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Pyongyang: A blot on the
map
By Francesco Sisci
Part 1: Alone
again, naturally
BEIJING - In October when
Chinese President Jiang Zemin went to Texas to see US
President George W Bush, the two spoke of North Korea.
Jiang said he favored a denuclearized Korean Peninsula
and Bush was happy about this. A few days later,
however, the North Koreans told the Americans they
indeed had a nuclear-weapons program.
It was a
slap in Jiang's face. Pyongyang's admission meant either
that the Chinese were A) out of the loop, did not know
what was happening in North Korea, and therefore the
United States did not need to talk to them, or B) they
were lying and the North Koreans were telling the truth.
In either case the message was that the Chinese were not
reliable when talking about North Korea and that
Washington had better talk to Pyongyang directly. The
North Koreans were trying to build bridges with the
Americans at the expenses of the Chinese.
The
North Koreans also thought that it was the right moment
to raise again the specter of a nuclear bomb. The United
States was preparing for an attack on Iraq because it
allegedly had weapons of mass destruction (WMD), but so
did North Korea. However, Pyongyang thought, Washington
would be unwilling to open two fronts at the same time,
so it would prepare for war in Iraq and settle an
agreement with the Democratic Republic of Korea (DPRK).
Because of this the North Korean ambassador in Beijing
argued at a news conference that his country had every
right to build any WMD against "gangster-like" US
policy. But then he also hinted, as clearly as he could,
that North Korea's real aim was to open a dialogue with
the United States, trading, as it did in 1992, aid for
promises of stopping its weapons program.
The
North Koreans, however, failed to grasp fully their
irrelevance in global politics. North Korea is important
only as long as China or Russia is backing it;
otherwise, Pyongyang is just a blot on the map. However
ugly the reality might be, North Korea has no strategic
value per se. It has no oil, like Iraq or Iran, and even
if it blocks land routes between Japan and China, it has
already been doing so for 60 years - waiting a little
longer to unblock these routes won't change a thing.
To make sure where things were standing during
the visit to China in late November of Russian President
Vladimir Putin, China and Russia reaffirmed their
commitment for a denuclearized Korean Peninsula. In
other words North Korea was alone in its development of
an atom bomb. The United States didn't rise to the North
Korean bait, and cut its fuel aid. This would possibly
not have a great impact by itself, as the US fuel
accounts for just a fraction of North Korean
consumption, but it could trigger a cumulative effect
that would, once more, make life difficult for the
North.
In other words, the United States was
saying that it didn't trust North Korea again. Pyongyang
cheated in 1992, by developing arms against the
agreements, and would do so in the future. The US did
not believe either that North Korea would use the bomb,
as any move in that direction could be detected and
would bring about the physical end of Kim Jong-il and
all his minions, as is likely to occur in Iraq with
Saddam Hussein.
So without the once-guaranteed
support of China and Russia, North Korea could be left
festering on its own. The only tool left in Kim
Jong-il's hands was the civilian population, whose daily
welfare, malnutrition, cold and other sufferings are
held like human shields in defense of the leadership in
Pyongyang. But the threat of killing one's own people to
arouse the attention of a government that strictly
speaking has nothing to do with those people has never
been very compelling, although the missionary spirit is
deeply ingrained in the American raison d'etre.
On the other hand China's irritation with North
Korea has brought Beijing and Washington even closer,
and this could be the real turning point of the game.
North Korea exists because Russia and China
wanted a buffer state, a pressure point against the
Americans sitting in South Korea. But Pyongyang's
survival always depended on Beijing's and Moscow's
goodwill. With the weakening of Russia's international
influence and rise of China's, further strengthened by
its geographic and cultural proximity, Beijing was more
important. But now China is cross with North Korea. To
be sure, there is still the issue of the US presence in
South Korea, and the ancient fear of having US troops
next to the Chinese border. And there is also the fear
that if North Korea were to collapse the United States
could pull out, leaving Japan alone and thus forced to
rearm, something that rekindles fears of Japanese
aggression in Asia. More practically there is the huge
concern of the costs of reconstruction of North Korea,
and of who should or could sustain its impoverished
people.
On the other hand, the gigantic
Keynesian effort of rebuilding North Korea could turn
out to be the one thing that could help boost Japanese
production and its economy, and it could help the
trilateral cooperation of Tokyo, Seoul and Beijing under
the auspices of Washington.
This perspective and
the ongoing growth of Sino-US cooperation even in the
military field, as one can glimpse from the recent
reopening of bilateral military dialogue, makes it
easier to envisage a Sino-US settlement on the future of
a reunited Korea. The country could be a bridge and a
buffer between China and Japan.
Furthermore,
China and the United States are now collaborating
against terrorism, but there is still deep distrust
between the two sides. Cooperation on North Korea could
be the one thing building the necessary mutual trust
that could help long-term bilateral ties evolve and
bring about a real partnership between China and the US.
China is also coming to grips with Japan by
putting aside old wartime grievances. In its latest
issue, the influential Chinese journal Strategy and
Management reassessed the role of Japan without
considering wartime history. And this week the People's
Daily newspaper published a photo of Japanese soldiers
starting a mission with a very human, non-militaristic
touch, as if to say that the Japanese military should no
longer be considered aggressive and hostile.
According to this outlook, there is no room for
Kim Jong-il and his fellows, and he is aware of it.
China, though angry, would still be inclined toward a
slow, peaceful process that would minimize the risks of
a social or political explosion in North Korea. China
would like, in an Asian way, to give face and some kind
of slow exit to the old leaders in Pyongyang. The
Americans are conversely furthering the idea of speeding
the DPRK's demise, by having China open its borders to
North Korean refugees, similar to what triggered the
collapse of the Eastern European allies of the USSR.
However, North Korea, independent from any other
country, could go ballistic if China were to open its
borders to refugees, and start a war. Taiwan could never
start a war or provoke China into a war without the
United States' support, and China would never go to war
unless heavily provoked by Taiwan. Both scenarios are
now unlikely to happen. Last summer Taiwanese President
Chen Shui-bian tried to draw some attention by turning
up the volume of his pro-independence rhetoric, but was
rapidly stopped by the US and China hardly even
commented on Chen's initiative.
But no country
has any such leverage against North Korea, and Kim
Jong-il could well spin out of control if he were to
feel cornered. This is something that should push
everybody to be patient, but patience can be in short
supply when history starts rolling. And after the war in
Iraq, reforms in Iran could move faster, and this would
further influence developments in the third pin of the
axis of evil, North Korea.
This is what the new
South Korean president should think about.
(©2002 Asia Times Online Co, Ltd. All rights
reserved. Please contact content@atimes.com for
information on our sales and syndication policies.)
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