China's conflicting interests on Korea
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By Stephen Costello
The discussion of Chinese interests regarding their North Korean neighbor, conflicted as they are, has often omitted some important considerations. Chinese officials and academics have often disagreed with each other and among themselves, so confusion is not surprising. Interests should also be distinguished from shorter-term tactical statements and actions, which are what most observers follow. Such interests should be a better guide to real policies and actions than the latest public statements or ungrounded assumptions.
Chinese leaders generally supported the negotiated denuclearization of North Korea carried out in the 1990s. That’s both logical and unsurprising in the context of the times. In this sense the US-North Korea Agreed Framework of 1994, and South Korea’s subsequent North-South engagement initiatives of 1998-2007 had Chinese backing. In contrast, the preference for pressure over diplomacy since 2001 by the US and since 2008 by South Korea were opposed.
Many observers have noted that Premier Xi Jinping is bolder and more ambitious than his predecessors, butfew have described any real change in Chinese interests on the Korean Peninsula. Even assuming expandedChinese cooperation with UNSC Resolution 2270, which expanded sanctions on North Korean trade last month, they still support a negotiated path, and appreciate the DPRK’s insistence that the US must be the main guarantor of any strategic/political deals that could lead to access to international financial participation.
Chinese Pivot
Now, in the aftermath of a new nuclear test and a new rocket launch in the DPRK, Chinese leaders are likely to pivot from their unusual level of support for new UN sanctions to a newly intensified demand that the US overcome its objections to dialogue with the North and come to the negotiating table. In this way, they would attempt to return the US position to its earlier, 1990s basis. At that time, the US position was also denuclearization, but in the context of the North’s economic development and security, in a credible, public and politically durable way.
And here we get to a key stumbling block. There is and has been no indication that the US administration would or could return to credible talks with the DPRK, particularly during its final eight months. Such talks ― credible, rather than political stunts ― would require a degree of strategic planning, of staffing and of public diplomacy that is very hard to expect from the Obama team.
History
The US administration’s view of American interests changed drastically in 2001. Part of the new approach was a recalibration of US-China diplomacy. China, South Korea and Japan had all resisted the Bush team’s withdrawal of support for the Agreed Framework and the KEDO project implementing it, but to no avail. As a gesture to China, and perhaps as a way to shift responsibility and blame, China was offered the chairmanship of the new Six Party Talks (6PT) in 2003.
The prospect of chairing the new group must have been enticing, since it would give Beijing an international role on a matter of both international and regional significance, and presumably more power to force a deal. But as with so many others, the Chinese seem to have greatly misunderestimated the Bush team’s intentions, as the former President might say. And the tension between its role as convener of the 6PT and its interest in having North Korea make deals directly with the US seems still unresolved.
Judging by what we know now, the 6PT was not intended to produce an agreement with North Korea. At least not one that the DPRK would sign. In fact, its impact was to create a bottleneck to prevent deals with North Korea that did not involve elements the North would never agree to, and that the US administration insisted on. Among these elements was the famous “CVID” requirement: complete, verifiable, irreversible, dismantlement. Among Washington policy wonks, we used to laugh at the innocence, the impracticality of CVID. Its promoters must have known that “irreversibility” is a political and strategic construct, not a classically legalistic US principle. But as Vice President Cheney was said to have advised, “We don’t negotiate with evil. We defeat it.”
Let’s recall that the 6PT had replaced a working and successful multilateral process, part of which included the Trilateral Coordination and Oversight Group (TCOG) , established in April 1999, which recognized common strategic interests among Japan, South Korea and the US. However, the TCOG was allowed to atrophy, along with the Agreed Framework and KEDO.
This turn away from a process ― co-led by South Korea at the time, and supported by Japan, China and Russia ― that realistically connected DPRK denuclearization and missile reduction with meaningful development and security, is the diplomatic history that today’s officials and planners must come to terms with. It is the history that the US administration ― and too many journalists ― carefully ignores when imagining the view from China or North Korea. Their officials, of course, remember it clearly.
If China uses its new cooperation with UN sanctions to forcefully require the US to come back to negotiations with North Korea, the Obama administration could face pressures in coming months that it is not prepared for. Both Stephan Haggard of UC San Diego and Daryl Kimball of the Arms Control Association have recently suggested that this linkage should be expected.
If the US administration continues to hope that either the Chinese will help to squeeze the North Korean economy without an American recommitment to negotiations, or that it can continue to blame China while it refuses to use its own considerable leverage to address the North Korea issue, it is likely to be disappointed. In either event, sanctions would be relaxed, China and North Korea would resume blaming the US, and we would be back to square one. Unfortunately, this is the most likely outcome.
Stephen Costello is a producer of AsiaEast, a web and broadcast-based policy roundtable focused on security, development and politicsin Northeast Asia. He writes from Washington, D.C. He can be reached at scost55@gmail.com.