Page 1 of 2 China turns netizen anger on Seoul By Peter Lee
The United States-South Korean Cheonan initiative has apparently
fizzled, giving China a chance to shift the geopolitics of Korean policy to its
preferred framing: "stability" instead of "security", and economics over
military affairs.
In the wake of a less-than-damning presidential statement from the United
Nations Security Council, the vaunted joint naval maneuvers scheduled for the
Yellow Sea have reportedly been relocated to waters south of the Korean
Peninsula, with the aircraft carrier George Washington hovering
watchfully near Pusan instead of actually participating.
If the venue for the exercises is shifted, it is unlikely that China
can give sole credit to its own vocal objections and the live-fire exercises of
its navy for Washington and Seoul's change of heart.
Beijing apparently benefited from the shaky character of the Cheonan dossier
that the Republic of Korea (ROK) forwarded to the UN Security Council.
Judging from a technical dissection of the evidence reported by two academics
in Japan Focus, [1] the South Korean military may have botched the
investigation as thoroughly as it botched the initial response to the incident.
Twenty-five officers will be disciplined for shortcomings ranging from
drunkenness to falsification of records relating to the sinking. The military
will get a do-over on the report itself when full investigation results are
released in the next few weeks.
However, even if it is able to plausibly address issues like the magic-marker
Korean characters scrawled on the recovered torpedo fragments - an inscription
that remarkably survived even as the high-temperature paints coating the
torpedo were themselves incinerated - the high tide of indignation orchestrated
by the United States, South Korea and Japan has clearly passed.
The decisive factor in the Cheonan affair was probably not the overt
intransigence of the Chinese. It was the reticence of the Russians.
Russia dispatched its own experts to review the Cheonan evidence in
June. As US President Barack Obama angrily berated China for "willful
blindness" in ignoring the "compelling" Cheonan brief, Moscow's silence
was conspicuous.
The inference can be drawn that Russia believed that supporting the US on Iran
was sufficient recompense for the US-Russia reset and the Obama
administration's diplomatic handling of the exposure of the Russian spy ring,
and it was not obligated to line up with the US and Western powers on the
Security Council to place China in the familiar role of the irresponsible
superpower single-handedly shielding a pariah state against global outrage.
However, given the equivocal relations between Russia and China and the
complicating issue of Russia's dealings with India, its sometime ally (and
China's sometime competitor), Beijing has no assurance of similar forbearance
by Moscow in future. And the recurrence of a Korean crisis is virtually
foreordained.
South Korea is planning on the hopeful assumption that Kim Jung-il will die
while the current, conservative and pro-US Grand National Party is still in
power. If the North, the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK), botches
the succession and instability rears its head, the contradictions between the
Chinese approach - dealing with the DPRK as a sovereign state and China as a
significant stakeholder through the six-party talks - and the South Korean
approach - the rapid delegitimization and eventual extinction of the North's
sovereignty and the reunification of the peninsula under the South's hegemony -
will become acute.
If North Korea is teetering on the verge of collapse and a wave of excitement
is sweeping society south of the border over the possibility of final
reunification of an independent Korea after a century of misery and division,
it would appear difficult for China to win recognition of its national interest
in the future of the peninsula, especially since its national interest seems
best served by the continued existence of an impoverished, anti-American buffer
state.
Beijing's leverage over the North Korean regime is perhaps overrated, simply
because the regime is too rickety to risk the economic reforms that might
secure its prosperity and survival.
As to military intervention, China needs only look at its fragile relationship
with Taiwan, let alone the US experience in Iraq and Afghanistan, to view with
extreme skepticism and caution any suggestions that the People's Liberation
Army might be "greeted as liberators" if it descended on Pyongyang on a
humanitarian mission in the midst of a political and social crisis.
A cooperative attitude by the South Korean government is, therefore, central to
China's hopes for a favorable endgame.
