SE Asia, Cina, Nord Corea, Russia, Usa
Sunny Seong-hyon Lee
– Tesi AT:
– La Cina starebbe riconsiderando le sue relazioni – non tanto con il Nord Corea come pensa Obama – ma verso il Sud Corea (SC), uno “Stato pendola”, l’anello debole nell’alleanza Usa-SC-Jap, che pensa di poter tirare dalla propria parte allontanandola dagli Usa.
– Pechino ritiene che il SC abbia più affinità con la Cina che con il Jap, con il quale hanno entrambe dispute storiche e territoriali (Isole Takeshima), che hanno guastato le relazioni SC-Jap, fondamentali per gli USA.
– Pechino starebbe corteggiando il SC (valutazioni positive da parte deimedia cinesidella nuova presidente sudcoreana, Park Geun-hye, il presidente cinese Xi Jinping ha prontamente accolto la sua richiesta di discutere sul Nord Corea; diversamente dal passato Pechino non ha criticato Seoul per le esercitazioni militari congiunte con gli USA)
o e questo mentre – nel quadro dei cambiamenti geo-strategici ed economici della regione – in Nord Corea sta montando il bellicismo e anche la relazione USA-SC sta modificandosi:
o il SC vuole adeguare il proprio status nelle relazioni di potenza alla sua ascesa globale, e questo significa una maggiore autonomia dagli USA,
o esempio recente la disputa sull’accordo ROK-USA (ROK=Rep. di Corea) per il nucleare civile, con il SC che desidera produrre il proprio combustibile nucleare, come il Jap.
o Gli Usa condividono l’intelligence con l’Australia sulla Cina, ma non lo fanno con il SC sul Nord Corea.
– Anche il Sud Corea sta riconsiderando le sue relazioni con la Cina, e intende guadagnarsene l’appoggio, anche in vista di una eventuale riunificazione della penisola, guidata dal Sud Corea.
– Il SC risponde al corteggiamento di Pechino, pensando di usarlo per strappare a Washington quanto da tempo richiede.
– Il dibattito in Cina sulla politica verso il Nord Corea sarebbe
o evidenziato dalle dichiarazioni di Deng Yuwen, vice-direttore del cinese Study Times (della scuola centrale di partito) che, sul Financial Times, secondo il quale la Cina dovrebbe abbandonare il Nord Corea, dato che esso da tempo non è funge più da cuscinetto, e gli interessi cinesi sono più in linea con l’Occidente. Deng è stato sospeso per aver preso pubblicamente queste posizioni apparentemente divergenti con quelle del PCC; (FT, 10.04’13) il governo cinese non ha appoggiato queste posizioni, ma sta aggiustando il suo approccio.
– Pechino spera che il suo irrigidimento verso il NC (Sì a sanzioni Onu più dure) influenzi la scelta del SC se unirsi o meno al programma di difesa missilistica a guida USA.
Kathrin Hille, Pechino
– Pechino pensa sempre più che la politica nordcoreana “del rischio calcolato” danneggi gli interessi cinesi (vice direttore del Korea Center presso l’università Fudan di Shanghai).
– La modificazione delle sue relazioni con il Nord Corea deve avvenire senza pregiudicare la stabilità della penisola, e questo spiega la contraddizione tra il dibattito interno sull’abbandono dell’alleanza con il Nord Corea e il suo mantenimento a livello ufficiale.
– L’attenzione internazionale è su come la Cina, che ha votato a favore, applicherà le nuove sanzioni Onu (risol. n. 2094) contro il Nord Corea.
– Nel Congresso Nazionale del Popolo alcuni delegati hanno discusso se abbandonare l’alleanza con il Nord Corea,
o anche se il ministro Esteri ha mantenuto ufficialmente la linea tradizionale.
– (Il direttore dell’Istituto di studi sulla Corea, Università Sun Yat-sen) Usa e Cina hanno interesse alla stabilità della penisola coreana, e su questo possono cooperare; il problema per la Cina è come farlo,
– senza scatenare maggiore bellicosità da parte del NC, o perfino il crollo del regime assumendo una linea troppo rigida o allineandosi apertamente con Washington, entrambi scenari peggiori dello status quo.
