Little Rocket Man.
***...
Chapter 1(LRM)
Donald Trump was a very important man. He was president of the United States of America, the greatest president the world had ever seen since Abraham Lincoln himself. Donald Trump had become president, exactly how he had become president was still an ongoing investigation by the FBI, but at least until the FBI finished their investigations, Donald Trump would remain president.
Donald Trump was a very humble man, diplomatic and wise in how he conducted himself on the world stage, and not at all impulsive. He was slow to anger, quick to listen, and not at all impatient. He was indeed the greatest statesman the world had ever seen.
Donald Trump was the president, an enormous privilege that few people ever received. He had so many things to do, and every moment in office was finite and precious. He had made great, some might say outrageous, campaign promises, deeply controversial policy promises that would be difficult to pass into law, but if he worked very very hard and didn't waste any time, Donald Trump might just get these policies enacted.
Time was of the essence. Even the statesmen of relatively little and unimportant countries never had enough time to do everything they wanted to do in office, the workings of even the smallest governments was an immense undertaking to run. Donald Trump was the President of the greatest superpower in this current age of the world, a real heavyweight of political importance, and a giant nation like USA would only be managed by the most ruthless marshalling of every last moment of precious time.
Donald Trump was a master statesman, the best since Abraham Lincoln, and he knew the value of time. He really was a president the history books could learn a lesson from. He was a great man, a really great and hard working man.
Donald Trump went into his office, with matters of state requiring his urgent attention. He sat down, set his face determinedly, and then turned on the television. For 3 hours the distinguished statesman watched television, checking both the real news and the fake news. He did not let the urgent matters of state interrupt this television viewing time, television watching was too important to let such things distract him.
Having spent 3 priceless hours of his finite presidential time in office on watching television, Donald Trump then spent another hour tweeting about what he had watched on television. He made a special point of making insulting and inflammatory remarks directed at the senior statesmen of American allied nations, generating diplomatic incidents that would haunt American international relationships with these allied countries for years to come.
He hadn't even finished all his tweets before the Twitter sphere erupted in international outrage that would dominate the news cycle for the next 24 hours.
Having spent 4 hours of presidential time, and having destabilised the international political situation with inflammatory tweets in the process, the greatest president since Abraham Lincoln yawned and went to bed. He had to go play golf tomorrow, and needed a good nights sleep to be at the top of his game.
Donald Trump ignored the pile of urgent government papers awaiting his urgent attention, and got ready for bed. He was a superlative president, the best in living memory.
***...
Donald Trump grunted as he hit a golf ball. The air was balmy and hot, and the sun shone merrily in the sky. The golf ball flew straight and true, promising to be under par this hole, and Donald Trump felt a feeling of satisfaction at this impressive achievement.
The global media was in outrage over his latest inflammatory tweets about the distinguished statesmen of major US allies. The US ambassadors to the various countries were running urgent damage control to moderate the ill will Donald's tweets had caused. If the United States tried to negotiate deals with these countries right now, it would perhaps receive a rather chilly reception.
Every one of these international alliances was the result of years of careful patient diplomacy. It had not come easily, and damage to these relationships typically took a long time to repair. Some foreign officials had even tentatively questioned Donald Trump's psychiatric health, asking if his unconventional way of conducting himself was the result of some psychiatric pathology. Other officials did not go so far as to question his mental health, but did certainly question his professional conduct as a senior statesman.
Donald Trump did not care what the fake news and the foreigners said, he was a great man, and was making America great again. He was determined to drain the swamp, no matter how hard he had to work at it.
Of course, he couldn't do these things right this second, he at least had to finish his golf game before he got to work on the complex and time consuming task of completely draining the Washington swamp. Just a few more golf holes to go first.
***...
It was nighttime now, and Donald Trump had finished playing golf. He had spoken on the phone to various people, which surely counted as doing work, and had the entire night ahead of him to stay up late getting some solid work done.
Donald Trump sat down with some aides and advisers, and was immediately given urgent papers to sign. Donald Trump didn't like just signing things without knowing what he was signing, and said that he would have to read them first.
The aides unhappily put these urgent papers on top of the overflowing in tray, stacked high with similar papers that Donald Trump had wanted to read before signing. He knew that he probably should be getting on with these urgent papers, but for some reason he couldn't find the time...
***...
Far away from the United States of America was a nation known internationally as North Korea. North Korea was a very different sort of country from America, a very complicated country to even describe in a few short words.
