The Act of the Deal.

The act involved in the deal is far more complex than the art involved in the deal. The later encapsulates a lot of rhetoric, fine, dandy language; the former a lot of sweat, high doses of difficult reality. For the North Korean leader, any sign of success in his imminent summit with President Donald Trump of the United States will do. In fact, holding the summit at all is a victorious step for him: he faces a mass of countrymen whose sense of expectations is disorganized, scattered, muted and bland at best. Unless he is genuinely interested in denuclearization, reconciliation with his southern kinsmen and economic reforms even if they are only Chinese-style market tweaking. Then he would certainly need more than showboating and publicity. And a bad haircut.
For Trump, home expectations are more coherent and, in fact, could approach a sort of inquisition. He might think that his sanctions are working and that Kim Jong-un is already feeling the heat and is under intense pressure to cut a deal. That might be true but the real person under pressure to cut a deal is Trump himself. His critics and enemies, which are legion, are quick to point out that ever since he came to power, his most visible inclination is to dismantle, or attempt to dismantle, those deals he met in place, cut by his predecessors, and the list is lengthening day by day: Iran, Obamacare, Paris climate and a host of trade agreements. And he has done pretty little to fill the huge, gaping void left by the abrogations. His attempt to install his own healthcare has lacked a bit of coherence and has been swiftly dealt resounding blows everywhere. Trump often refers to himself as a builder but many are wont to argue he has rather behaved like a bulldozer, a wrecking party, a demolition crew. And if his argument is that he needs to pull down in order to construct, it is safe to counter that folks have seen much of the demolition, perhaps too much, and little, perhaps too little, of any form of building or rebuilding.
If he listens to his enemies or critics at all, even Americans that elected him, then he will strive as best as he can to cut a deal with Kim. He has achieved pretty puny domestic agreements, let alone foreign ones, and he will try to throw some pepper into his doubters' eyes. Besides, he has been touted as a master of  one-to-one, man-to-man negotiations and he will want to gratify his boys in this regard. Trump is heading to Singapore with his sights set on a trophy he can hold aloft to his enemies and in the process, cut himself some slack.
Which could bring in the twin dangers of urge and haste: a surge of adrenaline that could engender some sloppiness and throw whatever he has to agree with Kim into unintended webs of complexity. It is US-North Korea summit but thickly enmeshed in the web of negotiations are other countries. For a start, Japan, not in any way buoyed by the recent G-7 summit in Canada, may feel its own security concerns are being poorly handled. From South Korea to Philippines, there is the widespread suspicion that Trump does not think much of ditching allies, leaving them flat and dry and frying in the high desert. The summit may therefore turn out to be far more complex than he has envisaged and if he has negotiating powers, now is the time to deploy them. It is a golden opportunity.

President Trump

Kim Jong-un

What does Kim really want? Trump, Pence and Bolton won't let us know.

