As Trump’s tensions with North Korea escalate, any nonmilitary solution will rely on China and its massive economic leverage, Greg Wright says in The Conversation.
U. S. President Donald Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong-Un are playing a dangerous game of brinkmanship.
North Korea got the world’s attention – and Trump’s – when it successfully launched an intercontinental ballistic missile for the first time on July 4. In response, the United Nations approved new economic sanctions against North Korea which, predictably, inspired a bellicose response from the rogue regime.
Trump threatened that further provocations will be met with “fire and fury and frankly power, the likes of which this world has never seen before.”
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In response, North Korea issued a threat of its own – missile strikes on the U. S. territory of Guam.
With tensions escalating, it is important to be realistic about how we can get out of this mess.
In short, any nonmilitary solution will rely on China choosing to apply its massive economic leverage over the North Korean regime. This is a point that Trump clearly recognizes. In July, he tweeted that Chinese trade with North Korea “rose 40 percent in the first quarter, ” highlighting China’s reluctance to punish North Korea for its pursuit of nuclear weapons.
While the poor quality of the data hinders a detailed analysis, Trump’s overall sentiment is correct. China has increased its trade with North Korea in recent years and done little to forestall North Korea’s nuclear ambitions besides backing the most recent round of U. N. sanctions. China’s foremost objective seems to be promoting greater stability from its volatile neighbor.
Yet a quick look at the data, however murky, shows just how much leverage China has, if it wishes to use it.
In general, exports from one country to another can be mostly explained by the distance between them and the sizes of their markets, a pattern that holds for China and North Korea.
Geographically, they share a long border, which makes China a natural, though not inevitable, partner for trade. As a case in point, North Korea also shares a long border with South Korea, but these countries have almost no trade between them. In addition, North Korea shares a small border with Russia, with whom it has little, though ever-increasing, trade, as I discuss below.
China’s large market, proximity and – most importantly – willingness to trade with North Korea has led to a situation in which North Korea has become highly dependent on trade with what has become its primary patron.
