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SPEAKING
FREELY
Road to Pyongyang paved with good
intentions
By Paul Nash
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.
US President
George W Bush's warm remarks welcoming Chinese Premier
Wen Jiabao to the United States on December 9 carried
across the South Lawn of the White House with a light
sense of irony. After all, it was not very long ago,
during the last US presidential elections, when Bush had
talked about China in terms of a strategic rival.
Today, however, relations between China and the
United States appear to be better than they have been in
decades. Perhaps not since the late US president Richard
Nixon first visited China in the early 1970s, when the
two nations re-established diplomatic ties, have
Washington and Beijing demonstrated such an eagerness to
work together.
Wen, who paid his first official
visit to the United States since taking office early
this year, was welcomed at the White House by a 19-gun
salute, making him only the fourth foreign dignitary to
have been received by Bush with such stateliness. And
from Bush's remarks, there is little doubt that his
administration is anxious to advance a "constructive
strategic partnership" with China, a
partnership that both nations have sought after for
the longest time.
Previous US administrations
complained that building a strategic partnership with
China was difficult because, oftentimes in the past,
there has been little or no common ground on which the
two sides could come together in cooperation or just to
air their differences. But times have changed. Wen and
Bush had on their agenda last week a host of contentious
issues, from bilateral trade, counter-terrorism and the
question of Taiwan, to peace and stability on the Korean
Peninsula.
The issue of North Korea's quest for
nuclear weapons proved to be a sticky one. During his
visit to the US, Wen told reporters that he did not know
whether North Korea in fact possesses nuclear weapons,
but he reiterated China's stance against a nuclearized
Korean Peninsula and toward a peaceful reunification of
North and South Korea.
Wen emphasized his belief
that "progress" is being made in the dialogue to ensure
that the peninsula remains nuclear-free. He said the US
and North Korea are now drawing closer than before, and
he stressed China's conviction that the best way to
reach a peaceful resolution is to continue with
six-party talks in Beijing.
And while Beijing
seems eager to play a constructive role in this process,
working quietly behind the scenes to pressure North
Korea to make concessions, along the way it clearly
seeks a quid pro quo return from Washington.
Beijing, for its part, wants Washington to help
persuade Taiwanese President Chen Shui-bian to abandon
his plan to hold a controversial referendum on China's
missile threat, as well as help resolve ongoing US-China
trade disputes. The US also needs China's help on
several fronts. North Korea is one, but the growing US
trade deficit with China is another issue that has
become a thorny political dilemma for the Bush
administration. Washington would like to see China
actively adopt short-term measures to promote balanced
trade and help quiet critics in the US who assert that
China's unfair trade and exchange rate policies are
causing unprecedented job losses domestically, most
prominently in the manufacturing sector. China has been
making strong efforts to bring the US, North Korea and
other relevant parties together again for a new round of
negotiations in Beijing. Acting as intermediary, it has
been playing the diplomatic field with Pyongyang and
also putting pressure on Washington to take what it
calls a more "practical and flexible" attitude toward
Pyongyang.
Some analysts, however, are growing
increasingly uneasy over Beijing's approach to North
Korea. "China," says retired US Lieutenant-Colonel James
Zumwalt, "only continues to do what many other countries
in the region have done for so long - offer Pyongyang
rewards for its irresponsible behavior.
"In the
past few weeks, China has apparently stepped up its
delivery to North Korea of shipments of oil and food to
entice them into signing off on the most recent draft
communique regarding North Korea's nuclear program
'concessions', in an effort to get the US to the
bargaining table again," said Zumwalt, who served as
senior adviser to the assistant secretary of state on
human rights and humanitarian affairs under former US
president George H W Bush. Since 1994, he has made 10
visits to North Korea in an effort to help bridge the
differences between the US and the DPRK (Democratic
People's Republic of Korea).
Zumwalt opposes
further appeasement of Pyongyang and South Korea's
Sunshine Policy of reconciliation and cooperation with
North Korea, which was championed by former South Korean
president Kim Dae-jung. Many observers share Zumwalt's
belief that such an approach in effect rewards North
Korea for acting irresponsibly, allowing it to attract
enormous amounts of foreign aid in return for only
promising to freeze its nuclear program.
That
North Korea is still playing a game of brinksmanship or
"blackmail" with the United States is borne out by
recent rhetoric from Pyongyang. In response to
Washington's rejection of Pyongyang's proposed "package"
solution, which would grant North Korea energy aid in
return for halting its nuclear program, the DPRK's
official Korean Central News Agency (KCNA), considered
to be the official mouthpiece of Kim Jong-il's regime,
said that the United States' "delaying tactics would
only result in compelling the DPRK to steadily increase
its nuclear deterrent force".
The question now
looming on many minds in Washington is: How sincere or
able is Beijing to weigh in behind the scenes with
Pyongyang? Beijing is beginning to appear more concerned
with achieving a quick settlement - something that will
undoubtedly prove ineffectual in the long run - in order
to extract a quid pro quo from Washington on the issue
of Taiwan.
China has long feared an implosion of
the North Korean regime, which would bring a flood of
refugees to its doorstep and raise the specter of a
united Korea aligned with the United States. At the same
time, China does not want to see a nuclear-armed North
Korea, which would prompt other countries in the region,
such as Japan, to embark on their own nuclear arms
programs. And it clearly seeks to avoid armed conflict
with the United States over North Korea. While China is
North Korea's last major patron, a source of critical
energy and food aid, Beijing has had no great love
affair with Pyongyang, and it is no secret that many
North Korean's view Beijing with contempt.
Partnering with China to form a united
diplomatic and economic front against North Korea is
turning out to be more difficult than the Bush
administration had imagined only a year ago. Washington
has been forced to make some very painful concessions to
Beijing. In return, Beijing seems willing or able only
to press for further appeasement of Pyongyang.
If the road to appeasement continues to be
traveled, so the argument goes, any assistance given to
North Korea by China or the United States under a
"package" deal will more likely than not serve only to
prop up Kim Jong-il's brutal, totalitarian regime. After
witnessing the sorry fate of Saddam Hussein, a broken
man "caught like a rat" hiding in a muddy hole, Kim is
probably less likely now than ever before to relinquish
his fledgling nuclear program, which, in the face of
continued economic disaster at home, affords him his
last remaining hold on power.
If the United
States and China continue to appease Pyongyang in its
game of nuclear blackmail, they will surely become
implicit in perpetuating what many observers can only
describe as "evil" - the stark oppression, widespread
famine and vast misery of millions of common people
living in North Korea. But this is not a conflict born
of ideology. The plight of North Koreans is an affront
to the ideals of communism and democracy alike. Instead,
it has become a straightforward matter of regional and
international security disturbed by the reckless actions
of a leader bent on maintaining control, whatever the
price to others.
Beijing and Washington's desire
to grant concession after concession, to appease
Pyongyang, may be deemed the lesser of two evils. It may
be impelled by the noblest intentions to seek a peaceful
resolution to a crisis that could result in a
catastrophe from which no one could possibly benefit -
not North Korea, South Korea, the United States or
China. But if there is any truth to the old adage that
we "sometimes must choose between the lesser of two
evils", then another axiom holds equally valid: "the
road to hell is paved with good intentions".
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.
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