AS WE EMBARK on a new year, the usual tendency is for individuals to set new goals and targets for themselves in a subliminal hope that somehow better things will come as the year progresses.
It gives them a reference point on where they are going, based on what happened during the last year. In these circumstances, we could be forgiven for thinking that things could only get better; hopefully.
On the global picture, the economic crisis will be the dominant issue during 2012 while, fortunately, the focus on the major wars is waning. The common enemy of poverty and social injustice continues to prick our conscience and the United Nations’ goal of a 2015 reduction of halving global poverty is now a pipe dream.
But we digress. Two events in North Korea and Iran have added fuel to the political and economic uncertainty which stalked most of global affairs last year. Both of these countries are in pursuit of nuclear technology for “so-called peaceful” purposes.
A new leader Kim Jong-un has recently been appointed in North Korea and already the rhetoric has been ratcheted up.
Much to the disappointment of all those who were hoping for positive developments in the isolated state, a change in policy seems unlikely.
In a brash and dismissive statement denouncing all those “‘foolish politicians around the world” and “puppet forces in South Korea”, the National Defence Commission has categorically put a lid on any hopes of easing tensions that cropped up after the death of Kim Jong-il.
With the young and inexperienced son Kim Jong-un now firmly in place, the question is who is in charge of North Korea’s political and military apparatus? Its nuclear programme is the main reason for neighbouring South Korea and other regional states and the United States to be deeply concerned.
The six-party talks that had begun a few years ago were promptly put on hold after Kim Jong-il decided to change course. Months of freeze on the issue gave way to renewed hopes for the same talks to restart but little has come out of it.
Though the United States has already sent one of its top officials to the Pacific Rim to discuss the developments in North Korea, China, its major benefactor, must play an instrumental role in ending any stalemate in the six-party talks.
The other problem is Iran. On Monday, it announced that it had tested missiles close to the oil-transit channel close to the Straits of Hormuz at the entrance of the Gulf, through which 20 per cent of the world’s oil passes.
This was a deliberate show of strength by Iran in the face of impending sanctions against the Iranian Central Bank and financial sector by the United States and a possible oil embargo by the European Union later this month.
The economic consequences of any such move are ominous and we can only hope good sense will prevail on all sides.