North Korea was often called the hermit kingdom, for it deliberately cut itself off from the outside world, and primarily desired to be left alone. It was not a large country, neither geographically nor economically, and could not afford the expense of a modern war.
To North Korea's south was the nation of South Korea, a first world powerhouse of industry with a well equipped modern army. North and South Korea were still technically at war, held only by a ceasefire agreement that could be broken at any time, and North Korea had every reason to be concerned.
The situation between North and South Korea was a messy and complicated thing to explain, a situation that would require an entire book to do justice to the sheer complexity of the situation and it's nature. It had started with a civil war, and like most civil wars, it was a complicated mess with no simple solution.
It was complicated, more complicated than most Americans comprehended, a complicated mess with a lot of innocent lives on both sides at stake if the uneasy ceasefire was ended. There were no easy answers to bring an end to these problems, it was a situation that needed to be handled with great care by highly skilled and experienced diplomats with a deep knowledge of the Korean conflict.
The South Korean armed forces had been getting more sophisticated with every passing year, with modern fighter jets, smart missiles, a modern navy, and formidable military power. The North Korean military had tried very hard to keep up, they really had, but their mostly Cold War technology was becoming more and more obsolete in the face of South Korean military assets. If the ceasefire suddenly ended, North Korea would not be in an enviable position.
The North Korean government was in the terrifying position of facing certain extinction at the hands of it's primary enemy if war came. The fighting would be bitter and ugly if war came, but even the most optimistic military strategists had to admit that North Korean victory was unlikely in a conventional military war.
Like some other countries had, North Korea was trying to ensure that war never came by developing a nuclear deterrent. It was a tried and tested method, develop a stockpile of nuclear weapons and no one will dare to invade you.
Joseph Stalin had not had to ask for permission to develop a nuclear arsenal for the Soviet Union. The Americans had not asked for permission to develop a nuclear arsenal. The British, French, Chinese, Indian, Pakistani, South African and Israeli governments had not asked for permission when they had developed nuclear weapons. They had all simply done it, and life had gone on.
Big superpowers and even smaller states like Pakistan had developed and stockpiled these weapons, nations in conflict that sought a deterrent to safeguard themselves against invasion. The world at large had not felt the need to excessively sanction these countries for daring to have nuclear weapons, even during the height of the Cold War no one had thought of sanctioning the nuclear armed states on both sides for the threat of human nuclear extinction the world was threatened with.
North Korea faced two main threats to it's survival, South Korea to the south, and the South's United States allies to the east, first world nations both who could easily rip out the throat of North Korea and wipe it off the map at a moment's notice in a conventional war. North Korea had nothing to gain and everything to lose by attacking either of these powerful nations and desperately needed to simply find a way to deter invasion by either of these powers.
North Korea already had a very small stockpile of very small nuclear weapons, enough to maybe destroy parts of a handful of cities if it came to that, but nothing like enough to cripple the military might of either South Korea or the United States. It was like a bee sting warding off a mighty bear, a sting that would cause pain to the bear, but destroy the bee in the process. It was a bee sting type deterrent, a gamble that hoped that the bear would fear the sting enough to just leave the bee alone.
North Korea had it's bee sting weapons, but still needed delivery systems to carry the sting. At present it had the ability to sting South Korea, but stinging distant America was more problematic. America was such a long way away, and delivering a sting was difficult at these distances.
It was a difficult and complicated situation, the stakes were very high, and calming diplomacy was desperately needed to reassure North Korea that peace could be maintained without a nuclear deterrent. The North Koreans were a proud people, a unique people, they had a rich and sometimes tragic history, and they wanted basic respect.
It required the skill of an exemplary statesman to handle this delicate political situation, a true master of careful diplomacy. Fortunately for everyone involved, the United States of America currently had the greatest president since Abraham Lincoln.
When dealing with North Korea, it was especially worth noting that North Koreans especially honoured their leader, the head of the Kim dynasty. The North Koreans were a very very proud people who took matters of respect very deeply, and to insult the North Korean leader was deeply felt as a slap in the face to the pride of the entire country. Any diplomat with any experience dealing with North Korea knew that curtesy to the leader costs nothing and gains much, and that insulting the leader was a sure fire way to escalate tensions considerably.
