The cancelled Trump-Kim summit could be good for future negotiations

News just in is the historic summit between Donald Trump and Kim Jong-un, set to take place on the 12th June in Singapore has been cancelled. 

President Trump has sent a letter to the North Korean leader, stating that due to recent "tremendous anger and open hostility displayed" towards the United States in the last couple of weeks, he has decided to not meet Kim at The planned summit.

This could be a good thing for Trump and his foreign (or lack of) policy over North Korea. After months of talking up the historic meeting and calling for a Nobel prize, he has finally realised that he has been made a fool by Kim Jong-un. North Korea does not have any intentions of giving up it's nuclear weapons, unless major concessions are granted to them by President Trump, such as troop withdrawals from the region and sanction relive. Much of these concession by either North Korea or the U.S were unlikely going to transpire.

After decades of development, in spite of increasing international sanctions, Kim Jong-un and his father before him have based their family and counties survival on obtaining a  nuclear capability, which they now posses. President Trump by excepting the invitation by Kim in March, was going to give Kim and his regime a propaganda tool and some form of legitimacy, even before the real and expected long negotiations.

By President Trump cancelling the upcoming summit, he has now placed the emphasis on the North Korean leader to back down on recent rhetoric and show real signs that he wants to really negotiate on the nuclear issue, not just play games with the U.S and the rest of the international community, as has happened in the past. 

Lets hope that this setback will not draw the U.S and North Korea towards military conflict, instead allow for the right conditions to be in place for a future summit between the two leaders.         

The international community need to intervene in Syria

When will the international community finally step in and actively halt the civil war in Syria? It has been over two years, since opposition forces began their campaign against the Bashar al-Assad regime with no end in sight. The United Nations estimate that almost 100,000 people have been killed and many more been injured.

In the last few days the UN refugee chief, Antonio Guterres, has reported that the conflict in Syria has become the worst refugee crises facing the world since the Rwandan genocide in 1994. Guterres estimates that over 6000 Syrians are fleeing the conflict every day, with Turkey, Jordan and Iraq being the main destinations. On top of this figure, the UN further estimates that over 6 million people are in need of aid supplies.

This report from the UN is quite disturbing, seeing that I would have thought, and I assume others would as well, that the international community would have learnt its lesson after the Rwandan genocide, but this does not seem the case.

I think that with all the recent reports over the last few months, of chemical weapons been deployed by both sides, that’s if the information is correct, and now with the ever increasing death toll and refugee crises, outside intervention may need to be examined even further.  The small amount of light military and other supplies to the opposition forces by the United States and European nations does not seem to be giving an advantage to the rebels, especially since government troops are being supplied with heavier weaponry from Russia.

The best option to end this conflict is through peace talks, but this has failed in the past and is unlikely to happen in the near future. Both sides seem content on fighting to the death and innocent civilians are becoming by-standers suffering the most. The only option that I can see to bringing peace is for more concerted effort by the outside world to actively intervene. To achieve this option would be for a meeting to take place between the all five permanent UN Security Council members and other nations from the region to discuss and hopefully come to a better solution to ending the conflict, then what has been proposed in the past.

The report by the UN on the scale of the violence and instability caused to millions of Syrians will I hope motivate more concerted action by the international community, before more innocent lives are lost. 

North Korea is playing dangerous games

Over the last few weeks North Korea has been playing dangerous power politics with the international community, especially with South Korea (ROK) and the United States (US). Pyongyang has been releasing statements declaring renewed hostilities against the South. North Korea has back up their verbal rhetoric with a buildup of military forces along the border with South Korea and threats to strike at US military bases in the region.

In the past few days, North Korean authorities have further increased tensions with the South by closing the border to South Koreans who are working at the joint Kaesong industrial facilities just inside North Korean territory. About 50,000 North Korean workers and a few hundred South Koreans managers work at this facility, that was set up to foster better relations between the two nations, and to allow the manufacture of cheaper South Korean goods.

These incidents show the same old rhetorics and threats that seem to occur every time there are joint ROK-US military exercises and/or new sanctions placed on the regime, although on this occasion North Korea has stepped up its rhetoric by actively threatening to attack both the US and cross the border into the South. 

Pyongyang have declared a ‘state of war,’ by actively cutting of communications with the officials in the South and amassing troops on the border  the North would be unwise to further the tensions with South Korea and the US, an active conflict would not benefit both the regime and the people of North Korea. 

It seems to me that Kim Jong-un, who has only been in power for less than 15 months, is trying to show the rest of the world and his fellow countrymen  that North Korea are not threatened by the US and its allies and have the will and capability to defend its territory. 

I think that the actions of Kim Jong-un is just verbal rhetoric, even a protest against new sanctions placed on the regime after last year's Nuclear tests and the annual joint military exercise just taken place on their doorstep. It's another case of North Korea barking louder, but a bite is unlikely.