The Once and a Future Supreme Leader

Tapestry of King Arthur 

Is taking foreign visitors captive the way that Kim Jong-un, the supreme leader of North Korea, earns his battle stripes (“Another American Citizen Is Arrested in North Korea,” NYT, 11/20/13)? Is it the way he carries on the divine right of Kings, North Korean style. Is it the way he claims his throne and his position as the rightful heir to the glory of his father Kim Jong-il and grandfather Kim Il-sung? Is taking foreign visitors hostage and ignoring the pleas of major powers the way the reputations of the Eisenhowers and MacArthurs of North Korea are created? Maybe this David versus Goliath strategy is how Kim Jong-un attained the credibility to oust the uncle, (“North Korea’s Leader Is Said to Oust Uncle in Power Play,” NYT, 12/3/13), Jang Song thaek, who was appointed to look after him, when he took over in he wake of his father’s death, only two years ago. Jang Song-thaek according to the Times report is the husband of Kim Kyong-hee who was the sister of Kim Jong-il and the Kim Jong-un’s aunt. Whether he called her Auntie Kyong was not reported in the Times piece, though the piece did speculate on the fact that the fall of Jang Song-thaek rather than bolstering Kim Jong-un’s power could destabilize him further and cause him to have to up the ante to maintain his power.  “Some analysts…worry that Mr. Kim might resort to militaristic provocations to divert attention from domestic instability.” The most interesting thing about the whole matter is that it conforms to Santayana’s famous saying, “those whose cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.” As the Times commented, “Mr. Jang would not be the first No. 2 or the first uncle of the Northern Korean leader to lose power. Kim Jong-il plotted a purge of his own powerful uncle to solidify control after the death of his father, the North’s founding president, Kim Il-sung.”

The Namesake

Anyone with a name like Vercingetorix is born to be a conquerer. It’s like Douglas MacArthur or Erwin Rommel, aka the Desert Fox. Beowulf is a name that connotes the war-like spirit, as does General McChrystal, whose name evokes something tangible yet precious. Ataturk is another name that produces a martial effect, as does Bismarck, though Clausewitz, who argued that war is a form of diplomacy, is a name that sounds incongruously effete for someone who advocated Genghis Khan-like pillage. On the other hand, Alexander Haig, Secretary of State under Ronald Reagan, doesn’t sound like the name of a general, even though he was one. Alexander Haig is more like the name of an expensive Madison Avenue optometrist. On the other hand, Nixon’s secretary of defense, Melvin Laird, may not have been a general, but he sure looked like one. Laird scared you, just like Sterling Hayden’s Jack D. Ripper did in Dr. Strangelove. The My Lai Massacre needed Calley, just as the Iran-Contra affair needed Oliver North, but those names are lacking the teeth of the hyena, Esau’s furry arms, or the mane of the Lion King. Circumstances made those military men, but they were not warriors like General Patton or David Petraeus, whose calm is mirrored by his title—Head of the U.S. Military’s Central Command. You can almost imagine his stationary, which has got to be an eye-stopper. Colin Powell seems to be cut from similar cloth. If he’d been a surgeon, his procedures would have been done laparoscopically, unlike the marauding Taras Bulba. And even when Ulysses Grant was a little boy, it was obvious there was always going to be a tomb named after him. Sherman and Lee opposed each other, but they both had tanks named in their honor, such was their parity. Their names come to a natural standoff, like the Monitor and the Miramax. Hannibal rhymes with cannibal (say no more), and Dwight D. Eisenhower was nicknamed “Ike,” which rhymes with pike, a reassuringly quaint implement of war. He married Mamie, but turned out be be as much of a swordsman off the battlefield as he was when he was Supreme Commander of the Allied Forces in Europe.