– Benché la posta in gioco fosse minore rispetto a quella in gioco con il Nord Corea, Pechino è stata riluttante ad opporsi a regimi con cui ha collaborato a lungo,
o con quello siriano di Bashar al-Assad, di cui è risultata di fatto sostenitrice, assieme alla Russia;
o con quello di Gheddafi, dal cui abbattimento i gruppi cinesi hanno subito danni economici.
Francesco Sisci
– La questione nordcoreana è divenuta lo snodo delle relazioni multilaterali in Asia, dove è mutato l’ordine regionale, Pechino non può più sottomettere la sua politica estera al comportamento del Nord Corea,
– il cui ruolo geopolitico per la Cina è modificato dal fatto che sia Taiwan che il Sud Corea hanno migliorato le relazioni con Pechino, e la guerra non si combatte direttamente sul terreno.
– La contesa del Sud Corea con il Jap sulle isole Takeshima (simile a quella sulle Sensaku) avvicina Pechino e Seul e, tramite Seul, agli Usa.
– La capacità della Cina di controllare il Nord Corea e il suo nucleare influirebbe positivamente sulle relazioni Usa-Cina, e di conseguenza sulla posizione americana sulle varie questioni dell’area.
– Nel concreto non si sa come Pechino possa farlo, mentre il Nord Corea sta aumentando la tensione nell’area con la sua vecchia politica del rischio calcolato.
– In Cina c’è chi pensa che fosse la Cina e non gli Usa l’obiettivo del test nucleare del Nord Corea, stanco di essere usato come pedina della strategia cinese, e che sia servito al presidente Kim Jong-eun per dare dimostrazione della sua forza ai generali e zii che lo controllano.
– Da 60 anni il Nord Corea avanza minacce come ricatto per ricevere aiuti, ma questa volta la situazione è cambiata sia all’interno che all’esterno del paese.
– La minaccia nordcoreana di un attacco nucleare agli Usa non è tecnicamente reale … , è solo l’ultima di un crescendo di provocazioni e retorica bellicista. Gli Usa hanno risposto con l’invio di due caccia stealth B2.
– La Cina non ha risparmiato critiche al NC, ha cercato di farlo desistere, ha mobilitato soldati ai confini con il Nord Corea, segnale che Pechino prende in considerazione il rischio di un collasso del regime nordcoreano.
– Il giovane presidente potrebbe non saper controllare la partita e divenire ostaggio dei militari e consiglieri.
– Quella nucleare è l’unica carta che il Nord Corea può giocare per negoziare con gli USA (che secondo i leader nordcoreani vorrebbero rovesciare il regime).
– La Cina non vuole che sanzioni più rigide portino al collasso economico o politico il Nord Corea,
– che potrebbe essere evitato con lo sviluppo economico in cambio della denuclearizzazione del Nord Corea e della protezione nucleare cinese e dell’aiuto economico internazionale.
– Gli Usa potrebbero riconoscere tale accordo, se la Cina dichiarasse di non voler espandere la sua sfera di influenza …
China targets South Korea with soft power
– The pundits believe this is a honeymoon period for China and South Korea. Ironically, it is happening as Pyongyang has been Ci si chiede se la ing up its rhetoric and war posturing.
– Many wonder whether China has finally lost patience with its intractable neighbor, North Korea, with differences between them deepening after Pyongyang’s third nuclear test. Beijing’s support for tougher UN sanctions against Pyongyang raised high expectations, especially in Seoul. President Barack Obama also recognized China’s toughened posture when he said China was "recalculating" its North Korea policy.
– In fact, China’s recalculation is more about South Korea. Amid China’s rise and resulting geopolitical shifts, China increasingly sees South Korea as a "swing state" that can be won over by Beijing, argues Kim Heungkyu at Sungshin Women’s University in Seoul.
– China sees South Korea as the "weakest link" among the Washington-Seoul-Tokyo alliance, agrees a Chinese analyst in Beijing. Taken together, China thinks it can work on Seoul to pull it away from Washington.
