“Endless negotiations with North Korea legitimize the dictatorship, allowing more time for the nation to enhance its nuclear and ballistic-missile capabilities.”
The former National Security Advisor Susan Rice acknowledged last week that America’s policies regarding North Korea’s nuclear-weapons program over the last three administrations had been a failure. During a CNN interview, she said, “You can call it a failure. I accept that characterization of the efforts of the United States over the last two decades.” She then turned to the New York Times editorial pages and wrote, “History shows that we can, if we must, tolerate nuclear weapons in North Korea the same way we tolerated the far greater threat of thousands of Soviet nuclear weapons during the Cold War.”
Former Vice President Al Gore also acknowledged the failure of policy. Both Gore and Rice served under President Bill Clinton. It was President Clinton that set the current situation in motion with the Agreed Framework of 1994. This misbegotten deal provided Pyongyang 500,000 tons of heavy fuel oil annually and two light-water nuclear reactors in exchange for the North’s promise to abandon its nuclear-weapons efforts.
Just a side note, Susan Rice was on the NSC as Director for International Peacekeeping, a position that she held from 1993-1995. In 1995, she was promoted to Special Assistant to the President and Senior Director for African Affairs. This was during the Rwanda genocide which the US under the Clinton Administration did nothing to stop.
The Agreed Framework of 1994 was signed by North Korea and then violated almost immediately. In 1999, former Secretary of State James Baker called the Clinton approach as “a policy of appeasement.”
After 25 years of failure, following the same pattern of appeasement and hoping North Korea will keep its word, when it is something the nation has never done, is worse than useless. Endless negotiations with North Korea legitimize the dictatorship, allowing more time for the nation to enhance its nuclear and ballistic-missile capabilities.
History
When the Korean Peninsula was divided in 1945, the partition was always intended to be temporary. Kim Il-Sung’s 1950 invasion of South Korea resulted in placing the Korean peninsula into its current configuration. Since then, China has had a policy of maintaining the division of the two Koreas.
China has long supplied more than 90 percent of the North’s energy needs, as well as vast quantities of food and other assistance to sustain the North Korean government and its secession of leaders. China has used a great deal of political and diplomatic capital to protect the North’s erratic regime.
North Korean nuclear capacity was never an issue or threat for China. The Chinese government was content to have the North Korean nuclear program act as a thorn in the side of the US and its commitment to maintain South Korean security. Now, with the constant saber rattling that North Korea has embarked on with its continued nuclear and ballistic missile tests, North Korea is beginning to pose a substantial risk to China.
China sees the genuine possibility of being drawn into a conflict with the US, Japan, and South Korea should hostilities break out. As more and more countries sign on to oppose North Korea and support the US should a conflict occur, China is at a crucial decision point.
China has long feared that the reunification of Korea would cause massive Korean refugee flows across their border, and that it would allow American and South Korean troops to cross the DMZ and position themselves in direct proximity to Chinese forces in a prelude to a possible action against China.
Solution
At this point, only one diplomatic option has any real hope of success. A case should be made by President Trump to President Xi Jinping that a reunified Korea would be in China’s national interest. There is ample information in China that maintaining the two Koreas, especially given the current nuclear crisis, does not benefit China in the long term. Of course, shifting decades of Chinese policy would be a complicated task, and the pressing question is if President Xi Jinping has the political strength within China to make that proposal viable.
China sees the North Korean regime as providing a buffer between Chinese territory and U.S. military forces. Should this proposal have any chance, to shift the Chinese policy toward North Korea and the US for that matter, the US should offer China a few important assurances.
First, an agreement that the US would not move military forces to the Chinese border area would have to be assured. The US would need to agree to work in close cooperation with China to prevent massive refugee flows either into China or South Korea. There would also have to be an agreement that allied forces would cross the DMZ to locate and secure nuclear, chemical and biological weapons stockpiles and to maintain civil order, but not to occupy positions in opposition to Chinese forces along the border. For all of this to work, China must start to see the US as an ally, or at least, not a potential enemy.
Reunification of the Korean Peninsula can be done in an orderly manner, but this can only be achieved by a joint effort between China the US and South Korea. In this way, the catastrophic collapse that China fears can be avoided. It would require a series of extreme economic pressures and assurances to North Korean military leaders that asylum and a better life is possible after the end of the current regime.
Like the fall of the Berlin Wall, once the collapse starts there will be little chance of stopping it. What must be done is an orderly management of the reunification. The North Korean people, many of who have family in the South will come to realize that this is a better life for them and their families as North Korea is assimilated into the vibrant economic strength and freedom that the South Koreans enjoy.
