It seems hard for the North Korean Rocket Man to start all over again. Especially now that his partner-in-crime — that stable genius — is out of the picture. Or at least, the White House. This may explain the mixed signals that Kim Jong Un is currently sending to the Biden administration. The most recent being that he is ready for both dialogue and confrontation. Admittedly, this is an improvement on his telling everyone and their cat back in 2019 that Biden should be “beaten to death with a stick”. North Korea accuses the US of pursing a ‘hostile policy’. Particularly irking has been President Biden’s appeal that the country abandon its nuclear programme and return to talks; while ruling out any face-to face meeting unless this condition is met. Yet issuing ultimatums when one is on the front-foot is a misstep. Possibly, the Americans believed that a tanking economy and the accelerated threat of food shortages would be enough for Kim to agree to a game of US hardball. No such luck. Indeed, when the power of balance swings so unfavourably away from one side — as many carrots as possible must be dangled. As a means of sugarcoating the inevitable. Sadly, that unquiet American — Donald Trump — did not learn this lesson when he rejected Kim’s opening bid of partially surrendering nuclear capability in exchange for the lifting of sanctions. That was a missed opportunity. And instead of pursuing damage control for the greater good — Biden is fronting it out. Denuclearise or lose. He has also been quick to pooh-pooh the three powwows that his predecessor held with the North Korean strongman. On the grounds of affording him undeserved international legitimacy — even as Trump Town unilaterally exited the Iran nuclear pact. Presently, the US has adopted a mirror-image policy. For it is now trying to trying to revive the latter while bulldozing Pyongyang. To be sure, the North Korean regime is a fiercely oppressive one. But this does not excuse American choreographed double standards. If this continues, it will remind every man, woman and cat of how Pyongyang withdrew from the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) in January 2003, began conducting nuclear tests in 2006 before confirming nuclear capability the following year. And yet a war of aggression was waged on Iraq over non-existent WMDs. Thereby reinforcing the message that nukes are the must-have accessory to ward off US military aggression. For a president eager to tell the world that America is back — he could have found no better way of saying it. Sadly. *