– China has gained diplomatic currency from Seoul by more rigorously enforcing UN sanctions on Pyongyang. "South Korea was pleased with China," a Chinese interlocutor concluded.
– Seoul-Tokyo ties, a crucial element of Washington’s Asia-Pacific web of alliances, have been troubled too by the neighbors’ historical and territorial disputes.
– China, which has a similar problem with Japan, believes that Seoul is closer to China than to Japan.
– China also senses that the Korea-US alliance is facing challenges as Seoul tries to reposition itself in the global order in a manner commensurate with its rising global status. In relations with Washington, that means Seoul’s is trying to find its own voice.
– The dispute over the ROK-US civilian nuclear agreement, and Seoul’s desire to produce its own nuclear fuel is the latest example.
– China didn’t miss Seoul’s debate about the credibility of US deterrence against the threat posed by a nuclear-armed North Korea. It also noticed Seoul and Washington’s differing expectations regarding the US threshold for entering the inter-Korean conflict.
– While US-ROK relations are at a historic high, the alliance is evolving in a time of geostrategic and economic shifts in the region. Seoul feels that its alliance with Washington must overcome a "fairness" issue. Washington allowed Japan to produce its own nuclear fuel, but Seoul has been barred from doing so.
– Washington shares intelligence with Australia on China, but it often doesn’t do so with Seoul on North Korea. On several occasions, Washington even bypassed Seoul and struck a deal with North Korea, making Seoul nervous.
– Seoul’s pursuit of the so-called "middle power" strategy and assertion of more independence in its foreign policy will strain on the Washington-Seoul alliance.
– Meanwhile, China has been ramping up its charm offensive toward South Korea, one that is geared toward Park Geun-hye, the newly elected president. China’s state media has given her a very positive treatment, hyping her ability to speak Chinese and her affinity with the Chinese philosophical orientation. China attention to details is impressive: When Chinese President Xi Jinping dispatched China’s ranking female politician, Chen Zhili, to Park’s inauguration ceremony in February, he made sure Chen visited Sogang University, Park’s alma mater.
– When Park wanted to talk with Xi to discuss North Korea, he readily honored the request. (Hu Jintao never spoke with Lee Myung-bak on the phone throughout Lee’s entire presidency).
– A major publishing arm under the Chinese government printed Park’s biography in Chinese with a lavish celebration.
– When US B2 bombers flew to the Korean Peninsula to participate in a joint drill with Seoul, the Chinese state-controlled media, which used to vociferously protest such actions, restrained from criticizing Seoul. Beijing’s charm offensive toward Park is meant to influence her early in her presidency as she fine-tunes her foreign policy.
– South Korea is recalculating too. Seoul wants to "work on" China so that China leans toward South Korea and eventually supports Seoul-led unification. The much-cited case of Deng Yuwen, deputy editor of the Central Party School’s Study Times, suggested this effort might bear fruit. Deng argued China should "abandon" North Korea in an op-ed piece in the Financial Times. He has since been suspended from his job for voicing a view that is apparently at odds with that of the Communist Party. Nonetheless, Seoul sees Deng’s case as a sign of hope, reflecting an increasingly diversified debate in China over North Korea policy.
– Seoul is calculating that even if China doesn’t immediately shift its North Korean policy, it could eventually. So, Seoul is willing to work on Beijing for the long-term.
– So far, Seoul has been responding to Beijing’s wooing. But Seoul has another audience in mind: Washington. Seoul hopes Washington notices the evolving romance between Beijing and Seoul and moves to accommodate Seoul’s long-running complaints in their relationship.
– For its part, China is curious to know how its charm offensive, including its toughened posture on North Korea, will influence Seoul’s debate over whether to join the US-led missile defense (MD) program.
Perceptions matter in both a personal relationship and international affairs. A sustainable ROK-US relationship will require both sides to maintain clear expectations of the other’s roles and accommodate mutual concerns. The danger is that while Seoul pretends to entertain Beijing’s courtship to make Washington jealous, Washington may miss the signal. A couple who pretend to be lovers may sustain their infatuation, especially when one party is perceived as a rising star, rich and it aggressively courts the other. The courtship may even lead to unexpected pregnancy. The two then may decide to settle down. Washington should heed the writing on the wall.