However, China's Korean anxieties have been compounded by the high-profile
pursuit of an enhanced US alliance by South Korean President Lee Myung-bak and
his Grand National Party, one that seemed designed to sideline China from
decisions concerning the future of the peninsula.
Lee openly delayed negotiations on a trade deal with China and lobbied for a
free-trade agreement with the United States, even though the Obama
administration was leery.
He also postponed the reversion of operational control of South Korean forces
on the peninsula back to Seoul's command in the case of war with the North, a
piece of assertiveness by the previous administration that had antagonized the
United States.
Lee's most recent gift to the United States was the reorganization of the Truth
and Reconciliation Committee and the issuance of a report excusing numerous
instances of massacres of refugees by American forces during the chaos of the
retreat to Pusan - and the charge to the Yalu - as "military necessity".
The Associated Press, which has pursued the issue virtually single-handedly,
reported:
Hundreds of petitions to the commission told another story as
well, of more than 200 incidents in which the US military, warned about
potential North Korean infiltrators in refugee groups, was said to have
indiscriminately killed large numbers of innocent South Korean civilians in
1950-51.
Declassified US documents uncovered over the past decade do, indeed, show
commanders issuing blanket orders to shoot civilians during that period. In
2007-2009 the commission verified several such US attacks, including the
napalm-bombing of a cave jammed with refugees in eastern South Korea, which
survivors said killed 360 people, and an air attack that killed 197 refugees
gathered in a field in the far south.
The liberal-led commission, with no power to award reparations, recommended
Seoul negotiate with the US for compensation for survivors of what it agreed
were indiscriminate attacks. But the government of President Lee Myung-bak,
elected in December 2007, has taken no action.
Lee's Grand National Party had warned during his election campaign that the
truth panel's work could damage the US-South Korean alliance.
Late last year, expiring terms on the 15-member commission enabled the Lee
government to appoint more sympathetic commissioners, who opted not to extend
the body's life by two years and instead to shut it down on June 30. Lee, the
new panel chief, withdrew from distribution a 2009 English-language report on
commission findings.
The commissioners also toughened the criteria for faulting US wartime actions,
demanding documentary proof US forces in each case knew they were killing
civilians, commission investigators told The Associated Press, speaking on
condition of anonymity because of their sensitive position.
In a rush of final decisions June 29-30, the commission found no serious US
wrongdoing in the remaining cases of civilian killings, attributing them to
military necessity. [2]
In response, the Obama administration,
infuriated by the Japanese government's flailing efforts to move the US Futenma
Marine Corps air base off Okinawa, decided to put its eggs in Lee Myung-bak's
basket.
It encouraged Lee's ambitions to boost South Korea's global profile, arranging
for the November Group of 20 summit and 2011 Nuclear Security Summit to be held
in Seoul.
Obama abandoned his previous aversion to the KORUS free-trade agreement and
called for its prompt ratification.
And he threw the full weight of American prestige and influence behind South
Korea's call for the Cheonan incident to be addressed by the UN Security
Council.
However, the Cheonan incident did not prove to be a galvanizing,
9/11-type event for Lee.
The political opposition declined to roll over and grant Lee the leadership
status president George W Bush claimed after the World Trade Center towers
fell. Skeptical commentators dogged the investigation of the sinking with
alternate friendly-fire scenarios and questions about the conduct of the probe
that the government was unable to completely rebut.
Local elections that were expected to serve as a validation of Lee's approach
to the Cheonan incident and give him a mandate for a stern response to
North Korea were, instead, a humiliating repudiation.
Now, the lukewarm response of the UN Security Council, the embarrassing
dithering over the location and content of the joint South Korean-US maneuvers,
and China's call to "turn the page" on the Cheonan incident all indicate
that China has an opening for counter-measures for this and future crises.
As it has done in virtually every diplomatic tangle since 1979, China will
attempt to shift the terms of engagement away from the unfavorable calculus of
regional security and military force to the deployment of economic carrots and
sticks to influence the behavior of South Korea and the United States and
lessen the pro-US tilt of the Lee government.
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