Diplomacy is an olympic sport
In a “new game at the Winter Olympics”, North Korea’s Kim Jong Un tried to pit South Korea against the United States, writes Evan Osnos in the New Yorker. “For months, experts on North Korea have suspected that Kim might switch course, from confronting the United States and South Korea to playing on tensions between them,” he writes. And indeed, Kim surprised everybody by proposing talks about sending a North Korean delegation to the Olympics.
“In the first encounter of the new diplomacy, Kim deployed an unexpected tactic: he sent his powerful and reclusive younger sister, Kim Yo Jong, to the Games, where she caught the United States off balance. She posed with Moon for photographs, and invited him to a summit “at his earliest convenience” in Pyongyang. He did not formally accept, but he came close, saying, “Let’s create the environment for that to be able to happen.””
“Vice-President Mike Pence, representing the United States, was a step behind. He ignored Kim, and refused to stand when the North and South Korean athletes entered the stadium together at the opening ceremony,” writes Osnos.
“Then, as Pence headed back to the United States, last Monday, the Trump Administration, too, abruptly changed course. With the inter-Korean overtures gaining strength, and Washington risking a breach of its alliance with Seoul, the White House said that it was now willing to join preliminary talks with North Korea. That’s encouraging: they would present the first possibility of substantive progress since a failed round of “exploratory” talks between Washington and Pyongyang in February, 2012.”
“American and South Korean experts believe that North Korea remains unlikely to give up its nuclear weapons, but could, in time, be persuaded to limit further production and allow inspectors to return. The most plausible early deal could involve a suspension of joint military exercises between the United States and South Korea, which Pyongyang considers a rehearsal for invasion, in exchange for a halt to weapons tests. But, in the months ahead, the chances of derailment are significant,” Osnos concedes.
Like George Orwell wrote, “Sports is war minus the shooting.” Osnos writes that this, at least, is something to cheer in South Korea.
A political failure
Quoting Enoch Powell, Martin Kettle writes in The Guardian that “all political careers end in failure.” “That is the nature of politics and of human affairs,” he follows up, in the context of Jacob Zuma.
“But failure – and day-to-day politics in general – is far more interesting than Powell’s pessimistic determinism allows. Political failure is always relative, not absolute. It is as many-sided and as nuanced as success. Failure can be dodged and deferred, as the careers of May and several of her ministers show. Failure can also be fought every inch of the way, as Zuma tried to do. One may or may not approve of either May or Zuma, but there is something humanly impressive and authentic about their attempts to postpone what, in the larger arc of history, is too often simplistically dismissed as an inevitable outcome.”
“The attempt to remove an elected leader is the most dangerous challenge that any democracy can ever face. These are rare moments, and they do not always go according to plan. A Zuma-style ousting doesn’t always happen when or how it should, or tidily. But if democratic politics matters at all, as most people living in democracies still think, then such moments matter more than most. We have a dog in this fight,” Kettle writes.
“Though Zuma’s ultimate fate seemed a predictable one he fought deep into extra time. The mechanics and tactics of his attempt to stay on, and then to negotiate a face- and cash-saving deal, were electrifying. The implications at every turn are supercharged for both sides and for his country. Cyril Ramaphosa’s determination not to allow Zuma a compromise was heroic. That doesn’t mean Ramaphosa is in all things a hero. It just means that this is a moment with large national consequences.”
Mainstreaming jihad in Turkey
“Over the past few weeks, Turkish officials have broken with decades of precedent in what is still, at least nominally, a secular republic: they have begun describing the country’s military deployment in Syria as “jihad” ,” writes Soner Cagaptay in the Washington Post. “Mainstreaming jihad, which sanctions violence against those who “offend Islam,” is a crucial step in draping the sheath of sharia over a society. Sadly, Turkey seems to be slowly moving along that path.”
“Turkey, established as a secular republic by Mustafa Kemal Ataturk at the end of World War I, long managed to hold sharia out of the official sphere, making it an outlier among Muslim-majority countries. While the secular constitutional system remains, my own research, polls and recent developments in Turkey together demonstrate a dangerous shift.”
“In recent years, the government led by Recep Tayyip Erdogan has been limiting individual freedoms, as well as sanctioning individuals who “insult Islam” or neglect Islamic practices. Since November 2017, the national police — controlled by the central government — has been monitoring online commentary on religion and suppressing freedom of expression when they find such commentary “offensive to Islam.””
“Nothing is more telling of Erdogan’s efforts to blend Islamic practices with his political power than the newly-elevated status of the Directorate of Religious Affairs — known in Turkish as the “Diyanet.” Ataturk established this bureaucratic bureau in 1924 to regulate religious services in his secularist fashion.”
“But those who expect Erdogan to declare Islamic law in Turkey will have to wait for quite some time. The change will not happen overnight. It is taking place gradually as the diaphanous veil of sharia descends.”