Some thoughts about the Trump-Kim summit

Raju Korti

The shape of the good byes to come?

While "neutral" Singapore hosts two of the most quixotic leaders of our times in what can be mildly described as facetious, the optimism exuded by US President Donald Trump and North Korean Kim Jong-un is a remarkable red herring.
That the high stakes one-on-one has been preceded by some tricky negotiations comes as no surprise. I am not too sure how the under-chandelier dinner Trump had with Singapore Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong can contribute to the easing of stand off between the the two traditional foes.
Not just Trump and Kim, the world knows that entente is next to impossible. Both are not known to climb off their high horse.The issue of denuclearisation and security guarantee, and the measures to be taken by both the countries are in the realms of utopia given the insecurity they face from each other. A nuclear armament is both a safeguard and a threat depending on one's perception. There is little to be optimistic for both Trump and Kim since it is not clear -- at least at this stage -- whether the Americans can succeed in extracting a more comprehensive commitment to disarming than North Korea has already offered.
Note that the White House has chosen to speak the same couched Pyongyang language of "seeking complete verifiable and irreversible denuclearisation on the Korean Peninsula. The North Koreans are not fools to be taken in by those apparently pompous words. They know it as potentially requiring the US to scale back troop deployment there or to shrink its nuclear umbrella over two East Asian allies South Korea and Japan. Little wonder, the meet is so terse that Trump doesn't feel the need to stay around longer, although that is also being interpreted as the US dropping subtle hints of pressure on Kim. The fact is there is little for them to talk.
Make no mistake. Kim's move to announce moratorium on testing nuclear weapons and tear down some of the infrastructure related to those programmes may well turn out to be a hogwash. For those who think that this is a sign of goodwill, it must be told that this doesn't impact in any way the huge weapons complex the country has assembled in the last decades.
The American administration knows that debilitating Pyongyang's sprawling missile and nuclear arsenal will take one hell of an effort and years. There is simply no precedent in the history that any nation that has amassed such a huge stockpile of nukes has ever given it up. The logistics and economics just don't reconcile to the very idea of denuclearisation. Trump's avowed goal of a "verifiable and irreversible denuclearisation" is at best flimsy and fractured. The Americans got to live with North Korea's ability to target the US with nuclear weapons just as India has got to with Pakistan.
Any deal would most certainly call for inspection of nuke sites by international inspectors who may have to look at the herculean prospect of visiting an unspecified number if compliance is to be ensured. That is a tall order for any country with the honorable exception of Iraq. North Korea is a different league not just because of its dangerous acquisitions by an unpredictable and dangerous dictator but also because the country is so isolated from the rest of the mankind.
The Kim dispensation -- if it can be called that -- has relentlessly pursued its military goal to unleash a nuclear strike on US and its allies South Korea and Japan with an array of missiles and bombs. A series of Inter-Continental Ballistic Missile programmes has had the Americans and its East Asian allies in jitters for, the threat perception is too high for even their capabilities.
The Americans would be making a cardinal error if they perceive the North Korean moratorium as a parameter of their optimism. Any attempt to legitimize the North Korean capability by accepting the status quo as a situation to proceed for normalization of relations, knowing the country's track record of pursuing nuclear weapons program, would be fatuous.
The only indication that Americans are aware of this reality is Trump booking his return ticket the same day.   

Some musings about Bill Clinton and MeToo

Raju Korti

The "other woman" in his life.

It has been 23 years since former US President first unzipped his pants in what many voyeuristically describe as Sexgate. It is not altogether surprising that former US President Bill Clinton has gone on the defensive about his affair with the then 21-year-old White House intern in the wake of the MeToo movement. Clinton, then 49, escaped charges of perjury and was almost impeached, leaving behind an outraged nation and a wife who made light of her mental bruises.
I have little doubt that Harold Robbins would have delighted to author the Clinton-Lewinsky affair given its lurid and pulpy trappings. Such was the heat generated by the scandal that in 1998 I recall it had become a chewing gum for even school-going children. I am not sure between Clinton and Lewinsky who was hounded more at the time but after seeing the pictures of the chubby-ish intern, a lot many people were envious with Clinton than being offended by his sexual misdemeanors that lasted three years.
Clinton initially was all bravado, denying sexual relations with Lewinsky but his bluff was called by Linda Tripp, the whistle-blower civil servant who tripped him with all those damning audiotapes. Finding that kind of publicity too hot to handle, Lewinsky largely kept to herself until she wrote the tell-all story. She is now believed to be an ardent votary of cyberbullying and how to make the internet more compassionate. While Clinton has chosen not to make much of that sordid past, Lewinsky's response has been a terse MeToo after Tripp chose to describe her as one lacking the moral compass. When her husband broke her confidence, wife Hillary did what even Indian women with utmost orthodox conditioning would not have done -- she went into an overdrive discrediting all the women who came forward and calling the intern a loony narcissist. Her argument that her marriage with Bill had seen more happy days than sad ones euphemistically meant that she had taken her husband's flings in her stride but the pain in her eyes said everything.
That Clinton used the perks of his political office to lure women was evident. He was also involved with Paula Jones, a state worker who unsuccessfully sued him but the intriguing part of this chapter was the American President paid her a huge amount of money in an out-of-court settlement but never apologized as he did with Lewinsky. The White House intern took his pants off in every sense.
As the editor-in-charge of the Indian Express that night, I recall my colleagues breathing down my neck to know more about the scandal that involved the world's most powerful man. Analyses and conjectures flew thick and fast as the story broke but the full implications started sinking in when our (then) Washington correspondent Chidanand Rajghatta (earlier the resident editor of Mumbai edition of the Indian Express) sent in a series of stories in what could be described as consolation for Harold Robbins. It was a cud irresistible to chew. As expected the discussion centered more on voyeuristic than the political implications the issue entailed. People in the newsroom seemed more envious than being scandalized.
Imagine if the Clinton-Lewinsky affair had taken place, say thirty years before. His infidelity may have squired out anyhow but the case would have ended up differently. There would have been no internet or blogosphere to keep the topic raging, no forensic team in place to conduct a DNA test, maybe Tripp would not have had the access to then relatively new idea of using voice recordings as evidence and Saturday Night Live hadn't got around to making comedy out of political events.
History made it sure that the Bill Clinton scandal was poised at the perfect confluence of moments for technology, science, the press and popular culture to build a case against a bluffing politician that would change national precedents forever.
There is nothing wrong in America that cannot be cured with is right in America, Bill Clinton once said. Unwittingly, he became its own mascot.