Trouble on the threshold?

Trouble on the threshold?

It is difficult to understand all the angst currently being poured out over the stance that Trump is taking in bolstering up interested parties opposing attitude towards the testing antics of North Korea. Over the years NK has, to a general extent shown a disregard for any inclusive overtures by the west for it to put aside its drive for a nuclear weapon. All the verbosity expressed by Kim Jong-Un, its ‘glorious leader’, does little to allay the concerns of South Korea to its errant neighbour and in addition increases the anxiety of China over its lack of influence in the direction that the leader is taking the country. Countries in the region are feeling insecure and alarmed at the pace and commitment NK gives to achieving a WMD, insecurity mainly due to the damage that may flow from an overspill of any military action to forestall the achievement of a WMD.

           

As a dictator with a seemingly indoctrinated populace; the administrative competence or complied loyalty of those around this leader, is publicly untested. Any obvious opposition is extinguished and his questionable sanity as a prime force in this totalitarian state with a population living on a subsistence basis shows no sign of adopting an understandable moderating demeanour to allow any external beneficial influence that will avoid another failed state scenario. In the event that some forceful action is inflicted upon it, as has been suggested by US hawks seeking to wave an example of a regional intent of influence over SK and the South China Sea, does little to deter KJU.  Link this to the overall propaganda forced upon the NK population to accept the external misrepresented views he displays, which has for decades potentially brain washed them into ‘glorious leader’ believers; creates a potential well pool of unconstrained energetic forces willing to sacrifice themselves for the dogma he has spun. No one is sure, or can be evidentially sure how many acolytes are willing to start or pursue any pre-emptive action KJU dictates to fire up.    

There is obviously a concern when and if it produces a viable and long range deployable weapon, particularly for S.Korea, China and Japan but given the assumed psychotic nature of KJU there is  the uncertainly of just who in his controlling sphere has any balance judgement to offer him, if any. As much as he rants about repelling all boarders and has ability to counter an external pre-emptive strike, which may be aimed at destroying any capable WMD; no one seriously wants to force a conflict if there is a practicable way of redirecting his drive. Any war with NK will be devastating to it and the overspill will, as China knows, cause major dislocation for it and directly S. Korea. A failed state on the borders of S.Korea and China is a certainty if the controlling administrative authority, of dubious ability or legitimacy, is shattered; unable to be redirected to maybe improve the country and lift the population out of poverty. This is assuming the nuclear investment direction is halted in exchange for managed investment. In this one might assume that S. Korea, China nor the US alone would be able to carry the long term financial commitment required to lift this unproductive poverty isolated state to a stable position that would avoid massive social disruption.   

So it is likely that the Trump regime will not want to press hard on NK directly and may rely on China to really take some effective action to curtail KJU, assuming that it, NK, does not cause an actual fatal incident onto a protected neighbour, in which case a few bangs can be expected.  This is not an outcome that anyone sensible wants, hopefully not even NK. 

While it is entertaining to speculate on the multiple changeable directions that Trump faces on a variety of issues, like NK, or china - competitor or foe, or issue of S. China sea land grab, or dump the environment for Co2 jobs, or make the US great again within the pawn shop of international finance; for the Europeans, the south Asian theatre of possibilities is a bit beyond its scope. It, Europe, is more diverted with domestic issues like elections, the brexit mess, the strength of the EU & euro, the failing economies, falling ‘productivity’, youth unemployment, funding NATO and ageing population vs. social contracts and a fight on terrorism. They all play to the popular media elective memes and take up some thought in the minds of the watching populace, while just trying to get on with the normality of life’s everyday issues. However the subjects that seem to get the most emotive attention in the EU is the subversive war on terror, Islamic extremism, middle east fragmentation and mass population relocation (unwarranted migration/immigration) all problems of its own making (with a dose of US stimulus) and it fails on these issues like many others to have any muscular coherent strategy or unified policies as a European front. There is always much talk but little effective enlightenment.  

