I both agree and disagree with John Delury’s Washington Post op-ed about our policy with respect to North Korea. I agree that we should stop threatening North Korea:
Maybe in the era of America First, we don’t care about death and destruction being visited on the 10 million people who live in Seoul, within North Korean artillery and short-range missile range. Do we care about some 140,000 U.S. citizens residing in South Korea — including soldiers and military families at bases here, plus more in nearby Japan? Or South Korea’s globally integrated $1.4 trillion economy, including the United States’ $145 billion two-way trade with the country? Do we care about North Korean missiles raining down on Incheon International Airport, one of Asia’s busiest airports, or Busan, the sixth-largest container port in the world? What happens to the global economy when a conflagration erupts on China’s doorstep and engulfs Japan?
Surely the American public and Congress, regardless of party, can agree that these costs are unbearable and unthinkable. Given the presence of many sober-minded strategists and policymakers in the administration, it seems reasonable to conclude the military taunts are a bluff.
However, I think he veers into fantasy in believing that we have anything material to gain by negotiating with the Kim regime. They won’t negotiate away their own survival and they see just about every difference we have with them as a matter of regime survival.
The Chinese have a much greater stake in what happens in North Korea than we do and not to put too fine a point on it but the North Korean nuclear weapons program wouldn’t exist without the Chinese. They can end it any time they care to without removing the Kim regime just by ending their commerce in dual use technologies with North Korea.
If the Chinese think the catalogue of horrors listed by Dr. Delury above are acceptable risks, who are we to contradict them? I think that at this point what will happen between the U. S. and North Korea will happen. North Korea is the point of the spear in the “Thucydides trap”.
China obviously believes it gets some benefits from the existence of the Kim regime (which consists of tens of thousands of fanatical loyalists). Most obviously, North Korea is a buffer state between the US and its allies, and the North Korean military would be a useful, perhaps decisive auxiliary in a future conflict. So, the problem is to discover China’s price to either overthrow the regime itself or stand aside and let us do it. The minimum end result would have to be a Chinese ally on the Yalu River. They may require much more, like removal of American forces from the peninsula.
And do not overlook Russia’s interests. In the first Korean War, Russia provided the MIG 15’s and Russian pilots flew them plus a great deal of materiel. China provide infantry. Russia also sent pilots and MIG’s to the Vietnamese War. The point being that Russia will have to be bought off, too.
I can only speculate that the Chinese consider the Kim regime and a North Korea allied with China to be synonymous and a North Korea allied with China is a vital national interest. If those are the case and the Kim regime cannot be diverted from its nuclear weapons program or continuing provocations, the die is cast.