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Day: June 19, 2024
The good comedian mocks the powerful. And is there anything or anyone more powerful than God? I don’t think so
What subjects, if any, should be off limits for comedians? For Jimmy Carr, Ricky Gervais and particularly Dave Chappelle, the answer appears to be “nothing”. But for the rest of us (because, while I’m hardly in the their league, I am, for my sins, a comedian as well as a vicar) the golden rule is “Punch up, not down”. In other words, it’s OK to mock the powerful but laughing at any minority group, as old-school comics such as Bernard Manning used to do, is a form of bullying.
By that logic, God, the most powerful being in the universe, is a legitimate target for humour. Pope Francis himself said as much last week.
The post As a vicar and a standup comedian, take it from me: the pope is right, laughing at God is OK | Ravi Holy first appeared on The News And Times.
Seoul, South Korea — Russian President Vladimir Putin received a grandiose reception in Pyongyang on Wednesday, meeting North Korean leader Kim Jong Un and pledging closer cooperation as both countries confront the West.
Putin and Kim, who also signed a document upgrading ties, participated in a welcoming ceremony in the central Kim Il Sung Square, where buildings were draped in massive Russian and North Korean flags and portraits of the two leaders.
North Korean residents dressed in red, white, and blue shirts waved bright bouquets of flowers in unison as a brass band played patriotic songs. Putin and Kim also observed a North Korean honor guard before departing for negotiations, which included two hours of one-on-one talks, according to Russian media.
At the outset of the negotiations, Putin thanked North Korea for its “consistent and unwavering support” for Russian policy, including in Ukraine, reported Russia’s Interfax news agency.
Kim expressed his “full support and solidarity” for what he called Russia’s “special military operation” in Ukraine, according to Interfax. The North Korean leader also vowed to “unconditionally support” Russia’s policies, the agency added.
Putin, who is making his first visit to North Korea in 24 years, invited Kim to Moscow, Russian state media reported.
Russia and North Korea have long been close partners, but their cooperation has intensified following Russia’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine. North Korea has supplied Russia with thousands of containers of munitions, including ballistic missiles, according to U.S. officials – an allegation denied by Pyongyang and Moscow.
Close, but how close?
According to Interfax, Putin and Kim signed a comprehensive strategic partnership treaty, formally upgrading ties. The treaty text has not been released. Though it is expected to fall short of a formal alliance agreement, Russian officials have said it will likely cover defense cooperation in some sense.
Analysts debate how far North Korea-Russia military cooperation will go. Some say Kim and Putin may find more reasons to continue working together as each country’s relationship with the West deteriorates. But the two men will not restore Soviet-era ties, said Kim Gunn, a South Korean lawmaker who earlier this year stepped down as South Korea’s top nuclear envoy.
“Russia is not the former Soviet Union,” he said. “And Russia is at war in Ukraine – they are pouring all their energy into this war. There’s not so much room for Russia to do anything with North Korea.”
For now, Putin and Kim are presenting a united front, with Putin describing their collaboration on Wednesday as a fight against U.S. hegemony.
An editorial Tuesday in the Rodong Sinmun, North Korea’s main newspaper, said the “people and military of both countries have the sacred duty, together, to safeguard their country’s sovereignty and dignity and guarantee the peace and security of the region.”
Rachel Minyoung Lee, a North Korea watcher and senior fellow at the Washington-based Stimson Center, said that formulation was unusual for North Korean state media, an aberration that she said sends a “less than comforting message” about future military cooperation.
“The agreement (or a treaty) North Korea and Russia sign during Putin’s visit, if made public, will hopefully bring clarity to this phrase,” she wrote in a blog post on 38 North, a North Korea-focused website.
Sanctions evasion
Tuesday, Putin vowed to work with North Korea to counter sanctions. In a letter published in North Korean state media, Putin said the two countries would develop trade mechanisms “not controlled by the West” and would “jointly oppose illegitimate unilateral restrictions.”
