WHILE the world’s attention is mostly glued to hot spots such as the Middle East and South Asia, trouble is brewing in another, equally combustible region: the Korean Peninsula. Of recent, there has been a disturbing exchange of rhetoric between the opaque regime in Pyongyang, and the Trump administration in Washington D.C. To put it cautiously, neither government is a stranger to provocation: the former is a strange autocracy known for taking bizarre decisions, while the latter is known to make boorish foreign policy decisions in a unilateral fashion. On Saturday, as North Korea marked the birthday of its founding father Kim Il-sung amidst a display of military might, Kim’s grandson and current strongman Kim Jong-un warned the US to be prepared for a “nuclear attack”. Considering the North’s nuclear arsenal and its eccentric nature, this rhetoric should not be taken lightly. The US, on its part, has threatened to “take care” of Pyongyang’s nukes as an American naval strike force has moved towards the Korean Peninsula. Further evidence that things are heating up to an uncomfortable level came in the shape of a warning on Friday from Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi that war could break out “at any moment” in the peninsula. The Chinese are known not to exaggerate, which is why the warning must be taken very seriously by the global community.

Relations between North Korea and the US have been bitter ever since the Korean War, when the peninsula was bifurcated into the communist North and the capitalist South. In fact, this bitterness has survived the end of the Cold War, and today may trigger a new conflagration if the global community does not act in a timely manner to douse the flames of aggression. Pyongyang’s rhetoric for long has been troubling, as the one-party state has threatened to nuke the South and the US. However, the Trump administration has also made little effort to engage North Korea, indeed adopting a tone of bellicosity and arrogance. Some have said the recent rain of Tomahawks over a Syrian airbase and the dropping of the ‘mother of all bombs’ on suspected militants in Afghanistan was a message to Pyongyang. The thought of a nuclear war in any part of the world is horrific. That is why in this situation China — which is one of North Korea’s few friends — must play a role to end the madness and prevent the escalation of hostilities.

Published in Dawn, April 16th, 2017