Sunny Seong-hyon Lee (boston.sunny@gmail.com) is director of the China Research Center for The Korea Times and a non-resident James A Kelly Fellow of Pacific Forum CSIS. He has lived in China for 11 years.
China adjusts approach to North Korea
By Kathrin Hille in Beijing
– The contrast could not have been more striking. Some delegates at China’s National People’s Congress last week were heatedly discussing whether Beijing should scrap its alliance with North Korea.
– But when Yang Jiechi, foreign minister, faced the press at the weekend, he did not divert an inch from Beijing’s traditional policy script.
“We have always believed that sanctions are not the end of the Security Council’s actions, nor are they the way to fundamentally resolve the issues in question,” he said. Mr Yang – again – urged calm and restraint on all sides.
– Following the adoption last Thursday of a new round of sanctions against North Korea, all eyes are on China to see how far it will go in cutting support for its long-time ally.
– “Beijing is the key actor with regard to all the banking and trans-shipping issues. […] If the Chinese government chooses to enforce resolution 2094 rigorously, it could seriously disrupt, if not end, North Korea’s proliferation activities,” write Marcus Noland and Stephen Haggard from the Peterson Institute for International Economics on their blog.
– “[The new resolution] is unlikely to advance the denuclearisation agenda unless China decides to treat them as a floor rather than a ceiling and really apply the pressure.”
– The contrast between increasingly public challenges to Beijing’s dated alliance with Pyongyang and its cautious official response underlines the dilemma China finds itself in. A foreign policy with the main goal of maintaining stability appears to be failing in the case of North Korea, and now the remaining options seem to pose the risk of making things even worse.
– “Chaos in the Korean peninsula would put China’s security under huge pressure,” says Cai Jian, deputy director of the Korea Center at Fudan university in Shanghai.
– He says China will enforce the latest sanctions “a little bit more strictly than in the past but not too strictly”.
– There is a growing consensus in Beijing that the North Korean government’s brinkmanship is harming Beijing’s interests and that just repeating past appeals to return to the negotiating table is having no effect.
– Deng Yuwen, deputy editor of the Communist party publication Study Times, wrote in the FT earlier this month that Beijing should ‘abandon North Korea’ as Pyongyang had long lost its supposed strategic value as a “buffer”, and China’s interests and values were more aligned with the west.
– The government has been very careful not to back such radical change, but it is quietly adjusting its attitude.
Although China’s support for the latest Security Council resolution is no sharp change following its backing for three earlier rounds of sanctions against North Korea, diplomats say it has been more engaged in consultations, especially with the US.
– “Although the US and China differ in their political tactics towards North Korea, they both advocate safeguarding peace and stability on the Korean peninsula,” says Wei Zhijiang, director of the Korea Studies Institute at Sun Yat-sen University. “Therefore I personally believe that the two should work together to control the crisis on the Korean peninsula. In other words, there is a lot of room for strategic co-operation between China and the US on the Korean peninsula problem.”
– Beijing’s problem lies in how to do this. Chinese diplomats last week rejected almost angrily suggestions of a US-China deal on a draft resolution. Chinese foreign policy experts fret that taking too hard a line against North Korea, or being seen as openly siding with Washington, could trigger either more bellicose acts from Pyongyang or even the regime’s collapse – both scenarios which Beijing views as worse than the status quo.
Chinese academics point to recent incidents where Beijing has been reluctant to turn against regimes it has long worked with even where there was less at stake than in North Korea. China’s insistence that it must not interfere in other nations’ internal affairs has made it, alongside Russia, a de facto backer of the regime of Syria’s Bashar al-Assad, and exposed it to blame for the failure to end the country’s two years of civil war.
– In Libya, Chinese companies saw their operations disrupted following the overthrow of Muammer Gaddafi as Beijing had backed his regime until the very end.
