The Clapton Gambit

Say you’re the beleagured tyrant of a certain Northeast Asian country.  In a moment of financial duress, you signed an agreement in which you agreed to disclose and eventually give up  a nuclear arsenal in which you’ve invested a great deal of money, pride, and prestige.  You know that in a year, there’s an even chance that you might be dealing with the most naive and pliable U.S. President since Jimmy Carter.  You also know that if too many people start getting the idea that you’re stalling on that declaration, momentum will shift in favor of turning the economic screws on you again, which you know could be the end of you. You can’t survive without money from your enemies, and one of your best sources might soon dry up. Even the foreign diplomat who had been the main proponent of going easy on seems to be turning sour.

Can you last this year without performing on that accursed nuclear deal? Yes, you can!

Fortunately for you, your enemies have an inexhausible apetite for superficial displays. They desperately want to believe that the gas chambers, nuclear tests, concentration camps, abductions, famines, and global crime syndication are merely a misguided artist’s cry for attention. Some of them, though not all, even have the self-important delusion that they can change your nature by playing music for you. Not that you showed up to listen, yet still, they seize on this stuff. They breathe it. They inhale. Then they lurk behind bus stations at night so they can afford more.

So what are you to do? You put them to sleep by feeding their habit:

North Korea has invited Eric Clapton to perform in Pyongyang in a highly unusual move that could see the English guitarist playing in the world’s most isolated state next year. The invitation will boost hopes that North Korea is growing more interested in building cultural bridges to the outside world, even as diplomatic negotiations over its nuclear programme hit an impasse. [….]

“These cultural exchanges are a way of promoting understanding between countries,” a North Korean official told the Financial Times. “We want our music to be understood by the western world and we want our people to understand western music.” [Financial Times, Anna Fifield]

This is where that young Claptomanic Dauphin you sired has his moment of usefulness. He’s hardly a suitable heir — too corrupted and too effeminate for the job — but it’s not as if you haven’t tried to let him grow into daddy’s shoes.

Poor kid. Some day he’ll have a helicopter accident.

Does this have risks? A few, perhaps, but that’s why you have people who will make sure no one gets the wrong idea. You don’t have to let just anyone will go to go to this, and gambits like this have worked out just fine before. For that matter, you can cancel the whole thing the second week of November. No one would even notice.