© Wikimedia Commons
Paul Delaroche, Napoléon à Fontainebleau, 1840. With other global powers increasingly at odds with US foreign policy under Donald Trump, the nation's hegemony on the world stage may soon face its own crisis point
This was no "deeply philosophical address". And hardly a show of "principled realism" - as spun by the White House. President Trump at the UN was "American carnage," to borrow a phrase previously deployed by his nativist speechwriter Stephen Miller.
One should allow the enormity of what just happened to sink in, slowly. The president of the United States, facing the bloated bureaucracy that passes for the "international community," threatened to "wipe off the map" the whole of the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (25 million people). And may do the same to however many millions of South Koreans who perish as collateral damage be damned.
Multiple attempts have been made to connect Trump's threats to the
madman theory cooked up by "Tricky Dicky" Nixon in cahoots with Henry Kissinger, according to which the USSR must always be under the impression the then-US president was crazy enough to, literally, go nuclear. But the DPRK will not be much impressed with this madman remix.
That leaves, on the table, a way more terrifying upgrade of Hiroshima and Nagasaki (Trump repeatedly invoked Truman in his speech). Frantic gaming will now be in effect in
both Moscow and Beijing: Russia and China have their own stability / connectivity strategy under development to contain Pyongyang.
Comment: See also: Russian General Staff reports 850 jihadists killed as Russian warplanes help Syrian Army repel Idlib offensive
Today Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov confirmed at a press conference that the attack was instigated by U.S. intelligence.