If incendiary bluster slides into military conflict, the populations of South Korea and Japan are in harm’s way.
Getty/WorldPost Illustration
U.S. President Donald Trump’s “fire and fury” warning to North Korea last week was at first dismissed in Pyongyang as a “load of nonsense” and met with a new threat to launch missiles near United States military installations in Guam — a step toward the brink that even North Korean leader Kim Jong Un now seems to have second thoughts about making. Whether that whiff of de-escalation is the result of a new sobriety in Pyongyang remains to be seen.
What
is clear is that apocalyptic rhetoric coming from the White House has
deeply alarmed America’s own allies in the region. “Military action on
the Korean Peninsula can only be decided by South Korea and no one else
can decide to take military action without the consent of South Korea,”
South Korean President Moon Jae-in felt
compelled to say on Tuesday. “The government, putting everything on the
line, will block war by all means,” he further declared.
If
the front-line state in the American alliance confronting North Korea
won’t go along with Trump’s approach, his bluff has already been called.
As Hugh White writes
from Canberra, Australia: “[Trump’s] threats to use force to stop North
Korea’s intercontinental ballistic missile program will prove empty
because his only military options could escalate into the biggest
conflict since 1945. So America will not just end up living with an
ICBM-armed North Korea. It will find its leadership in Asia sharply
diminished in the eyes of both its allies and its rivals.” That
diminution, White goes on, likely means that “prudent allies will rely
less and less on the U.S. [and] ambitious rivals will push harder and
harder to erode U.S. leadership and assert their own.”
Strategists in Japan are already thinking of alternatives
to the nation’s sole reliance on the American defense umbrella that
might either lead their country into a war they don’t want or expose
them to a North Korean attack they cannot resist. Writing from Tokyo, Hideshi Takesada proposes
that Japan “develop the capacity to attack enemy bases in North Korea
with conventional weapons ― both as a deterrent and preemptively if a
threat is imminent.” For Takesada, that includes both cruise and
ballistic missiles as well as “early warning satellites that are not
dependent only on the United States.”
Aside from its recent military threats, the U.S. has been leaning on China to pressure North Korea. Though China supported
the toughest sanctions so far imposed by the United Nations, there is a
growing belief that Beijing is biding its time as America’s credibility
erodes because it sees the North Korean standoff as beneficial to its
long-term strategic aim of weakening the U.S. alliance system.
Yun Sun
argues: “Compared with the tension and danger associated with the North
Korean nuclear crisis, the collapse of North Korea and the potential
prevail of American influence on the Korean Peninsula evidently
represents a bigger problem for Beijing. In this sense, China will not
and cannot meet Trump’s criteria of ‘solving’ the North Korea problem
because the cost-benefit analysis simply does not support such a move.”
Linking the North Korea issue to trade relations, she says, in the wake
of a new U.S. probe of China’s trade practices authorized this week, will not trump China’s strategic concerns.
Writing from Seoul, Seong-Hyon Lee doubts that a recent editorial in China’s state-run Global Times ― arguing
that Beijing would remain “neutral” in any conflict between the U.S.
and North Korea ― reflects official policy. He asks whether China and
North Korea still see each other as allies. “The answer,” says Lee, “is
yes,” because “China and North Korea have had a formal alliance, which
obligates China to come to North Korea’s defense when the latter is
under attack, since 1961.” He acknowledges that “there has been a deluge
of news reports that China’s patience with its former Cold War ally has
hit its limit and that China is now regarding North Korea as a
strategic liability rather than an asset,” but concludes that “even
though North Korea has recently been a discomfort for China, China is
not ready to ignore its bigger strategic value, let alone give up on
Pyongyang.”
Finally, Siegfried Hecker, a former director of the Los Alamos National Laboratory (which designs America’s nuclear weapons) and one of the few
Westerners who has inspected North Korea’s nuclear facilities
firsthand, offers a sweeping review of the history of the North Korean
crisis over several decades, three Kims and six U.S. presidents.
Hecker
concludes: “It is not that diplomacy with Pyongyang has failed over the
past 30 years but rather that Washington has not carried out diplomacy
effectively. It has vacillated between negotiations and threats. A close
look at the record shows that although Pyongyang has never given up its
drive for a nuclear deterrent, nuclear progress slowed significantly
during times of diplomacy and accelerated during times of isolation,
sanctions and threats.” He also faults Washington for failing to
coordinate effectively with its allies or with Beijing. “Whereas it has
relentlessly chastised China for not doing enough to rein in Pyongyang,
it has expected China to work against its own national interests. It has
not heeded Beijing’s advice that Washington must first address
Pyongyang’s security concerns.” As for the present Trump administration,
Hecker believes only urgent “face-to-face” exchanges with the North
Koreans, not ramped-up military threats, are the path forward.
“Washington must listen as well as talk,” he counsels.
The most sensible proposal for moving forward comes from former U.S. Secretary of Defense Robert Gates,
who has tied all these concerns together into a comprehensive strategy.
Gates proposes that the U.S. first sit down at the highest level with
China to make it clear it is not seeking regime change in North Korea
and will end hostilities by offering a peace treaty to Pyongyang. In
return, North Korea would have to essentially freeze its nuclear and
missile programs, guaranteed by intrusive Chinese inspections. If China
does not agree, the U.S. and its allies will be compelled to “heavily
populate Asia with missile defenses” against the North Korean threat
— something that China fears because radar scans can undermine its own security.
If
Gates’ strategy were to work, it would mean a new 21st century security
arrangement for East Asia that makes China an indispensable partner of
the U.S. and its neighbors in the region instead of an inevitable enemy.
If it fails, either the American post-war alliance system will fracture
under the strain of differential security risks — with Japan and South
Korea fending for themselves ― or it will consolidate into a new
superpower rivalry that divides Asia and the world. Both outcomes “bad!”
as Trump would put it.
Other highlights in The WorldPost this week:
- In Seoul, Confusion And Apathy Surround City’s 3,200 Bomb Shelters
- A Divided Country Is Exactly What Trump Wants
- How What Happened Here In Charlottesville Was Inevitable
- Germans Aren’t Surprised By The Recent Violence Of America’s White Nationalists
- Russia And U.S. Are Nearly Tied As Leaders In Income Inequality
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