Why is North Korea so difficult?

One reason for US reluctance to engage in peace talks and for a renewal of diplomatic relations has been the domestic political risk of talks with the enemy after a war which ended in stalemate and 37,000 US casualties.

The risk is exacerbated by a retributive streak in US foreign policy which has seen trade sanctions in place since the Korean war began in 1950. They were enforced against Vietnam for nineteen years and against Cuba for over half a century until their relaxation by President Obama (now being reversed). In each case US aims were frustrated by a small nation boasting Communist values.

This raises a question of the extent to which US policy is being shaped by the demonisation of its former enemies, with a continuing need to appease a public whose patriotism is largely defined by yesterday's wars and ideological postures. How else to explain the economic isolation of the North, with biannual threats of invasion which force it to spend hugely on defence, with little hope of raising living standards?

The primary and predictable effect of this policy has been to reinforce the authority of a brutal dictatorship.

But the containment theory, based on forward defence, has its own logic, now seen in Eastern Europe since the collapse of the Soviet Union, with Nato allies extending from the Baltic to the Mediterranean, most willing to deploy US nuclear missiles to deter Russian expansionist aims.

Given the current renewed emphasis on containing China, it would not be surprising if the US has no interest in renewing six-power peace talks, which would see it under pressure to withdraw 28,000 US military personnel along with its missile and bomber bases in the South.

The recent installation of Thaad interceptor missiles supports this view. They were brought in by the US during a transitional period after the dismissal of disgraced former leader Park Geun-hye and the South Korean election on May 9th but before the new President Moon Jae-in, a former human rights lawyer, took office.

The US was well aware he had campaigned strongly against the missiles and, as the first non-US compliant South Korean President in decades, had promised to revive long-stalled peace talks with the North.

All of which suggests that prospects for peace remain bleak as long as America refuses to discuss its own military exercises, insists on de-nuclearisation of the peninsula but not elsewhere in the region, and asserts a first-strike option. Given US nuclear missiles based in Guam and Okinawa and B1 B Lancer bombers on patrol off the North Korean coast, the DPRK would have no deterrent against a 10 minute missile flight time and the threat posed by these bombers.

Finally, one cannot discount the risk that President Trump may, between now and the mid-term elections in November 2018, face a desperate move by Republican leaders to retain control of both Houses of Congress by invoking Section 4 of Amendment 25 of the US Constitution.

The Amendment states that if, for whatever reason, the vice president and a majority of his Cabinet secretaries decide that the president is "unable to discharge the powers and duties of his office", they can put that in writing and send it to the speaker of the House and the president of the Senate. The vice president then becomes "Acting President", taking over the president's powers. This section has been used three times in the past.

While it is hard to predict how the US President would react, he might seek to revive his appeal as a bold and decisive leader by military action, exercising a threatened first strike option against Pyongyang without regard to the wider consequences, including the deaths of thousands of innocent civilians in both the North and South.

As a friend and long-time ally Australia can make a useful contribution by working to calm tensions and promote peace talks, but not if it sees itself as joined at the hip to the US Administration, as Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull insists.

That metaphor sees Australia's primary duty of loyalty as owed, not to the American people, and not to any principle of humanity or world peace, but to the personal aims and political ambitions of a widely discredited US President.