What does the North Korean leader, Kim Jong-un really want? We don't know, simply don't know. In suddenly agreeing to talks with the US, perhaps the most remarkable volte-face of the new century, a huge factor could have been at play in the mind of this guy that used to sport a very bad haircut. A factor, or several factors. Things we could only guess. It might have even been a dream: after all without a dream we wouldn't have had something, a movement as momentous as Christianity. At least in its present form.
There are a lot of things we do not know. We do not know  whether his hand was forced by crippling US sanctions, severe penalties that have brought the at-best crawling economy to a coma. Made more so by the fact that China that used to supply some oxygen have decided to cut some gas, thinking it more profitable to bow to US pressure that to bow to some nebulous friendship. Chinese-style economic reforms are just across the border and these might have appealed to him quite strongly, a panacea to some future turbulence and insurrection that might sweep his dynasty out of power: reforms that will never happen with sanctions in place. It might be that he got his inspiration by simply gazing across the border, seeing the development and affluence his foes and kinsmen in South Korea are basking in. It might be he was simply indulging himself in some diplomatic tomfoolery and that he was as interested in peace as Harvey Weinstein was interested in women dignity, confirming what the often tactless Vladimir Putin said was the resolve of the pariah state to eat grass rather than give up nuclear weapons. Then his influential, blushing sister, Kim Yo-jong, could have been whispering some filial softness into his ears. He might even know that the much touted nuclear weapons were not as perfect and developed as we have been made to believe, in no shape or condition or advancement to threaten South Korea, let alone the US. He might be genuinely interested in peace, secretly coveting the sure Nobel Prize that will come to him by pulling off the twin magic of unification and denuclearization.
Answers we would have surely obtained at the June 12, US-North Korea summit in Singapore, a coming together that would have laid bare precise intentions on both sides of the divide. A summit that would have been victory for all of us, those confirming suspicions or confirming expectations. The tone here is a bit fatal because the summit looked increasingly to be in jeopardy, judging by recent comments from both sides of recent. Now President Trump has decided to pull out of it outright. None of the two sides wins laurels for tact and subtlety but North Korea is the bull in the China shop and Trump's aides seemed to be nursing the habit of chasing it away with a pepper spray. The trouble with this administration is that there are too many hawks in in. Hawks snatch things and what is being snatched now is defeat from the jaws of victory. Victory that the highly anticipated summit would have given us. Whether those who suspect or anticipate.
There is no doubt Trump really wanted the summit. After such petty scandals at home, he needed the big diversion the summit would give him. It did not matter whether it was successful or not. The fact that it is happening alone would have been a very big step for him.  It seemed the loud-mouthed hawks that fly around him had different things in mind. Kim has a big chip on his shoulder but Bolton, architect on the infamous Iraq weapons of mass destruction, should have known linking denuclearization to Gaddafi of Libya was going to be a mammoth faux-pas. Even less subtle threats were ratcheted up by the Vice-President, Mike Pence, in a recent interview with Fox News. Pepper spray, pepper spray in the whole shop, everywhere.
The popular author, John Grisham, in the run-up to the polls that brought Trump to power campaigned vogorously for his opponent, Hillary Clinton, and when asked about a year later if he had reasons to change his mind, he said no. The only thing missing to confirm his misgivings was a crisis. Which he was sure the president would mismanage. Trump is capable of mismanaging peace either.

The Sackman Wields the Axe Again.

The White House is full of revolving doors and President Donald Trump is the chief sackman. It is becoming increasingly difficult keeping pace with the number of subordinates that have resigned or have been fired from his administration. The other day it was Rex Tillerson, the Secretary of State and it is the third National Security Adviser that we have on seat now. The latest is the US Veterans Affairs Secretary, David Shulkin and Shulkin did not hesitate to fire a parting salvo at his former boss,8 lamenting it should not be this hard to serve one's country. The Rasputin Coefficient measures the level of correlation between the values, beliefs and attitudes of a leader and the values, beliefs and attitudes of his subordinates. A positive correlation, good or bad, sees a high degree of match between the two sets while a negative correlation indicates a high level of dissonance. Hence Kissinger's diplomatic shuttles was an accurate reflection of Nixon's foreign policy mindset while Joe Biden would serve Obama like a faithful steed. When things become 'toxic, chaotic, disrespectful and subversive', as Shulkin has alleged, there is always a high incidence of leaders and aides working at cross purposes. Measuring the Trump administration Rasputin Coefficient was always going to be problematic. It is not all that a static index in the first place, dealing with human emotions, thoughts and passions, qualities that are always on the change and oh, how erratic is our president! This moment, he is threatening to wipe North Korea off the face of earth, the next he is eager to sit down with Kim Jong-un and have a little handshake across the table, if not across the Pacific. When your leader is unstable, voluble, projects the most coherent of his policies in tweets and is always shooting off the cuff, then it is always difficult determining where your minds meet. What made you buddies today might be your undoing tomorrow simply because your boss's thoughts had moved on. What gives you a positive Rasputin Correlation today might give you a negative one the very next moment. Mike Pompeo is the new diplomatic favorite, a hawkish necessity but nothing stops Trump from suddenly becoming dovish and Pompeo would be toast.
It is a win-win situation for Shulkin. We could see him as being fired because he is a stable, rational man who correlates poorly with the 'toxic, chaotic' Trump and if the reason given for his sack is true, an illegal acceptance of Wimbledon tickets, we can always excuse him of having the bad, positive correlation with his boss in the first place. As Trump's thoughts and opinions change, so will his relationship with his subordinates change and we will see the sackman wielding the axe again.

