solhkhabar | Peace International News Agency Peace International News Agency , Peace News , International Agency News of Peace
The most significant development in Singapore was to complete the transformation of Kim himself from a secretive, slightly comical, definitely murderous, and possibly irrational leader into a serious and engaged world leader of some stature, wrote Stephen M. Walt in Foreign Policy on Thursday.
The article added that the New York Times captured this notion perfectly in an article published days before the summit, headlined “Kim Jong-un’s Image Shift: From Nuclear Madman to Skillful Leader.”
Foreign Policy wrote, 'In truth, the Kim family has never been crazy or irrational; on the contrary, they’ve just managed to keep themselves in power in difficult circumstances for seven decades.'
'This tendency to see opponents as crazy has a long history. Americans saw Bolshevik leaders as irrational fanatics. During the 1960s, Secretary of State Dean Rusk described Beijing’s “state of mind [as] a combination of aggressive arrogance and obsessions of its own making,” and said that “a country whose behavior is as violent, irascible, unyielding, and hostile as that of Communist China is led by leaders who view of the world and of life itself is unreal.”'
'In the 1970s and 80s, other hard-liners suggested Soviet leaders placed so little value on human life.'
The article added that a more recent case of this happened in 2003 when 'US pundits justified attacking Iraq by claiming that Saddam Hussein was an irrational, serial aggressor who could not be deterred.'
Aadvocates of war with Iran have said similar things about Iran.
'It is not surprising that even well-informed Americans are inclined to think this way. Convinced that their own country is uniquely virtuous, exceptional, wise, and selfless, and that US foreign policy is good for nearly everyone, it is easy for them to believe that those who disagree with US policy and question America’s motives must be suffering from some sort of mental disorder.'
Walt added, 'We like to portray our enemies as irrational and foolhardy, but we’ve been guilty of no small amount of crazy behavior ourselves.'
'Unlike some of his critics, I don’t think President Trump is crazy or in the early stages of dementia,' Walt wrote. 'But based on his performance thus far, it’s easy to see why major world leaders might conclude that there was no point in trying to accommodate, mollify, appeal to, or compromise with a leader as capricious and vindictive as Trump.'
9417**1396
Follow us on Twitter @IrnaEnglish