This light unperturbed recognition of situations is similar to its understandable response to Russia’s capture of Crimea and Russia’s progressed conflict in N. Ukraine; a situation that is fractiously containable with a negotiable dialogue when dealing with a competent unified authority guided Putin like; one that also has an ideologue culture that is broadly consistent and not wholly inimical to the progressiveness of economic self interest with western influences. It, Russia, seems to have a simulated homogeneous cultural stability that does not portray obvious tenacious extremist potency (yet there are factions of disagreement) and it has a degree of perceived reliability to expect it to remain stable disregarding who the titular appointed head of the authority is – it can change and one may reasonable expect the administrative and cultural stability of the country to remain, an administrative cohesiveness with economic imperatives relative to the west without underlying sectarian instability, a position similar to China.

Conversely, and one might suggest with a bit of scoping vision, there is a country on the boarders of Europe that is not, despite its superficiality of a small element of modernity, is very far from being a reliable and stable nation. It is one that for many years the west has sought to more actively to be cosseted with, than efforts aimed at Russia. It has a diversity of sector sectarian cultural pressures that is likely to have an unwelcome long term impact on Europe. It is now an accepted fact of political actions that any forceful actions that rips apart administrative stability of a proffered malignant country, no matter how repugnant it may be to the west, is not to be fought over; there will be no further attempts at military ‘regime change’, rather instead, laying down defensive and influential force. 

Key players in Europe for a few decades, have assumed, wrongly, that in dealing with this country, there are security and economic benefits with its secular tendencies that offered a basis for constructive dialogue leading to unanimity of common purpose for the benefit of its populace state. Events of the recent past secreted in the existing societies troubles, advances the violence predicament stemming from Muslim extremism that is now projected onto the countries of Europe. Overt malleable discussions have aimed to avoid unfavourable censure of the country for its actions and have disguised this county’s part it participated in the aiding of the growth of Islamic hardening to secular development. Its administrative structure has fostered an undemocratic putsch against opposition and given a degree of carte-blanch to an Islamic sect that now has gained a power platform that its president, thinks can control with the assumed dictator powers that circumvent the prime minister role and usurp the separation of executive powers in state.  

Although the country, Turkey, is split between the urban secularist Muslim and the rural stricter conservative Islamic followers, the AK party of islamist have demonstrated a fierce grasp of power and with Erdogan (known as Gollum by his own styled fiends) instigating overall presidential power for himself under a republican mantle; corrals the moderate secularist Muslim into a precarious position in that it has little opportunity to voice any disagreement with dictatorial edicts. Erdogan has the support of the Islamist and has proffered opportunity to them and encouraged them to expect a stronger Islamic doctrine to be the script guiding the development of turkey. He assumes that he has control over the power he has adopted for them and can equally contend with the secular benefits derived by its association with western influences and also be conciliatory to the desires of Islamic supremacy. He is reliant on enough partisan Islamic moderates providing influence to maintain a useful working relationship with the direction of an ultimate European integration. Not something extremist would allow.

With the overspill of problem from the middle east, it may be possible to see that the extremist of Islam are working to an agenda that does not really concern itself with the machination of legitimate authority, rather how it can use what is available to its own advantage and with the simple expedience of sparking one faction against another, create a void into which it can secrete its will. In turkey it has a person who will defend one sect of popular support over the other different sects of Islam and who will be easily content to direct forceful action under a diversionary mantel via Kurdish opposition to his authority as a way of demonstrating his power base but he will not see the insertion of extremist direction into the AKP; They could well eventual be the power behind his throne.

