Why Would China Change to Suit Us?

The editors of the Washington Post seem to be under the same misapprehension that I’ve pointed out before:

President Obama’s policy since 2009, “strategic patience,” has failed. The policy has mostly consisted of ignoring North Korea while mildly cajoling China to pressure the regime. As the supplier of most of the isolated country’s energy and food, Beijing has enormous leverage. But Chinese President Xi Jinping appears even more committed than his predecessors to the doctrine that it is preferable to tolerate the Kim regime — and its nuclear proliferation — than do anything that might destabilize it.

Since the nuclear test, China has been saying that it will support another U.N. resolution on North Korea, but it is balking at significant new sanctions. Instead it calls for “dialogue,” by which it means negotiations between North Korea and the United States. This sounds reasonable; the problem is that talks on curbing North Korea’s nuclear program and missiles have failed repeatedly, and Mr. Kim is now insisting that the regime be accepted as a nuclear power.

What is needed is a return to the only non-military strategy that brought results: sanctions that strike at the regime’s inner circle. Mr. Kim and his cronies are still managing to import luxury goods from China, in spite of a U.N. ban; they still use Chinese banks to do business with the rest of the world. Those links could be curtailed if China, like Iran before it, were designated as a money launderer and U.S. sanctions were slapped on Chinese banks and other businesses that supply weapons and luxury goods.

so I’ll repeat myself. China has its own strategic objectives. It will not sacrifice those objectives to suit us and, short of a war that none of us should want, we cannot force China to do so.

Further, the United States has strategic objectives other than stopping the pipsqueak regime in North Korea from doing whatever it’s doing. How much are we willing to sacrifice those objectives over North Korea?

5 comments… add one
  • Guarneri Link

    It seems you haven’t put forth the full and real context for the request for pressure, which is sanctions, enforcement of existing sanctions really, in response to the marriage of resumed spent plutonium production and missile testing by NKorea.

    This comes out of a briefing to the Armed Services Committee on the deemed large threats to the United States (read: having to participate in defense of SKorea or Japan) or see those countries develop their own, which will also piss off China. This,is not merely “stopping a pipsqueak regime” for no reason. In either case you will have regional destabilization. What’s wrong with asking China to simply enforce sanctions it has already agreed to, rather than sit by impotently justified by raising the boogey man of war?

    It seems one either has to fundamentally disagree with Clapper (and SK and Japan) that NKoreas efforts pose a problem while also arguing that China is so bent on re trading it’s agreed upon prior position it would go to war, or one has to argue to stand up and do something. The Post is simply pointing out that Obama’s errant leading from behind policy has needlessly created this issue while facilitating an easy out for China and NK.

    We will undoubtedly face the same issue at some point with Iran.

  • No sanction is enforceable or even imposable without China’s cooperation.

  • ... Link

    Obama’s NorK policy has been, largely, an unmitigated success as far as I’m concerned. It would be nice if we were telling the Chinese that they need to handle the Kim regime before Japan & South Korea decide to beef up their armed forces (perhaps by going nuclear). Not sure Obama is quite that up to that, but the Chinese ought to be able to figure it out for themselves.

  • Guarneri Link

    That’s my point, Dave. And until they were let off the hook they were amenable, if under pressure.

    By the way, I wasn’t passing a judgment. I was just observing that an argument that declares NK a pipsqueak, and then invokes war with China as an unacceptable result of dealing with them is basically a tautology and doesn’t address the seriousness of the threat or the willingness of China to deal NK.

  • Ben Wolf Link

    I don’t know, Drew. The notion of the U.S. having the power if only the will is something one should be very wary of in this day. There are going to be any number of situations over which we do not and cannot have control; this may well be one of them.

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