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Day of reckoning looms
With Pyongyang growing increasingly bellicose, the time is coming when Beijing will have to do more than just slap it on the wrist.
- By Yuan Jing-Dong, Special to Gulf News
- Published: 23:04 July 4, 2009
After more than two weeks of intense behind-the-scenes negotiation, the United Nations Security Council on June 12 unanimously passed a resolution imposing stiffer sanctions on North Korea in response to its May 25 nuclear test.
The resolution seeks to restrict North Korean access to financing and materials for its nuclear weapons and missile programmes and authorises cargo searches on the high seas. However, the resolution does not ban normal trade and excludes the use of force.
While the resolution reflects an unprecedented international unanimity in sending an unequivocal message to Pyongyang, the real test will be whether the newly announced sanctions will be enforced. China is widely viewed as holding the key here.
Indeed, there is widely held perception that Beijing has significant leverage over Pyongyang but has been reluctant to use it. China provides North Korea with half of its total foreign aid, significant amounts of energy supplies and accounts for up to 73 per cent of the regime's total foreign trade.
Beijing has for a long time maintained that de-nuclearisation, peace and stability on the peninsula, and the security concerns of the relevant parties should all be addressed through diplomacy and dialogue. Will North Korea's nuclear test last month bring about important changes in China's calculations and hence its approaches?
There is no question that China is indignant of North Korea's unwieldy behaviour. Beijing expresses resolute opposition to the test; it further indicates its displeasure by cancelling high-level official visits. Chinese analysts are publicly calling for reassessments of the future of the Six-Party Talks and the impacts on China's North Korea policy.
While very few analysts advocate discarding the Six-Party Talks, many are sanguine about the prospect of the multilateral negotiation process for peninsular de-nuclearisation. Zhang Lianhui, a professor at the Chinese Communist Party's Central Party School and a prominent North Korea scholar, argues that North Korea has never considered giving up its nuclear weapons programme. What it has done so far are just delaying tactics in order to get maximum economic benefits.
Others argue that North Korea's test seriously undermines China's security by strengthening military alliances between the United States, Japan and South Korea, and could lead to a regional arms race and trigger nuclear proliferation in Northeast Asia. There are calls for Beijing to harden its positions on Pyongyang, including the use of economic leverage to send a clear signal to North Korea.
Clearly, Beijing's calculations on how to deal with North Korea are not aligned with expectations that it could and should use its leverage to exert pressure on Pyongyang. The problem is that China is concerned it could well lose whatever leverage it has should it apply it more often. Beijing is also afraid of the uncertainties that could result, and that the outcomes may actually undermine its national security interests.
However, China's preference for a diplomatic approach with kid gloves has not prevented North Korea from engaging in increasingly defiant and provocative behaviour. Yesterday, North Korea fired seven ballistic missiles, further ratcheting up tensions. These actions are already harming China's national security interests, not the least of which includes closer US-Japan-South Korea defence coordination and a worried Japan seeking greater security autonomy by arming itself, possibly with nuclear weapons should Tokyo lose confidence in Washington's nuclear umbrella.
Now is the time to take a different approach. Understandably, Beijing is facing a difficult choice. But it is a choice it has to make and one long overdue. Pyongyang needs to understand that Beijing's patience and goodwill have their limits and its provocation deserves more than a slap on the wrist.
- OpinionAsia, 2009
Yuan Jing-dong is the director of the East Asia Nonproliferation Programme at the James Martin Centre for Nonproliferation Studies and an associate professor of International Policy Studies at the Monterey Institute of International Studies.
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