US tensions with North Korea and Iran on the wane?

ONLY a few months ago, pundits were warning that we were heading towards new wars in the Korean Peninsula and the Middle East that may evolve into global confrontations and include the use of nuclear weapons.

These nightmare scenarios started dominating the foreign policy discourse in the aftermath of the inauguration of Donald Trump who pledged to pursue a more aggressive global strategy. In response to reports that North Korea was expanding testing of a hydrogen bomb and an intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM), and that Iran was challenging the balance of power in the Middle East, the White House employed harsh rhetoric. Blaming his predecessors in office for failing to thwart Pyongyang's nuclear militarisation, President Trump insisted he would consider using military power to force North Korean leader Kim Jong-un to quit his nuclear military programme. Mr Kim rejected the US demands that were accompanied by the imposition of international sanctions against his regime, and threatened to use his country's nuclear weapons to destroy US cities, calling Mr Trump "a dotard" after the American commander-in-chief named him the "little rocket man". These threats and counter-threats ignited fears that the world was on the brink of a second Korean War and that it was facing the most serious nuclear crisis since the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis.

At the same time and on another front, Mr Trump entered office promising to revoke the nuclear deal that the Obama administration (and several other world powers) signed with Iran. The idea was not only rejected by leading US allies and most of the international community but was also opposed by the new president's foreign policy advisers. Indeed, by rescinding the Iran nuclear deal, Washington would have faced diplomatic backlash from the European Union, China and Russia, and ignited growing military tensions in the Middle East that could draw the United States into a war with Iran. The sense that the world may be sliding into wars on two fronts may have been driven in part by the impression that the new American president lacked any experience in foreign policy or knowledge in world affairs, or as the caricature depicted him, that he was a "madman" who would press the "big nuclear button" on his desk and blow up the world.