Rex Tillerson: Serving God and Mammnon.

The oil industry where Rex Tillerson made his mark was a fairly certain arena. The newly-drilled oil-well is guaranteed to produce; new technology was going to make shale oil commercially available and the shady atmosphere enveloping Nigerian oil was always going to get cruder and darker. Only instability in the prices of oil was going to be of much challenge but that too wasn't exactly rocket science and for a man who had risen to the top echelons of his calling, he could be counted on safely to handle that. In short, the world he was familiar with was stable, rational, fairly predictable: always within his grasp. It was a place of gentlemen and handshakes.
So, it must have been a shock to him when he decided to switch jobs and throw himself into politics. Politics is a calling rough enough and American politics is a particularly toxic variant. It wasn't an arena for gentlemen, handshakes being very, very rare and fists in ample display and use and nobody was going to pull punches. And the most combative of the pugilists was the man he was going to serve as Secretary of State, President Donald Trump, a boxer who was going to play very unfairly, not hesitating a moment to punch below the belt. And the most volatile part of American politics would certainly be found in the State Department, in foreign policy. There he would have to deal with players even worse than his master. A place as stable as earthquake-engendered tsunami. An arena where the appalling Rohingya crisis could break out at any time, where Russian hackers and exterminators were going to cause trouble at any time. An arena filled with irrational souls as Mugabe, Kim Jong-un. A theater savaged by unpredictability such as the North Korean rascal making a volte-face and proposing talks with the US all of a sudden. Moments defined by not only not knowing when the next nuclear test will take place but also not knowing whether the missile was flying towards Hawaii, or flying over Japanese mainland or was going to end up shortly in the Pacific Ocean. Torrid moments of terrorists freshly abducting schoolgirls in Nigeria. Intolerable situations in which Turkey, a NATO ally would attack  Syrian Kurds, America's staunchest allies in the Middle East, and both the president and his top diplomat would be tongue tied. Tillerson was stepping into an insane world he was never prepared for, both by training and temperament.
A world that was perfect fit for his master, by temperament. Tillerson was supposed to be America's face to the outside world but it was an America that that gone Trump, a guy who was as brash and unpredictable and unrestrained as his worst adversaries in the diplomatic boxing ring. A chap whose remarks are often off cuff and whose most coherent foreign policies could be found only on his lips and tweets. It was eerily difficult imagining Tillerson as Trump's Secretary of   State. The Rasputin Coefficient was horribly non-correlative. Tillerson, in Trump administration, was practically serving God and Mammon at the same time.
Hence he would think the Iranian deal to be reasonable while Trump would savage it as nonsense. He would lay into Russia over the Salisbury spy poisoning while his president would be uncharacteristically taciturn and quiet all of a sudden. You would think that if the president was going to accept talks with North Korea, he would consult his secretary first. A dove, so to say, wasn't going to serve a hawk. Tillerson was more studied, careful, restrained than he was a pacifist but he wasn't going to do well in a regime stuffed with hardliners and of which head was a sheriff likely to shoot first before asking questions later.
Trump admitted he didn't agree with Tillerson on most issues. Sacking him behind his back was his most poignant testament to that disagreement.   

Maybe Kim Jong-un's Sister is the Miracle Worker.

