably draw in South Korea, which faces thousands of North Korean troops and artillery guns across the heavily militarized border.
With few options at his command, Moon has been encouraging Washington to talk directly to Pyongyang to resolve differences, according to senior officials and advisers to the president.
“Dialogue is urgently needed to stop the North from developing its weapons programs further,” said Moon Chung-in, a special adviser to the president on foreign affairs and national security.
“But North Korea sees the South as powerless and won’t negotiate with us. They want to have direct talks with the United States,” said Moon, who also holds the post of distinguished professor at Yonsei University in Seoul.
Washington is insistent on maximizing economic sanctions and keeping up pressure on the North to stop its pursuit of nuclear weapons.
“Moon has been telling Trump that a military option should never be considered, but there is not much we can do when two strong leaders (of North Korea and the United States) are clashing,” said Lee Su-hoon, who headed a group of national security advisers for the president until July.
“But no one wants a catastrophic end. Down the road, I expect there will be a compromise and dialogue.”
In comments on Monday, President Moon insisted on dialogue to resolve differences with the North, “whatever ups and downs we face”.
“I am certain the United States will respond to the current situation calmly and responsibly in a stance that is equal to ours,” he said in opening remarks at a meeting with senior aides.
But there seems little likelihood of dialogue at this point.
In his most recent phone conversation with Trump a week ago, Moon said “a tragic war should never happen on the Korean peninsula,” according to his presidential spokesman. But within days, Trump warned Pyongyang would meet fire and fury if it threatened the United States.
The sharp rise in tensions is expected to dominate a speech by Moon on Tuesday to commemorate the 72th anniversary of liberation from Japanese colonial rule. He also holds a news conference on Thursday to mark his 100th day in office.
The anniversary is shared by North Korea and its leader Kim Jong Un may also make a speech.
GUAM THREATENED
Tensions between North Korea and the United States surged last week after the isolated country said it would finalize a plan by mid-August to launch four intermediate range missiles toward waters off the U.S. Pacific territory of Guam.
Referring to Kim Jong Un, Trump said: “If he does anything with respect to Guam or any place else that’s an American territory or an American ally, he will truly regret it, and he will regret it fast.”
The heated rhetoric has raised fears of a sudden clash, that once started could cause massive casualties in the South’s densely populated capital Seoul, which is just 40 km (25 miles) south of the border. The Seoul metropolitan area is home to 25 million people.
Moon, closely linked with South Korea’s 1998-2008 policies of engaging with the North, came to office promising to revive ties with Pyongyang.
He filled his national security team with several key players of that time, naming them to the posts of prime minister, spy chief and unification minister.
“The problem is that Kim Jong Un is nothing like his father,” said Nam Seong-wook, professor of North Korea Studies at Korea University in Seoul.
“Officials in the Moon government don’t know him, since they just have dealt with Kim Jong Il,” Nam said, referring to the current leader’s father, who died in late 2011.
Less than six years into his reign, Kim has tested more missiles than his father and grandfather combined, conducted three nuclear tests, and is racing to develop a nuclear-tipped missile that can hit the U.S. mainland.
Faced with this aggressiveness, and Kim’s refusal to talk to the South, Seoul has few options, analysts said.
“At this point, there’s little South Korea can do but… communications with the United States and China, and we’re doing a good job at that,” said Lee, Moon’s former adviser.
Additional reporting by Jane Chung and Haejin Choi, Editing by Soyoung Kim and Raju Gopalakrishnan
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What White America Must Do Next
August 14, 2017 by admin
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James Alex Fields, Jr., a 20-year-old from Ohio, decided to plow his car into a peaceful crowd protesting the racist spectacle. Heather Heyer of Charlottesville was killed and at least 19 people were injured. Cornel West, who joined the counter protests with a group of clergy, witnessed it all and told me, “I have never seen this kind of hatred.”