At this exact moment, North Korea was developing the delivery systems of it's modest nuclear deterrent to hopefully ensure that the United States would be forever deterred from launching an invasion. The regime of course had no desire to actually use these weapons, that defeated the whole purpose of a bee sting defence. If the sting was used, the bee would die in the process, but the threat of the sting would make an enemy think twice before attacking the bee. No nation in the history of nuclear deterrence had ever actually used their bee stings, and North Korea had nothing to gain from breaking this trend, they just wanted to have the sting to make sure they were left alone.
North Korea did not see it as being unreasonable that they join the nuclear club. They were a small nation under threat by powerful enemies, enemies that could not be survived in a conventional war. They were vulnerable to attack at any time, protected only by an ancient ceasefire agreement without armistice. They had neither the money nor the technology to match the sophisticated military forces of South Korea and the United States, and with recent politics they could not rely on their traditional Chinese allies to defend them if war broke out tomorrow. It was simply too expensive for North Korea to match the conventional military power of their enemies, but a nuclear bee sting was much much cheaper.
For a modest investment that even North Korea could afford, they had a small but painful sting to make their enemies back off. It was simple and obvious economics, a cheap solution to an otherwise far too expensive problem. Other nations did this, why not them too?
The weapons were online, and currently aimed at South Korea as a deterrent. All that remained was to develop delivery systems capable of striking the US mainland, and North Korea would be able to feel some measure of security for the first time since the 1950's. They felt that they had a legitimate need for such a defence, and given how many other countries did it, why not them too?
***...
Back in America, the greatest president since Abraham Lincoln was watching television yet again. It had been a tempestuous week of politics for Donald Trump, with the pesky FBI investigation probing deeper into possible Russian interference during the 2016 presidential elections campaign. Donald Trump was a busy man, and didn't have time for this pesky nonsense about possible foreign tampering in the United States democratic process.
Mexico was still being stubborn about agreeing to pay for the boarder wall, saying the usual nonsense about it being unreasonable for a rich super power with one of the largest economies on earth to make a relatively poor country like Mexico pay 12 billion dollars for something that didn't even benefit them. It was extremely frustrating dealing with such stubborn and unreasonable people as the Mexican government.
Closer to home the American people were getting increasingly restless, with increasing civil unrest as citizens formed mass protests against Donald Trump's presidency. Some of these protesters were getting quite violent, and a few people had died. It was an ugly mess, and was only getting more ugly over time.
Donald Trump didn't need all of this nonsense. He was the president of the United States, he should be able to rule the country and the world as he saw fit, why couldn't the people see that?
He was the greatest president since Abraham Lincoln, he was the man who would make America great again. The vast majority of the American people had voted for him after all. The fake news could disagree all they like, they could consult liars like tenured professors of statistics and all the other so called experts to get them to say lies all they liked, they could pull out all the references and charts they liked, they were all liars. Trump had won the popular vote, he had!
It was all so unfair, he was the victim of the biggest witch hunt in history. He was being persecuted by evil people, he was the victim of a great injustice.
The protesters he could ignore, none of them could touch him until the 2020 elections, the offended foreign statesmen he could ignore, they could only bow the knee to the might of the United States. But one thing he could not ignore was this pesky FBI probe, if the FBI probe found him guilty of something serious, then they could remove him from power before 2020! It was unthinkable!
What he needed was something to make all of these problems go away, something like a war to make everyone so busy and distracted that they had bigger things than an FBI probe to think about. He needed to show the world that he was powerful.
He of course would start by tweeting something about Hillary Clinton. She might be a political dead horse, but he would not stop whipping that dead horse for all it was worth. After he attacked Hilary Clinton, he would lash out at other easy targets like female celebrities who he would mock for their appearance. After he was done shaming the appearances of female celebrities, Donald Trump would start attacking foreign officials in inflammatory tweets.
Who else should he provoke today? Who else who else? China? Well he could try but they had an annoying habit of just ignoring him, plus they were powerful enough to actually hit back. Australia? They would just spend the next two weeks laughing about it if he tweeted something about them. Germany? Yes that was more like it, but maybe he could find someone even better to pick a fight with?
What he really needed was a country that the American people had heard of, but small enough to not hit back. Preferably a place with no white people, as that might anger sections of his voter base. It needed to be a place that was very unpopular in the mind of the American people, a place that his right wing base in particular had a strong dislike of, but also a place that was unable to hit back if kicked. A place that could be bullied as much as he liked without fear of retaliation, but so internationally unpopular that he could place brutal international trade sanctions against them if they took his baiting.
Donald Trump knew of such a country that would be absolutely perfect, North Korea.
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