The news arrives with the subtlety of a gong in a quiet library: Xi Jinping, the paramount leader of the People's Republic, is to hold a rare summit with Kim Jong Un in North Korea. One scarcely needs a degree in history to sense the tectonic implications. This is not a mere diplomatic courtesy call; it is a signal, a flare shot into the darkened skies of an already anxious global order.
Let us not mince words. The timing reeks of imperial decline. For those of us who have spent years charting the parallels between the current geopolitical landscape and the crumbling edges of the Roman Empire, this summit reads as a desperate bid to shore up faltering alliances. Beijing, for all its bluster, finds itself encircled. The Indo-Pacific Quad, the AUKUS pact, the ever-closer alignment of Japan and South Korea with the American imperium: these are the barbarians at the gates. And what does the Emperor do? He rides out to meet the most isolated, unpredictable, and frankly, unstable of his vassals.
This is no state visit. This is a pilgrimage to a nuclear-armed hermitage. It smacks of the late Roman emperors travelling to the frontiers to prop up client kings who were more liability than asset. Kim Jong Un, that portly heir to a dynasty built on boy kings and brutal purges, has played a masterful game. He has the bomb. He has the missiles. He has the world's attention. And now, he has the leader of the world's second-largest economy coming to him, hat in hand.
One must admire the sheer chutzpah of the North Korean regime. For decades, it has been the pariah, the beggar, the rogue. Yet here we are, with the Chinese leader agreeing to a photo op that will be splashed across state media worldwide, legitimising a dictatorship that starves its own people. It is a reminder that in international relations, morality is the first casualty of pragmatism.
But what does Xi hope to gain? Surely, it is not just a show of unity. There are murmurs of weapons transfers, of Chinese technology flowing into North Korea's missile programmes, of a tacit understanding that Pyongyang's nuclear arsenal serves as a hedge against American dominance. This is dangerous territory. It evokes the reckless dealings of the European powers before the Great War, where secret alliances and shadowy promises dragged continents into conflagration. China is playing with fire, and the rest of us will feel the heat.
For the West, and particularly for the United States, this summit is a wake-up call. The assumption that North Korea can be contained, that its threats are mostly bluster, is a dangerous fantasy. Xi's visit will embolden Kim. It will grant him a seat at the table of global power. And it will force Washington to recalibrate its entire Asia strategy.
What we are witnessing is the crystallisation of a new axis: China, Russia, and North Korea. Call it the Axis of the Disgruntled. Each one feels encircled, each one nurses grievances against the liberal order. Together, they represent a formidable challenge to the post-1945 settlement. The ghost of Yalta haunts these summits.
And yet, for all the high drama, one cannot shake the feeling of intellectual decadence. We have seen this before. Empires in decline throw up such parleys as desperate measures. They send emissaries to the edges of the known world, seeking reassurance that borders hold, that barbarians will not breach the walls. But the walls are already crumbling. The barbarians are already inside. And a summit in Pyongyang will not change that.
One can only hope that our own leaders are taking notes. For the fall of civilisations is rarely announced with a bang. It comes as a slow procession of meetings, of treaties, of photo opportunities with men like Kim Jong Un. We are living in interesting times. And those times, as the old curse goes, are rarely comfortable.
