Trump at UNGA

President Donald Trump touted his summit with North Korea, alleging Pyongyang was no longer a threat to the US

In a broad spectrum speech at the UNGA, President Donald Trump touted his summit with North Korean dictator Kim Jong-un as such a meaningful breakthrough that Pyongyang was no longer a threat to the US. The president later defined Iran, which does not have nuclear weapons, as “a regime that was sowing chaos, death and destruction.”

Trump also conveniently fired a salvo at globalism and emphasised his ‘America First’ mantra and reserved much of his fire and fury for the leaders of Iran and Venezuela over violations of basic human rights and more. During the 35-minute-long sermon, some of the president’s warmest words were not directed at long and loyal US allies but at the North Korean dictator and their new efforts towards diplomacy. Trump lavished praise on Kim Jong-un and expressed enthusiasm for a second summit, a vastly different tone from his debut address at the UNGA last year when the president pilloried Kim as “Little Rocket Man” and threatened to obliterate North Korea if provoked. In the same address, President Trump highlighted the innumerable human rights violations in the hermit kingdom that took place under what he deemed a depraved regime of Kim Jong-un, and also urged other nations to isolate the North Korean dictator.

This year, the US president appeared before the UNGA as a Kim Jong-un cheerleader or perhaps as his biggest fanboy. While Trump’s bellicosity last year made the world nervous, his benevolence towards Kim this year is equally alarming even while North Korea has made no major concessions since the icebreaker Singapore summit, which was powerful on symbolism but weak on substance where Kim agreed to dismantle a missile test site and a nuclear complex.

As always, the progress is negligible. And to all appearances, the International Atomic Energy Agency, the UN’s nuclear watchdog, has found no indication that Kim’s regime has halted its nuclear activities or prepared an inventory of its unregulated stockpile of weapons. So while the leader of the free world might have forgotten how he hammered North Korea and may have also granted a blanket immunity to Kim Jong-un for his endless betrayals of pre-set international norms, the world hasn’t. And just to remind President Trump, the reclusive nation continues to breach basic human rights.

To this day, Pyongyang has thriving concentrations camps where citizens are penalised under the three- generation punishment rule. Crimes for which North Koreans can find themselves in prison cells, known for their notoriously harsh conditions, can include failure to wipe dust off portraits of Kim Il-sung — the patriarch of the hereditary dictatorship and having contact with the pariah South Koreans neighbours. The Kim dynasty has also killed millions of North Korean citizens without ever being held accountable for its human rights abuses. Kim Jong-un alone has reportedly executed or purged a large number of high-level government officials since taking power in 2011.

While leaders of this dark regime have lived in the lap of luxury and enjoyed life to the fullest, average North Korean citizens continue to wallow in misery. Apart from human misfortunes, scientists estimate Pyongyang has invested in dozens of nuclear warheads and long-range ballistic missiles that could reach the US soil.

The list does not exhaust here, but President Donald Trump has decided to exonerate the Kim regime of all acts of sin. Now Iran is not a good actor. It has funded terrorism from time to time and spearheaded proxy wars but by contrast, Tehran, has not developed nuclear weapons and accepts routine international inspections. Its weapons have a limited range and it has no known plans to develop intercontinental ballistic missiles. So this macho approach by the Trump government towards Iran goes on to expose the hypocrisy of the administration’s foreign policy vis-a-vis the Tehran regime, which by far has been abiding by many if not all of the international norms set to regulate and limit its nuclear activities.

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