Both countries are subject to a growing number of sanctions imposed by individual countries – Russia because of its invasion of Ukraine and North Korea because of its nuclear weapons program and other illicit activities, such as cybertheft.
North Korea is also subject to a series of United Nations Security Council resolutions, which prohibit a wide range of economic activity with Pyongyang.
Russia – a permanent, veto-wielding member of the U.N. Security Council – voted for the North Korea sanctions as recently as 2017. But it now opposes the sanctions and has taken steps to complicate their enforcement.
Many Russian analysts say Putin is reluctant to completely abandon U.N. sanctions on North Korea. Instead, he may search for what he sees as loopholes that facilitate cooperation even in areas that are subject to U.N. sanctions, such as North Korean laborers earning income abroad.
For instance, North Korean IT specialists could work remotely from their home country without technically receiving income abroad, said Georgy Toloraya, a former member of the U.N. Panel of Experts, which was meant to monitor enforcement of the North Korea sanctions.
Weapons cooperation
Analysts are also watching Putin’s visit for any signs of additional defense cooperation.
A key question among Western analysts is what Putin might offer North Korea in exchange for weapons allegedly used in the Ukraine war.
U.S. officials have expressed concern that Russia may provide North Korea with advanced weapons or other assistance related to its nuclear program.
Such cooperation represents “the greatest threat to U.S. national security since the Korean War,” said Victor Cha, the Korea Chair at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.
In a blog post, Cha said it is “highly unlikely that Kim would have feted Putin so lavishly only for the promise of food and fuel,” noting that Pyongyang seeks advanced weapons, including nuclear submarine and intercontinental ballistic missile technology.
“This aspect of the relationship not only destabilizes security on the peninsula and in Asia; it also heightens the direct threat posed by North Korea to the [U.S.] homeland,” he said.
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WORLD BRIEFING: June 19, 2024
It must be somebody pretty important in your life to warrant a personal airport pickup at 3 a.m. But that’s the honor North Korean “Supreme Leader” Kim Jong Un paid to Vladimir Putin on Wednesday morning, greeting the Russian President on a red carpet-laid runway in the wee hours and then riding with him through Pyongyang streets festooned with roses and murals of his stout, balding guest, whom Kim had earlier hailed as an “invincible comrade-in-arms.”
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The last time Putin visited North Korea, it was his first year as Russian President and Kim was still ensconced under a fake name at a Swiss boarding school. (Kim’s late dictator father, Kim Jong Il, played host instead.) Twenty-four years on and Putin’s return to the “Hermit Kingdom” comes as he’s embroiled in Europe’s deadliest land conflict since World War II and the younger Kim wields a nuclear arsenal capable of threatening the continental U.S.
The Kremlin described the trip as a “friendly state visit,” though the prospect of the two leaders inking partnerships on security, food, energy, and foreign currency prompted the White House to express concern about the “deepening relationship.” At a joint press briefing with U.S Secretary of State Antony Blinken on Tuesday, NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg echoed those worries, particularly “potential support that Russia provides to North Korea when it comes to supporting their missile and nuclear programs.”
Certainly, ties between these two pariahs are stronger than any point since the fall of the Soviet Union. In a letter published in Rodong Sinmun, mouthpiece of North Korea’s ruling Workers Party, Putin promised to develop trade and security systems with Pyongyang “that are not controlled by the West,” while promising to help his host stave off “U.S. pressure, blackmail and military threats.” Yuri Ushakov, Putin’s foreign policy aide, told Russia’s Tass news agency that the meeting could result in a “comprehensive strategic partnership.”
Washington and Seoul have accused Kim of supplying Russia with artillery, munitions, and other equipment to help Russia’s military navigate a shortfall over the winter, for which North Korea likely received food, fuel, and military technology in return. Both North Korea and Russia deny the existence of an arms deal, though on Wednesday Putin opened talks with Kim by gushing about Pyongyang’s support “including in the Ukrainian direction,” according to Russia’s Tass news agency. Kim responded by congratulating Russia’s role in “maintaining the strategic balance in the world.” Meanwhile, analysis of debris in Ukraine’s Kharkiv region indicates North Korean short-range missiles had been deployed there.
