I was raised with the viewpoint being stressed by Dad that when voting in presidential elections the most important factor to consider was how a candidate viewed or dealt with international affairs. Sure, there was a bevy of domestic issues to know and care about, but our place in the world and use of our far-reaching power was the number one priority to vote on every four years. Dad served in the Pacific Theater of WWII, was present once when General MacArthur reviewed the troops and knew that war was as he told me often when I was a boy, and the only time he came close to cursing, “hell”.
I have never forgotten his sage reasoning about foreign affairs and our role on the world stage. I blend its importance with the shaping of our federal courts as the top two issues that sway my decision-making on Election Day. I thought about the long-ago lesson from Dad when hearing Wednesday of the meeting between two of the world’s most brutal tyrants. The news from North Korea was the type that would catch Dad’s attention in the daily newspaper. The type of story that would resonate in a presidential election year.
The Wall Street Journal reported the significance of the meeting and agreement between Russian thug-in-president Vladamir Putin and North Korean no-shortage-of-brutality Kim Jong Un as being crystal clear.
The speed and depth of the expanding security ties involving the U.S. adversaries has at times surprised American intelligence analysts. Russia and the other nations have set aside historic frictions to collectively counter what they regard as a U.S.-dominated global system, they said.
For “Russia, North Korea, even China, this is all a marriage of convenience, based on convergence or alignment of interests and goals right now, rather than some passionate love affair,” Sue Mi Terry, a former CIA and White House official, said recently on a podcast sponsored by the Center for Strategic and International Studies think tank.
Yet the initial outlines of a new axis have emerged, with signs of broader strategic and diplomatic cooperation.
Russia’s military cooperation with Iran, North Korea and China has expanded into the sharing of sensitive technologies that could threaten the U.S. and its allies long after the Ukraine war ends.
“Russia’s war in Ukraine is…propped up by China, North Korea, and Iran,” NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg said Tuesday in a joint news conference with Secretary of State Antony Blinken. “They want to see the U.S. fail. They want to see NATO fail. If they succeed in Ukraine, it will make us more vulnerable and the world more dangerous.”
The WSJ article lands where I suspect many policymakers are when they wake up stone sober in the middle of the night with the worst-case scenario playing in their minds. From my desk come a few bottom lines. The agreement fostered in North Korea underscores the break with the West that Putin was clearly headed toward over the past years. It is not a surprise. It is rather a clarion statement to the world community that the gloves are off when it comes to the mindset of Putin’s Russia.
The intention of Jong Un was never in question over the long term, despite the seriously flawed and embarrassing groveling that Donald Trump did when hustling a tyrant to be his new friend. There is a serious character flaw in how Trump craves the attention of despots and autocrats, fashioning himself to be one in the United States.
If I had one question that could be answered with Nostradamus insight it would be the fate of those North Korean males who get labeled as “guest workers”. The BBC reported on these ‘helpers’ from the Hermit Kingdon who receive a plane ride abroad with Jong Un getting cash for their services. Might there be a new-found source of human resources in North Korea for Putin to use in Ukraine? It would lessen the aggressor nation’s military cremation services to get rid of so many dead Russian soldiers.
A steady hand on the tiller of international affairs was the desired result Dad voted for each presidential election. The proven lunacy of Trump and his lack of any semblance of international skills or even a sense of curiosity about the world would lead Dad to vote against what he would understand to be a threat to our country and its place on the world stage.