On the night of October 27, 1962, the then Soviet leader, Nikita Khrushchev  was close, perilously close to a nuclear holocaust. Or he could have been well several hours into it were it not for the restraint of a Soviet naval officer aboard a submarine. Earlier, US forces had dropped depth charges on the submarine and the standard operational response from the warship was to fire nuclear-tipped torpedoes, a move that would have likely triggered a nuclear confrontation. However, all the three officers aboard would have to agree to the retaliation. It was the restraint of Vasili Arkhipov on submarine B59 that saved the world from nuclear annihilation. Still, on the night of the 27th, the Cuban Missile Crisis was far from being resolved and Khrushchev must have sat in a very quiet corner of the Kremlin, mind wrapped in trenchant introspection, a lot of 'what is the point?' going on in his mind.
What is the point of putting the vast, almighty Soviet Union on the firing line for the sake of tiny Cuba thousands of miles away? What is the point of placing nuclear missiles in Cuba when a single Intercontinental Ballistic Missile(ICBM) launched from Russia can equally make the same statement? A lot has been said about the strategic ICBM superiority of the US over that of Russia in that period but placing medium and intermediate-range missiles in Cuba was not really going to bridge the gap overnight. What's the point of the whole crisis? And that train of reflection, perhaps aided by the sight of his young son nearby, must have engendered the biggest of them all. What is the point of building nuclear weapons?
Perhaps North Korean leader, Kim Jong-un had experienced the same epiphany of recent. He has just agreed to hold presidential-level talks with the US, a move a lot of folks now regard as a miracle, and which a greater number now attribute to the huge sanctions imposed on the pariah state by the international community in wake of well-publicized nuclear tests by Kim. In international politics, emphasis is mostly placed on cold, biting calculations. Hardly is there a place for emotions. It might be as well but there is really no hard evidence to suggest that Kim's sudden change of heart, if it is real, was triggered by sanctions. The sanctions have been biting, no doubt, especially with the active cooperation of China, North Korea biggest trading partner, in making them effective but stiffer sanctions had been imposed on Iraq, Iran, Liberia, on many brutal regimes, and there is no single instance in which a positive correlation has been safely recorded between pressure and capitulation. In fact, the US had to move in troops on Iraq and the West African peace-keeping force, ECOMOG, had to go into Liberia, Sierra Leone and the Gambia when it became clear tough sanctions imposed were not working. It is very simple to see. No matter how devastating the sanctions are, some resources will still have to flow in and the brutal dictator only has to appropriate most of these for his cronies and repressive forces for him to continue in power, the sufferings of his people not mattering a jot. Many commentators point to Iran but the sanctions were a diversion for leaders who were increasingly grappling with a young population with whom Great Satan rhetorics were not going to resonate much and who were equally going to be disenchanted with their country's involvement in costly foreign wars. At any rate, Iranian clerics must have come too to the inevitable question: 'What's exactly the point in acquiring nuclear weapons?" Weapons nobody, even a madman, is not likely to fire. The destruction a single one can wreak is so mind-boggling that it even weighs down the hand. Khrushchev's son himself said that his father cut a very forlorn subject on the night of October 27, 1962, clearly unwilling to go down in history as the first person to start a nuclear war. By the following morning, his mind was made up. In fact, he had to accept the terms put forward by President Kennedy for ending the stalemate without consulting the Politburo, the highest decision-making body in the Soviet Union at that time. The capitulation was a severe humiliation for the USSR and was later to pave way for Khrushchev fall from power two years after. He was never a fan of nuclear weapons again and if he had stayed in power longer, there was credible likelihood he would have actively sought their complete elimination. Weapons he had spent billions producing.
Hence there are feelings, emotions, attached to nuclear weapons many of us are not conversant with but which those who produce or control them are too well aware of. The tough, thuggish, Khrushchev was not immune to them and there is no reason to believe the bad Kim Jong-un will be too. Perhaps the guy realized that he was to fear the unreliable, unpredictable Donald Trump more than the American president was to fear him. His own sister, Kim Yo-Jong has been prominent of late and the lady might have had a calming influence on him. And for those enamored of cold, hard calculations, what stops him from coming to the futility of putting all his aces in a couple of nuclear weapons most of which American anti-ballistic missiles are likely to intercept anywhere. The US has thousands of more sophisticated, more reliable ones, five of which can obliterate the whole of North Korea in a couple of minutes.
Still on cold, hard facts, which nobody has exempted Kim from deducing, he and his sister could have stood side by side gazing south of the border, envying the incredible luxury (luxury she was well-acquainted with in her recent visit to South Korea during the Winter Olympics) their kith and kin are living in. Without manufacturing nuclear weapons. Goods that nobody is going to use or use without a single benefit. Goods that invariably constitute a drainpipe.
Goods worse than grasses the often tactless Putin claimed the North Koreans would rather eat than give up nukes. Castro and the Cubans came to the inevitable conclusion they could not go on feeding for ever on sugar cane, another form of grass, so to say. Kim and his sister might have realized that they and their suffering citizens might do better by investing lean resources on pizza or chicken or bread or pills. And not on nuclear weapons America and Russia keep on manufacturing in thousands. And keep on dismantling in thousands.