“This was inconvenient, but we stuck to our principles,” says a Chinese diplomat. “In the case of North Korea, we are bound by more than just principles: We have a friendship treaty. So we can only make the most subtle of adjustments.”
China walks fine line on Korea
By Francesco Sisci
– BEIJING – It may all be a charade, a game of smoke and mirrors to conceal the usual 60-year-old North Korean brinkmanship: give me money, or I am going to pretend I will kill you while I starve my people to death. Yet, this time it may be different because many things within and outside of North Korea have changed.
– Pyongyang threatened to launch a nuclear attack on the US. While technically the threat is not very real, since America has plenty of defense against a possible North Korean nuclear attack, this is the latest act in a long series of provocations. Just days before, Pyongyang announced it had restarted a nuclear reactor that it had previously shut down as a result of the six-party talks. In fact, there has been a crescendo of provocations and escalating war rhetoric in recent weeks.
– In just a few days, the North denounced the armistice that ended the war with the South in 1953, in response to sanctions the United Nations (including China) imposed after Pyongyang’s third nuclear test. The US responded by sending a mission of two stealth B2 bombers to the North.
– The test was the start of everything. Before and after it, China spared no criticism and offered friendly advice to Pyongyang to try to make it desist from its intentions and avert the present troubles. The crux of the matter was and is that China does not want North Korea to hijack Beijing’s foreign policy to Pyongyang’s advantage.
– Over the weekend, President Xi Jinping said that no country "should be allowed to throw a region and even the whole world into chaos for selfish gain", in an apparent reference to North Korea. Although veiled, it was the strongest statement against Pyongyang ever uttered by a top Chinese leader.
– In the same hours, the Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi said, "we oppose provocative words and actions from any party in the region and do not allow trouble-making on China’s doorstep".
– On Sunday, the Foreign Ministry expressed "grave concern" at the rising tension and said China had asked North Korea to "ensure the safety of Chinese diplomats in North Korea, in accordance with the Vienna Convention and international laws and norms." Shortly before, Pyongyang had announced it could not guarantee the safety of foreign diplomats in North Korea after Wednesday.
– As a result of this situation, in recent days Beijing has mobilized troops to the border with the North. This is not in preparation for an invasion, especially as China stressed that the armistice is still in force. But the movement indicates that Beijing has begun more seriously considering the possibility of the collapse of the North, something that was once a political taboo for China as it would disrupt the regional political order.
– This taboo is almost as old as the People’s Republic. Mao Zedong intervened in the Korean War, arguing that preventing American troops at the Chinese border was more important than conquering back Taiwan.
– Now, however, Taiwan has dramatically improved ties with Beijing, and so has South Korea, while war is no longer primarily fought with soldiers’ boots on the ground. All these elements contribute to changing the geopolitical role of North Korea for Beijing.
– Moreover, at this moment, the regional order has already been disrupted, calling for China to take a different approach in its foreign policy, including the crucial North Korean pawn.
– China has been edged by its neighbors on almost all its eastern borders. To the south, especially — but not only — in the South China Sea, China must contend with Vietnam and the Philippines; in the east, the Senkaku Islands with Japan.
– Yet in the meantime, the North Korea issue and the friction between South Korea and Japan over claims to the Takeshima Islands (similar to the Senkaku issue) have brought Beijing and Seoul closer together.
– At this juncture, what has changed from the past is the ever closer cooperation between Beijing and Seoul, and then through South Korea, also with Washington.
– Moreover, Washington indicated that greater cooperation with Beijing on North Korea would be helpful in creating a global rapprochement. If in fact China were able to get Pyongyang under control and solve the nuclear issue there, this could have a positive impact on bilateral relations, and thus on Washington’s objective stand on all these questions.
– In this sense, today’s North Korea becomes the true hub of the multilateral relations that dominate all of Asia. This does not mean that China is keen on seeing the sudden and unpredictable collapse of North Korea, but Beijing can’t no longer afford to put all its foreign policy apples in Pyongyang’s basket, and thus it needs now more than ever to bring North Korea under control.
