By defining his goals more narrowly than previous presidents, he may halt Pyongyang’s weapons program.<\/b>
\nSHANGHAI \u2014 In North Korea, the United States is closer to nuclear war than at any other time since the Cold War. An aircraft carrier battle group (after some confusion) is steaming in. Kim Jong Un vows a sixth nuclear test, which the United States has said it would not tolerate. \u201cDiplomatic efforts, \u201d according to Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, \u201chave failed.\u201d Heated words are exchanged on a near-daily basis between the world\u2019s only superpower and its small and impoverished, but nuclear-armed, antagonist. If posturing tips over into actual violence, 1 million people could die on the Korean Peninsula alone \u2014 that is, if the conflict doesn\u2019 t go nuclear. Pyongyang\u2019s missiles are not able to reach the United States, but Japan is well within range.
At the same time, these two nations may also be closer to peace than at any point in nearly two decades. This is because the United States appears to be shifting away from a policy that exacerbated the conflict. Under the administrations of George W. Bush and Barack Obama, the United States mixed two fundamentally conflicting aims in its dealings with North Korea, writes Fu Ying, who led the Chinese delegation in many of the failed multilateral Korean nuclear talks, in a recent paper for the Brookings Institution. That\u2019s because Washington aimed for both denuclearization and regime change. The first goal is strategic, and the second is largely ideological. But the threat of regime change is the very reason the regime wants a nuclear deterrent.
There are signs that President Trump may take American policy beyond this strategic-ideological schizophrenia. This past week, Tillerson said the United States needs to separate its values from its policies. For the sake of national and regional security, curtailing Pyongyang\u2019s weapons program is clearly the higher priority.
Two misperceptions have resulted in a confused policy toward North Korea. First is the notion that it has been a client state of China since the end of the Korean War, driven by an ideological alliance between the two communist countries and China\u2019s need for a buffer between it and U. S.-allied South Korea. In the Financial Times, for instance, James Kynge wrote, \u201cBeijing remains inclined to tolerate its exasperating client state.\u201d But for much of the Cold War, North Korea was a client state of the Soviet Union, not of China. The Soviets provided virtually all of the economic and military aid to North Korea, including its initial nuclear capability. During much of the same period, China was in a quasi-alliance with the United States against the Soviet Union.
After the fall of the U. S. S. R., North Korea\u2019s founding leader, Kim Il Sung, the grandfather of Kim Jong Un, went to China in 1991 and met with China\u2019s leader, Deng Xiaoping. He entreated his neighbor to take over the leadership of the communist world and assume patronage of his country. Deng rejected the pleas. His famous words \u201cTao guang yang hui\u201d (\u201cKeep a low profile\u201d) , China\u2019s foreign policy doctrine for the following decades, were uttered for the first time in front of the elder Kim during that meeting. China, however, did provide \u2014 and still does \u2014 just enough material support to help a close neighbor; Beijing dislikes the idea of instability on its northeastern border that might result from a state collapse. But the notion of a client state based on an ideological bond is simply wrong. China does have some leverage, but it does not, as Trump has said, hold the key to controlling North Korea.
The second misperception is that it\u2019s time for action, because marathon talks over many years failed to persuade North Korea to give up its nuclear weapons program. \u201cStrategic patience has ended, \u201d Tillerson said. This radically oversimplifies the history of negotiations, both directly between the United States and North Korea and involving neighboring countries. Yes, negotiations failed. But they very nearly succeeded.
Two multi-year negotiation processes were carried out after the Cold War. Under the Clinton administration, the United States talked with North Korea directly, without China\u2019s involvement, and in 1994 signed the Agreed Framework on resolving the nuclear issue. The Bush administration engaged in several rounds of three-party talks and six-party talks, hosted by China at the request of the United States. Both negotiations were able to keep the nuclear situation under control for sustained periods of time and came tantalizingly close to resolving it. Toward the end of the Clinton administration, the situation had improved so much that President Bill Clinton seriously considered visiting North Korea.
There were several reasons they eventually all failed, among them lack of trust and delayed implementations by both sides. But the most decisive reason, as Fu argued in her essay, was America\u2019s conflicting goals of denuclearization and regime change. Former defense secretary William Perry said on a number of occasions that the North Koreans could not be developing nuclear weapons to use them, because that would be suicide. So they must have created them to ensure their own survival against a U. S. attack. Yet ever since Bush\u2019s \u201caxis of evil\u201d speech in 2002, Washington has been unwilling to forgo its ideological aim of regime change to realize denuclearization.
This conflict in U. S. aims was at the heart of the failure of the six-party talks and the tit-for-tat escalations between the two countries during the Obama administration. In fact, in the face of the existential threat posed by a superpower, North Korea has come to believe that nuclear weapons are its only protection. The fate of Moammar Gaddafi, who had given up Libya\u2019s nuclear weapons program in exchange for the lifting of American-led economic sanctions, is not lost on the North: Obama sided with Arab Spring insurgents after Gaddafi\u2019s violent crackdown on them, and the Libyan leader died on a desert highway, trying to escape the rebels.
America\u2019s conflicting goals have also complicated Beijing\u2019s position. Nuclear weapons in North Korea are against China\u2019s national security interests, for obvious reasons. But the collapse of the North Korean state as a result of regime change forced upon it from the outside would be equally catastrophic in China\u2019s eyes. A refu\u00adgee influx would wreck havoc in its northeastern provinces, depressing labor prices and quality of life. And Korean reunification on U. S. and South Korean terms could result in American troops on its border, a situation Beijing would find intolerable in the long term.
So for China, denuclearization cannot be obtained by means of regime change. This position is based solely on security interests and has nothing to do with a client state or ideology. The United States has over the years leaned on China to exercise its leverage on North Korea. But previous negotiations ended in failure because what the North needs to give up its nuclear weapons \u2014 security \u2014 Beijing cannot give. Only Washington can give it.
Today, Trump seems to be freeing the United States from the neoconservative and liberal-interventionist policies of the past. For the first time in 16 years, the American side has come out and said rather unequivocally that the foremost priority is disarmament. \u201cWe do not seek regime change, we do not seek a collapse of the regime, we do not seek an accelerated reunification of the peninsula, \u201d Tillerson told NPR. \u201cWe seek a denuclearized Korean Peninsula.\u201d Now, the United States and China have a shared objective without substantive contradictions. Trump has even said that he would be \u201chonored\u201d to meet with Kim Jong Un under the right circumstances. This may be the crucial difference that could breathe new life into the possibility of a negotiated settlement.
In the end, the deal can only be that North Korea gives up its nuclear programs in exchange for assurances that it will not be attacked. Numerous uncertainties and risks would remain. How would we verify denuclearization? How could Pyongyang trust that Washington would honor a commitment not to pursue regime change later, as it did in Libya? Would China be willing to step in and fill the gap between the two parties\u2019 promises? Because of the long-running hostilities and absence of trust, provocations such as missile tests or even nuclear tests can set this goal back.
But the United States and China finally have a clear path \u2014 pressuring North Korea from their respective directions to first halt its nuclear program and then negotiate its rollback in exchange for the survival of the state. And the unprecedentedly close working relationship between presidents Trump and Xi Jinping on the Korean nuclear issue (one bilateral summit and two telephone calls in the same month) can help keep it moving forward. With Trump\u2019s new approach, choosing one goal over the other, the United States may finally get what it wants.<\/p>\n