Malcolm Blair-Robinson's Blog, page 77

North Korea: China’s View

Everyone knows what America thinks, even if the emphasis sometimes varies somewhat between Pentagon and White House. But China’s view is less well understood and it is China which  holds the key to the North Korea nuclear crisis. In fact China is as fed up as everybody else with its neighbour, but has a lot less influence over Pyongyang that we think on this issue. Put simply Kim Jon Un will allow nothing to halt his determination to secure his state from hostile action to effect regime change by the United States and its allies. So even if China were to halt all trade with North Korea, although the NK people might starve, the leadership would not and the military position would remain unchanged.

China does not want fighting on the Korean peninsular. It does not want a war which would leave South Korea victorious and ruling over a united Korea in the style of unified Germany. It does not want North Korea to collapse into a failed state Middle Eastern style, leading to a diaspora of refugees pouring across its borders. It wants to reduce the military involvement of the United States in the region, not increase it.

But Beijing certainly does not want a nuclear armed neighbour without any structural political system underpinning its government, which could be relied upon to restrain the current mercurial leader or any future hothead. China’s aim is peace between North and South and a demilitarized Korean peninsular. Few anywhere, even in America, can disagree with such an ambition. China needs to redouble its efforts to this end in a way that convinces Pyongyang of its determination to enable a fair settlement. America, while keeping up the military pressure to convince Kim Jon Un he cannot win any more than he already has and is now at the limit of his reach, must give China the chance to do that.

North Korea: America’s Trade Threat

President Putin has said, correctly, that the NK’s would rather eat grass than give up their nuclear weapons. So trade sanctions of whatever sort are futile.  The latest threat to halt trade between the US and any country which trades with China is ill conceived and impossible to implement without major damage to US economic interests.

Most NK trade is with China, so to have any semblance of a threat that is not laughable to Pyongyang, the US embargo would have to apply to China. That would be a near disaster to the American airplane industry, American farmers, the info tech industries and more. It would be ignored by the UK, Germany, France and Russia, as well as dozens of other countries, who have trading ties with China. So it is a pointless proposal which will achieve no more than all its predecessor sanctions.

The plain fact is nothing and nobody will stop the North Koreans in their project to obtain nuclear military power, other than their destruction or through negotiations which somehow give them the security they want. Remember in order to get Khrushchev to remove Soviet missiles from Cuba, Kennedy had to pull US missiles out of Turkey. But he judged it a better option than oblivion.

The situation with North Korea has, over many decades, been allowed to get out of control. It is not the fault of the current generation of politicians but it is their call now. There are two options only. Talk or fight. We know what Kennedy chose. That is why we are still here.

North Korea

North Korea is a mystery to most of the world. Controlled by one family via inheritance and through totalitarian methods, its internal politics is in the iron grip of whoever is the hereditary leader, who hold the powers of life and death over those he rules. The country is in a permanent state of war with South Korea, but this has been suspended by an armistice for 60 years. It is obsessed with not only having nuclear weapons, but by having the capacity to land them via missiles on the mainland of the United States. Only then will it feel safe from attack for the purposes of regime change. The problem is the rest of the world will not. In particular America.

The North Korean leadership has played its paucity of cards with a  frightening skill, outwitting several US administrations, to the point where its technical advances have confounded so called experts and brought it to the brink of achieving its nuclear and ballistic ambitions. It has also brought itself to the brink of war with the United States, and with it the consequent destruction not just of its own country but much of South Korea too. Japan may not escape collateral damage and the whole region would suffer an economic meltdown in the immediate aftermath. This would spill into the global economic system.

Clearly there must be a better way. Sanctions have no effect, although they are constantly in play, like the next drink being the route to abstinence in the befuddled mind of the chronic alcoholic. Sooner or later, through miscalculation or loss of patience war is now certain. Unless.

Unless the United States manages to convince North Korea that the next time it fires a rocket or tests a nuclear bomb it will be attacked and wiped out. If that message sinks home, as in Kennedy at Cuba, talks can deliver an outcome which works for both sides. But so long as the US allows itself to be pushed just a little further down the road of talk and no action, while Kim Jon Un follows one provocation upon another, the road to calamity remains open. The lesson of the Cold War was that in order to prevent it you have to be ready and willing to fight. At a moment’s notice. Loaded and locked was a statement then of fact, not as now, a rhetorical flourish.

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The Tory Party: Will It Bring Down Its Own Government?

If it does not fall in line behind May, the answer is yes. The government may fall anyway because the scale of the problems building up in front of it is epic. It is disunited over both the way forward for Brexit and the economy. The Tory party behind it is split on principle on the fundamental issue of Brexit and what it means. The public services are crumbling. The economy is slowing while other parts of the world are growing.Wage growth is negative. And thus far ministers are making a horlicks of the Brexit negotiations, which seem to be going round in circles. There is the Great Repeal Bill by another name now coming before the Commons and a majority for the official proposals is in doubt. No government since Jim Callaghan has appeared so bogged down.

