Korean game of nuclear bluff
Your issue of 5 May (Koreans fear spectre of war) offers evidence that we are immersed in a new era of brinkmanship even more threatening than the Cuban missile crisis. At that time an astute politician like John Kennedy was preparing to make this speech: “My fellow Americans, with a heavy heart, and in necessary fulfilment of my oath of office, I have ordered – and the United States Air Force has now carried out – military operations with conventional weapons only, to remove a major nuclear weapons buildup from the soil of Cuba.”
Now that we have placed the lunatics in charge of the global asylum, this colossal game of bluff and counter-bluff cannot be allowed to continue. It is time the UN passed a resolution to expel every nation that does not undertake to reduce, and ultimately remove, its nuclear arsenal. To be reinforced by the cessation of all relations with those countries until they comply.
UN secretary general António Guterres should show some real leadership. Perhaps he might start by insisting that the US meet its funding obligations to the UN. Am I living in a fool’s paradise? If so, better that than inhabiting a smoking ruin.
Noel Bird
Boreen Point, Queensland, Australia
• Your front-page headline Koreans fear spectre of war took me straight back to June 1950, when I was working as a teenage assistant in a French school. A colleague terrified me by announcing “C’est la guerre!”, adding “en Corée”.
Since I did not know where Corée was, but it sounded a long way off, I was reassured. But now? Plus ça change ...
Paul Ellingworth
Aberdeen, UK
• Your report headlined Trump relies on China to fix Korea problem (28 April) outlines the tense situation there, but suggests no real way forward. There is a possible solution that would benefit China, the US, and the people of North and South Korea. It would require sacrifices on all sides, however.
The present stalemate is intractable, because no one wishes to see any change in the status quo. Consequently, the threat of instability and war will always loom.
Under this plan, China would agree to the unification of Korea, to accept a democratic republic on its border and to aid in the dismantling of the Pyongyang regime.
In return, South Korea and the US would agree to the removal of US troops and weapons from South Korea after the collapse of the Kim government and the re-unification of the peninsula, with the proviso that they could return at any time if there were an invasion or attack on the unified country.
This withdrawal would involve some infringement on the sovereignty of South Korea to decide its own defence policy, but the benefits of a peaceful unification would outweigh this.
China would feel less under threat of containment by the US, Korea would be unified and the US could bring its troops home. Everyone, including the North Korean people, wins.
Malcolm Ledger
Kyoto, Japan
Elephant in the room
Gary Younge’s piece on guns and knives (21 April) really caught my imagination and I believe that we should look deeper into the issue of a society failing to have “language” to discuss particular issues.
Take for example climate change: Just as Americans discuss gun crime but fail to mention “guns”, we too discuss climate change but ignore the elephant in the room, which is our “excessive consumerism”. We are forbidden to mention that we, the consumers, are the ones generating the demand for polluting products and activities.
So, next time you pass an enormous video billboard demanding that you fly with this particular airline or drive that particularly powerful car, you should remind yourself that maybe we simply shouldn’t be doing that. If we fail to make this connection, then we are no better than those people who can’t grasp the fact that it is the availability of guns that causes gun crime.
Alan Mitcham
Cologne, Germany
Intelligent aliens
The idea that the discovery of alien life will result in a worldwide “theological conundrum” is a very interesting one (5 May). Meanwhile, the term “extraterrestrial salvationists” has been used by archaeologists to identify those of their colleagues who already believe in the possibility that extraterrestrial visitors have influenced the course of human development.
In other words, there are earthlings who believe in the possibility that this tiny blue dot we exist on in a vast universe of billions, even trillions, of other galaxies has long since been visited by beings far more highly evolved and infinitely more knowledgeable, we might easily assume, than us. Any religionist or monotheist might also have difficulty getting their heads around that one.
Richard Orlando
Westmount, Quebec, Canada
Briefly
Oliver Burkeman is right (5 May). The corollary to time speeding up is our tendency to project into the future, to “think ahead”. Then it comes and there we are, at it again. In France it’s called la fuite en avant. And it’s behind the old chestnut about it being all about the journey and not the destination. Will we ever learn?
E Slack
L’Isle Jourdain, France
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