If these were normal times, even if you believed a press conference to be typical American racial theater, you would expect the President of the United States to condemn unequivocally the hatred and bigotry of the white nationalists gathered in Charlottesville. But these aren’t normal times.
Instead, Donald Trump offered a mealy-mouthed response. “We condemn in the strongest possible terms this egregious display of hatred, bigotry and violence on many sides, on many sides.”
Trump did not mention white supremacy or single out white nationalists. He only offered a general condemnation based on a false equivalence: that somehow what we witnessed in Charlottesville was the same as protests at the University of California, Berkeley, or in Ferguson, or in Baltimore. As if what came out of the mouths of these “white thugs” is equivalent to the principles espoused by those who dared to stand up to them.
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It is an old move, really. A rhetorical sleight of hand meant to trap the critic in a corner and to hide the speaker’s true intent. Black people have seen it since the first moment we called attention to this country’s hypocrisy. In this case, Trump did not want to condemn the white nationalists in Charlottesville because they are on his side.
These people, as David Duke reminded the president, helped elect him. Steve Bannon, Stephen Miller, Sebastian Gorka and Jefferson Beauregard Sessions III represent these people. And, if The Daily Stormer, a white nationalist publication, is any indication, these people are quite satisfied with what Trump said. “He said he loves us all…. No condemnation at all. Really, really good. God bless him.”
Of course, many politicians and pundits (myself included) were quick to condemn Trump. Former Vice President Joe Biden tweeted “There is only one side. #charlottesville.” Joe Scarborough tweeted “Mr. President, call it by its name! ‘WHITE SUPREMACIST TERRORISM.” Senator Jeff Flake of Arizona tweeted, “The #WhiteSupremacy in #Charlottesville does not reflect the values of the America I know. Hate and bigotry have no place in this country.” Ivanka Trump’s eventual Tweets sounded similar. But these condemnations all seem a little too easy to me. No matter their intentions, they smack of a certain kind of sentimentality. As James Baldwin noted, sentimentality is “the mark of dishonesty;…the mask of cruelty.”
It is easy to condemn Trump and the white nationalists who participated in the rally—to say that they are the bad people. But we give them life. What about the racially coded language that exploits white fears and has defined our political discourse for generations? These rabid racists shout their Nazi slogans, defend Confederate monuments, and declare that America is a white nation—while politicians on both sides of the aisle trade in the myth that Trump’s election was a backlash of the white working class, as if what is happening to white workers is somehow distinct from and more important than what is happening to workers of color. As if we are the reasons life has gotten so much harder for white working people in this country.
The irony, of course, is that this so-called Rust Belt rebellion isn’t true. A higher percentage of Trump’s voters in comparison to Clinton voters were from houses that earned over $100,000 a year. Moreover, several studies have shown that social issues, not economic issues, motivated the Trump voter. Trump voters worried that a particular cultural vision of America was eroding. Politicians’ appeals to “the white working class revolt” among Democrats and Republicans is less about the economic devastation of workers and more about white identity—with black and brown folk and immigrants as the scapegoats.
These white nationalists say they want to take back their country as members of Congress push draconian immigration policies that will ensure this nation remains a white nation. It is easy to condemn the violence of these white supremacists as politicians debate the logistics of a return to a regime of policing that has devastated black and brown communities, or challenge Affirmative Action because supposedly black and brown students are taking the slots of white students, or seek to disenfranchise millions of our fellow citizens under the guise of voter fraud. They all seem to be on Trump’s side.
Such views give oxygen to white supremacy’s blazing fire. And such views have animated American politics as long as I can remember. Trump’s election has inflamed and emboldened those who embrace them. Now, we have to confront honestly this fact: the white nationalists in Charlottesville, and every other town, are as native to American soil as sagebrush and buffalo grass. What is required of white America now is something much more than a sentimental condemnation of that fact. Ask yourselves: Can you truly give up the idea that this is a white nation? Can you imagine this country as a truly multiracial democracy? Or, are you willing to cast this fragile experiment into the trash bin of history, because you refuse to have it any other way?