– However, this is only a theoretical statement, and it is hard to see how this can be practically achieved while Pyongyang is escalating the tension according to its old game of brinkmanship. Can Beijing actually push Pyongyang back to the negotiating table, as Joseph DeTrani wrote on this site last month? (See China can defuse North Korea time-bomb , Asia Times Online, March 26, 2013.)
– Some Chinese believe the North Korean nuclear test was actually aimed at China, not at South Korea or the US. They underscored that for the first time China and the US were informed at the same time about the experiment. In the past, China was informed first.
– Pyongyang is tired of being used as a passive pawn in China’s bigger foreign policy plans, and young leader Kim Jong-eun has to prove his mettle to the court of old generals and uncles supervising his new role. The ideal situation for Beijing would be a regime in Pyongyang that gives up its nuclear weapons and embraces wider economic reforms. If young Kim can do that, so much the better.
– South Korea and Japan could be also amenable to this solution, as they are not eager to shoulder the huge burden of rebuilding backward North Korea. Reforms would help to boost growth in the North and give the South time to prepare for an eventual reunification. But will young Kim play along? So far he does not seem inclined to.
These elements add to the volatility of the situation. While brinkmanship is an old game in Pyongyang, the player, young Kim, is new at it, and he might make a wrong move or be held hostage by his advisers.
– Furthermore, there could be other regional players in this game. If Beijing were to solve positively and effectively the Pyongyang issue, Japan’s hand in the Senkaku dispute could become weaker. China would prove to the region and the world its ability to solve a very thorny situation, and this would make it harder not to consider its position on delicate border issues. Then, in order to avert any future Japanese misgivings, Beijing should work hard now to mend fences with Tokyo. The same would then also be true with the Philippines and Vietnam.
– Here there is a very delicate historical lesson. In 1978, China intervened against Vietnam, which had invaded Cambodia to topple the blood-thirsty pro-Beijing Khmer Rouge regime. China acted with America’s blessing to contain Hanoi’s expansionist drive in Indochina. Yet 35 years later, Hanoi still hates Beijing for it, while it has reconciled with Washington.
– China loves to think long-term and would hate to see North Korea (or a reunified Korea) turned into a second Vietnam. For these reasons, Beijing is walking a very fine line, but if Pyongyang escalates the situation, Beijing can’t just follow – unless, of course, we are inclined to think it is only an elaborate charade.
Francesco Sisci is a columnist for the Italian daily Il Sole 24 Ore. His e-mail is fsisci@gmail.com
A Chinese nuke umbrella for North Korea?
By Qingshan Tan
Speaking Freely is an Asia Times Online feature that allows guest writers to have their say. Please click here if you are interested in contributing.
– The most recent North Korean nuclear standoff underlines the failure of West’s past attempt to denuclearize the Korean peninsula – the six-party talks. The issue remains a top diplomatic object for the US and its allies. For US, North Korea’s possession of nuclear weapons would pose a grave threat to the security of Japan and South Korea, and Washington is also concerned that North Korea will export nuclear know-how or weapons to rogue states hostile towards the US.
– For China, a nuclear-armed North Korea adds uncertainty to the stability of Northeast Asia, while raising the prospect of potential nuclear arms race on the peninsula, nuclear confrontation with the West, or nuclear blackmail against South Korea.
– It is time for some fresh thinking on the issue of North Korea going nuclear. To come up with a new approach requires an analysis of North Korea’s motive in pursuing nuclear weapons. The North’s initial effort in its nuclear programs was a out of desire for power status. Then as its nuclear programs began to attract more and more Western attention, the North realized that it could use the nuclear issue as a bargaining chip for Western economic aid.
– This apprehension intensified in the mid-1990s when North Korea experienced a severe shortage of grain, resulting in a four-year famine. As its economy improved, North Korean leaders turned their attention to regime survival in the face of what was perceived as a hostile international environment.
They drew a negative lesson from the Libyan revolution in 2011, attributing the fall of the Gaddafi regime to the abandonment of its nuclear programs. They believe that the possession of nuclear weapons is the only guarantee to prevent Western sabotage of the regime. This belief makes it possible for North Korean leaders to push for the brinkmanship policy in order to fend off any attack.
