North Korea nukes the Year of the
Snake By M K Bhadrakumar
Everything
about North Korea has to be speculative. That has
been and is still the main problem. But one
speculation seems to be ending, finally. It
concerns China's apparent ambivalence about North
Korea's nuclear program. Increasingly, Beijing is
coming out on the "right side of history".
That in turn would have potential to
unleash a host of profound consequences for the
security of the Asia-Pacific and global
politics as a whole, and,
most important, for the future of what China's
incoming leader Xi Jinping enigmatically alluded
to - but left undefined - as his "two great
powers" concept during his visit to the United
States last year when he was still a mere
"princeling".
Indeed, as the "breaking
news" accrued out of the bits and pieces of
information of an obscure earthquake in North
Korea early on Tuesday and it dawned on the world
that the hermit kingdom had probably conducted its
third underground nuclear test, all eyes began
turning to China. For China watchers on the whole,
this is a veritable feast for the mind - how the
new leadership in China would cope with a major
foreign policy challenge - the second challenge
simultaneously, in fact, if one were to add the
feud between China and Japan over disputed islands
in the East China Sea.
At the end of the
day, it transpires that Xi's predecessor, Hu
Jintao, kept voicing counsels of reason to
Pyongyang but also kept the North Korean economy
uninterruptedly supplied with food, fuel and
investment and virtually kept the international
community at bay by restraining its hands from
imposing punitive sanctions. In effect, the
impression becomes unavoidable that Hu shielded
North Korea from international outcry and tacitly
tolerated North Korea's nuclear program.
Then came the long-range missile launch by
North Korea in December and Beijing's stunning
decision to join the United States in backing the
United Nations sanctions against Pyongyang. The
conventional wisdom at that point was that China
would soon afterward revert to its "default
position" on North Korea, as it had done many a
time in the past.
The interesting thing,
in retrospect, is that things didn't exactly
happen that way. On the contrary, when Pyongyang
let go a fierce attack on Beijing for signing on
to the US-led sanctions at the UN Security Council
and threatened a nuclear test in the downstream,
China began publicly ticking off North Korea -
although limited to the English-language media
that is meant for the consumption of the world
opinion.
There is no question that the
editorial in the state-owned Global Times
newspaper last week penned by Zhang Liangui, a
North Korea expert who advises the Chinese
Communist Party Central Committee, needs to be
taken seriously. The editorial was predicated on
the assumption that Pyongyang would go ahead with
the nuclear test no matter what it takes, and
looking at the downstream it warned that North
Korea would "pay a heavy price" in terms of
China's goodwill. The salient of the editorial was
its unambiguous warning that Pyongyang would be
wrong to (mis)calculate that it can play China
against the United States - "Pyongyang shouldn't
misread China. China won't put its relations with
Pyongyang above other strategic interests."
Clearly, China's political relationship
with Pyongyang has touched a low point. But then,
what about China's longstanding priorities? These
are: no war on the Korean Peninsula; no
destabilization of the North Korean regime; and, a
nuclear-weapon-free Korean Peninsula. China may
balk but humanitarian considerations will remain,
and the long-term relationship cannot be abandoned
just like that.
Besides, North Korea has
acted as a crucial buffer against the US troops
based in South Korea and Japan. Furthermore,
against the backdrop of the US' rebalancing in
Asia and China's troubled relations with Japan,
Beijing needs to hedge and it can, therefore, at
best afford to press the "pause" button at this
point.
On the other hand, there is also
the big picture to consider - the "new type of
relationship between two great powers", which Xi
spoke about during his visit to the US. Thus, in
many ways, it all boils down to how Xi visualizes
the US-China relationship on the whole.
There is some reason to believe that the
new leadership in Beijing would be seeking a good
guanxi (or relationship network mojo) with
the new US administration of President Barack
Obama's second term that is just settling in.
Indeed, a good guanxi is based on personal
affinity and trust, and it holds the potential to
produce "win-win" situations in the downstream,
especially if it leads to business contracts. The
big question is whether the Chinese leadership
will look for a good guanxi to develop with
the Obama administration over the North Korea
problem.
Geopolitical bite The
estimation of the US commentators is that at the
United Nations Security Council, as and when new
economic sanctions against North Korea would come
up for discussion in response to its latest
nuclear test, China will likely support such
measures. In fact, South Korea's Yonhap news
agency has reported that North Korean companies
and government-linked businesses operating in
China have been withdrawing money from their
Chinese bank accounts.
On the contrary, as
the Global Times editorial took note en
passe, there is always the possibility that
the US, Japan and South Korea are probably
attempting to foment discord between China and
North Korea, and "such a trap may be real". There
is even talk that the US might team up with South
Korea and impose a sea blockade of North Korea
without bothering to obtain any UN mandate for
such an aggressive act, which would of course put
the Chinese leadership in a real fix.
Also, the North Korean nuclear test comes
at a politically sensitive moment when there have
been leadership changes in China, Japan and South
Korea. In particular, the newly elected president
of South Korea, Park Geun-hye, is the daughter of
former president Park Chung-hee, whom the North
Koreans once attempted to assassinate - they ended
up killing his wife (the new president's mother).
China can ill afford to be distracted by
another foreign policy crisis on its doorstep when
mounting domestic problems require great
attention. Clearly, China finds itself between a
rock and a hard place with the North Korean
nuclear test. By a curious coincidence, the
nuclear test took place even as the Year of the
Snake slithers in. Snake years have historically
had a geopolitical bite - Pearl Harbor (1941),
Tiananmen Square massacre (1989), 9/11 attacks on
New York and Washington (2001). And Xi himself was
born in the snake year of 1953.
Ambassador M K Bhadrakumar
served as a career diplomat in the Indian Foreign
Service for over 29 years, with postings including
India's ambassador to Uzbekistan (1995-1998) and
to Turkey (1998-2001).
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