Putin’s arrival also comes at a time of heightened tensions on the Korean peninsula. In recent weeks, North Korea has sent hundreds of balloons with bags of trash and excrement into the South in apparent retaliation to activists there dispatching anti-Pyongyang propaganda. Meanwhile, several North Korean soldiers were reportedly maimed or killed on Tuesday while laying landmines in the demilitarized zone (DMZ) that have separated both sides since the 1950-53 Korean War. In addition, more than 20 North Korean soldiers briefly encroached into the DMZ on Tuesday for the second time in less than two weeks but retreated following warning shots, according to South Korea.
The question is whether Kim’s blossoming bromance with Putin risks emboldening the North Korean despot. Historically, one of the main reasons North Korea has pursued improved relations with the U.S. was to negotiate sanctions relief. But if Russia offers a viable long-term solution for improving North Korea’s economy, Kim has less of an incentive to improve relations with Washington.
Russia’s permanent seat on the U.N. Security Council makes this autocratic rapprochement particularly valuable for Kim. Despite previously supporting the most robust sanctions regime in history against North Korea, Russia on March 28 vetoed a U.N. resolution renewing the bloc’s Panel of Experts’ mandate to monitor sanctions enforcement. Moscow is also taking steps to permanently dismantle punitive economic measures targeting Pyongyang by calling for a “sunset clause” for the existing sanctions regime.
At the least, any financial or political cover that Putin can provide enables Kim to ramp up the brinkmanship—alternating threats and conciliatory gestures to eke concessions—that has formed the bedrock of North Korean foreign policy since the days of Kim’s illustrious grandfather. It also eases the burden on a national coffers under such strain that currently human hair for wigs and fake eyelashes accounts for 60% of declared exports to China, North Korea’s largest trading partner.
“This really takes some pressure off of the North Korean economy, which I expect to rebound,” says Stephan Haggard, professor of Korea studies at the University of California San Diego. “In effect, this is a positive shock for the country. It can churn out munitions and get food and possibly fuel in return.”
From Putin’s perspective, any cost imposed to Western allies is a net positive. Putin’s message to Japan and South Korea, says Alexander Gabuev, the director of the Carnegie Russia Eurasia Center in Berlin, is “your help shredding thousands of young Russian boys on the battlefield is having a price as we can create problems for you from North Korea.”
Yet budding ties may risk fissures developing between Moscow and its only backer that really matters: China. Credible reports suggest Putin originally intended to travel directly to Pyongyang at the culmination of last month’s visit to China but was dissuaded by nervous Beijing officials. For while both Kim and Putin both likely scroll Bond villain YouTube compilations on the can, China’s Xi Jinping clings to a notion of the Middle Kingdom as legitimate global power, and he fears the optics of belonging to, as Gabuev puts it, a “triangular Axis of Evil in the Indo-Pacific.”
Moreover, China only tolerates North Korea’s existence—including the very real threat of nuclear catastrophe just 500 miles from Beijing—because that is deemed strategically preferable to a unified, U.S.-allied Korean peninsula on its border. Putin coming along and whipping Kim into rattling cages isn’t necessarily part of Beijing’s plan. “The Chinese are probably weary or unnerved about North Korea and Russia becoming too close,” says Daniel Pinkston, an East Asia expert at Troy University in Seoul.
So while Russia and North Korea getting chummy is never a good thing, even a “comprehensive strategic partnership” between two of the most sanctioned countries on earth is unlikely to tip the balance in any meaningful way, and could well backfire if Beijing gets peeved. Ultimately, “Authoritarian regimes are transactional, and dictators can always renege on their commitments, so they’re not credible partners,” adds Pinkston. “Russia and North Korea are both aggrieved, revisionist states, but they don’t have shared values other than overturning the status quo.”