For North Korea, nuclear possession is not an end, but a means. It wants to achieve a defensive end by an offensive means. For North Korean leaders, it is not of losing "face" in light of South Korean-US military exercises, it is their true belief that the US intends to overthrow their regime.
Since North Korea has limited cards in its hand, the only useful one is the nuclear card. Developing nuclear weapons is the only trump card to deal with the United States.
Both the United States and China realize the danger of a nuclear-armed North Korea, but diplomacy offers no fundamental solution to the problem. The UN Resolution 1718 and the more recently resolution imposing sanctions against North Korea have shown little effects on the regime.
US Secretary of State John Kerry wants China to put up more pressure on North in his first visit to China, but China has tried different means, including cooperating with the West by hosting the six-party talks, with no avail. But economic sanctions, diplomatic pressure, and military exercises can not effectively deal with the nuclear issue and force the North to give up nuclear weapons.
Besides, China does not want to see that more restrictive sanctions lead to the collapse of North Korea economically or politically. So any new approach has to address the Western concern of nuclear-armed North and China’s desire for a nuclear free peninsula and to prevent the regime from collapse as well as North Korea’s concern.
It would be in the interests of China to act now to preempt a possible collapse of North Korea or military crisis caused by stronger US actions in the Peninsula. The goal is to find a way that guarantees the North’s security and development in exchange for its denuclearization.
Finding such a solution requires fresh thinking and good will from North Korea, China, and the United States. One solution is a Korean "Yoshida Doctrine" – the North giving up nuclear diplomacy, playing down militarism, and adopting pro-growth and peaceful developmental policy – in exchange for China’s nuclear protection against any nuclear attack on North Korea and international economic aid.
North Korea could ask China to provide a nuclear umbrella to guarantee the North’s security, in return, it promises to permanently give up nuclear weapons and sign on to the nuclear non-proliferation treaty. The key to this solution is that North Korea must clearly commit itself to denuclearization and peaceful development and foreign policy, China guarantees North’s security, provides economic assistance.
This could see the North become a normal member in the international community; while the United States could recognize the special arrangement and pledge not to sabotage the North’s regime.
There is no doubt that the feasibility of this solution depends on China’s acceptance and the US understanding and support. China not only has to convince itself, but also to persuade the United States. China has to be clear on two points: China does not want to expand its sphere of influence or to compete with the United States, because the end game is to bring North back into the international community; China only provides North with defensive not offensive security guarantee, again the end game is the denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula.
– What does China gain from this arrangement? A non-nuclear North Korea and Korean Peninsula is in the interest of China’s security and foreign policy. From the lessons of history, any tension in the Peninsula is harmful to China’s security interest and forces China to make no-winning choice. Without any clear solution to the nuclear issue today, China will be dragged into later crisis.
This arrangement demonstrates China as a responsible world power. Last but not least, this solution can avoid North’s collapse, a stable and peaceful neighbor is in China’s interest.
How realistic is this solution? If we believe that North Korea’s nuclear programs are motivated out of security concerns and regime survival, then such a solution has to be acceptable for the North. It is the most cost-effective to achieve North’s objectives.
For the United States, if its objective is the denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula not the overthrow of the North Korean regime, then this solution allows the United States not to make a direct compromise to the regime, while resolving the nuclear issue and achieving the denuclearization objective.
As for China, the "special" relationship with North Korea determines the inescapability of China’s involvement. Any issues concerning North Korea eventually become China’s issue; it is impossible for China to walk away from it, whether it likes or not.
– The realization of this solution will result in a win-win-win situation: the United States and China get a non-nuclear Peninsula, disperse a nuclear crisis and establish a model for dealing with future nuclear proliferation. North Korea has security guarantee and can fully engage in economic reform.
Qingshan Tan is Professor of political science, Department of Political Science, Cleveland State University, and can be reached at q.tan@csuohio.edu
Speaking Freely is an Asia Times Online feature that allows guest writers to have their say. Please click here if you are interested in contributing. Articles submitted for this section allow our readers to express their opinions and do not necessarily meet the same editorial standards of Asia Times Online’s regular contributors.