Europe has so far been lenient towards the dictatorial position that turkey has moved into. It is assuming that it can still do mutable business on the basis that turkey will move towards democratic liberal values despite its current abuses of nascent human rights. This of course is on the hold-out of offering turkey access into the European Union on the same terms as existing members. What is slowly apparent is that at least one aspect possible for such accession is not going to be allowed to happen for much longer and that is the free unfettered volume movement of its people, or from any other non European country. It is an exacerbating liability that is unlikely to be tolerated by the separate states of the EU. Even though the UK, which was one of the main supporters of turkey’s ascension to the EU and very keen on Turkey being put on a fast track to join the EU, it may well be wary of continuing its cosy overtures now, disregarding the brexit mess and the urgent need of gaining business at any cost, would not be politically safe. The brexit vote was of a concern with uncontrolled immigration; a problem that the EU did not want to alleviate and the UK governments maliciously ignored, even though it had power to stem the immigration flow particularly of non Europeans into the UK, nothing was done, it erroneously placed the EU at fault and now it is the body it is forcibly extracting itself from!   

The events in Turkey, its recent shift to a dictatorial state, the disregarding of civil right, the purging of any opposition, restriction of free speech and closure of free press together with recent pronouncements highly antagonist to Europe and the increased militancy of Islamic demonstrations; must be of concern, yet Europe is simple unprepared  for the either the incorporation of turkey into the EU at a time when it cannot agree on how to solve its own pressing problems nor is it open to the ideological capture of turkey by the fundamentalist Islamic tendency. The toxic doctrine of isis and the corruption of Islamic moderates will not be countered by the active ignorance of what is unfolding.

  

Turkey is assuming that as a nato country (one of 29), important to the US with its base and with the  part turkey is ‘playing’ in the fight with Isis / Syria, it will be immune from sanction or discouragement from the EU in case it moves to open up to a Russian embrace. It is a tack that has played well to affront the EU in its disunity, preferring instead to adopt a long position hoping the president’s popularity falters. Over time it will not matter if it does. He is solely self interested, sees himself as the strong leader to reset turkeys Islamic credentials. Unaccountable and unreliable he has purge moderate from all administrative position, the two prime area being military and legal and in place are his people loyal to the AK but seriously linked to potent islamist.

The EU will become considerable weaker with the withdrawal of the UK from it, not that the UK adopted a formative part in the direction of international policies other that pursuant to its own economic benefit, hence the disregard of social movements and dysfunctions leading to the current in-jurist unaccountable desire for self ruin. Both have endemic exacerbation problems which for dogmatic ‘right wing’ beliefs have allowed general and specific mercantile interest to dominate unitary development within economic policies and not include the indigenous stresses now being expressed. The peak of one of the stresses is the over reliant of immigration for the creation of cheap ‘flexible labour’, now oversubscribed in all EU countries. Can it be seriously cognisable to contemplate the adoption into the EU a country of 76 million people of whom 50/22% are poverty stricken and not expect a great pressure of many of them to flee to riches and potentially bring with them an incompatible cultural mores with little compulsion to adapt?

There has been a prolonged unexpressed belief that the EU being made up of rich participants; that it can absorb any numbers of migrants and still retain a dominant cultural identity. The evidence, particularly in the UK, is that this is not the case; cultural ghettos are created in all countries that have allowed high un-integrated numbers to arise and have not invested in the indigenous infrastructures to accommodate rapid population growth. The philosophy behind this is that the west can and should help all the poorer nation of the world, gain the labour it needs for economic growth and have market development. In a time of expansion and nations sustainable growth, it was possible to be generous and provide an opportunity for wealth disbursement and individual betterment via immigration; this is no longer the case. World growth is continuing to slow, resources are acquisition and price sensitive, unconstrained market economics is failing more, host nation are getting less wealthy, endemic tensions are rising and the more that immigration remain unchecked, the poorer a nation gets; its capacity to manage gets thinner. In this context Europe does no longer have the capacity to see dangerous situations it has allowed to come about and standing on the threshold waiting is a country that could be its nemesis, the great project is all built on illusory political quick sand and its own people are sinking.   

You can’t help anyone from a position of weakness!  And if one does not have a participatory stake in the systems that holds one there, why should it continue to be tolerated?

         

 © Renot

206122025

See turkey thought for today 9.2007