So to imagine that a challenge to May leading to a contest among members of the Tory party, while government grinds to a halt, can or will be allowed to happen is plain ridiculous. The plotters need to face the political facts.

Either May stays or they all go.

Hess Enigma: Get It Now

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Rudolf Hess, Hitler’s deputy and right hand man, flew to Scotland on a mysterious peace mission in 1941, which has never been convincingly explained, to meet unidentified politicians who wanted to end the war. The truth has been covered up for generations because to reveal it would somehow undermine the honour and constitutional fabric of the United Kingdom. Who was plotting against Churchill? What were the peace terms on offer? What happened to Hess? Was he killed in the War? Was the prisoner in Spandau a double?

There are many questions to which in the modern day one man, Saul Benedict has all the answers, because his parents were players in the drama involving Churchill, Hitler, leading politicians and an important Royal. Saul is an author and declares his intention to write a book to reveal all, but he is shot dead, apparently accidentally by a poacher. But was it an accident? Rick Coleman, an investigative journalist, determines to find out.  Taking place in the modern day but with flashback chapters which gradually unfold the hidden secrets, the novel is a fast moving and compelling read

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G4S: Oh Dear Not Again.

This will be a short blog to make one fundamental point. If there is a taxpayer funded service, activity or responsibility involving the welfare, health, education, well-being, security or safety of the public, public servants, young adults, prisoners, patients or detainees of any kind, then it is utterly wrong to give it to the private sector to fulfill it and in so doing engage costs which reward shareholders. That is plain wrong from any rational moral standpoint not driven by greed. It is also plain wrong for the custodian of public money, the government, to offload its responsibilities to a third party, since it is not only craven , but it is also undemocratic.

Tory Leadership: May Changes The Game

This blog has already commentated on the political game changer of Labour’s decision to back the UK staying in the customs union and single market. Now May has seized the moment and announced that she is, in political terms, here for keeps, i.e. until after the 2022 general election. This turns on its head the supposition that she would go at latest in 2019 and more likely much sooner. It also re-establishes effective government both at home and abroad because once again there is a prime minister in charge of the government, rather than the reverse. Whatever your politics that is good news, because a leaderless country is bad for everybody.

And it is a leaderless country in which we have been living since the June Tory electoral disaster. To the rest of the world the UK and Brexit has become a rudderless muddle drifting in a sea of its own disunity and unable to articulate the specifics of its aims. The reality is that May was too damaged to exert her authority, Davis, Boris and Fox were running Brexit and Hammond was struggling to get them to recognise the economic priorities of the whole project. The rest of the cabinet was demonstrating serial incompetence in departmental management.

But times have changed. Labour has taken a Brexit posture supported by business, the City, trade unions, science and the majority of voters. Boris has become an international joke and a national embarrassment, variously branded with the attention span lasting only moments, a liar and a clown. Davis is making very heavy weather indeed of the Brexit negotiations and the EU is becoming exasperated, as are foreign investors and business leaders. Fox is revealed as a fantasist who knows next to nothing about the realities of business and trade.

There is absolutely nobody who could seriously mount a leadership challenge without bringing the whole government down in the process. The Tory party had one helluva fright in June. It is not going to throw itself over the edge now. It knows its survival and May’s cannot now be separated. May has several things running for her. Her rivals are discredited, there is nothing the Brits, especially Tories, love more than a loser who bounces back and if she can deliver a form of Brexit which does not seriously damage and disrupt the economy, she has a pretty fair chance of winning outright in 2022. Interestingly we are now seeing the real May, freed from the clutches of that odd couple kicked out of Downing Street after June 8th. She could turn out to be more formidable rather than less. Instead of being forced to cut off her right arm, she may have freed it from a bind.

The EU will be pleased to have a leader it can rely on from the UK once again. Labour will have to rise to a challenge it was not expecting to face. Its best chance is to bring down the government within the next eighteen months. There might be good opportunities to do that.

Politics will get exciting again.

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May In Japan

May is arriving in Japan to drum up interest in fixing a trade deal post Brexit. She touches down just as the country is caught up in the North Korean missile crisis. She will offer words of solidarity and encouragement, but really the UK is hardly a player in this strategic area any more. She will also find that Japanese corporations, already heavily invested in the UK, are becoming increasingly nervous at the drift and ambiguity of her government’s negotiating record thus far with the EU.

The trade position is further complicated by the fact that Japan is just about to complete its own trade deal with the EU, to which it is giving priority. The Japanese are not time wasters and when nobody knows what Britain is willing to settle for with the EU, there is scant prospect that, beyond polite words, they will do much. May’s staff have been briefing that perhaps it would be possible, to speed up the process, to use the EU/Japanese deal as the framework for a UK post Brexit deal.

Good idea, but if that is where we wind up, would it not be better still to stay in the EU and have our cake and eat it?

And what are and where are the actual material advantages of leaving the EU?

Is it not time for somebody to offer some hard evidence and real facts?