What can the Chinese actually do about the threat from Kim Jong Un?<\/b>
\nThe Trump administration claims \u201call options are on the table\u201d for dealing with North Korea\u2019s nuclear-weapons program\u2014from using military force, to pressuring China to punish its North Korean ally, to Donald Trump negotiating directly with Kim Jong Un. But what do those options look like? And what consequences could they have? This series explores those questions, option by option.
The leaders of North Korea\u2019s greatest adversary and greatest ally agree: It\u2019s bad that North Korea has nuclear weapons, and it would be better if they gave them up. So why do the United States and China keep butting heads over North Korea, as Kim Jong Un fine-tunes his nuclear arsenal?
The latest effort to counter North Korea\u2019s nuclear program\u2014 UN Security Council sanctions on several North Korean exports, orchestrated by American and Chinese negotiators\u2014appears to indicate that the United States and China are finally joining forces to crush Kim\u2019s nuclear ambitions. Yet the unity of purpose fades upon closer inspection. U. S. officials have questioned whether the Chinese government will enforce the sanctions, as the Trump administration considers ways to retaliate if Beijing fails to get tougher on its ally in Pyongyang. Donald Trump has boasted that the Security Council sanctions will have a \u201cvery big financial impact\u201d on the North Korean economy, but the Chinese likely prevented the impact from being even bigger; the UN measures, for instance, notably do not restrict China and other countries from exporting oil to North Korea.
And mere days after the sanctions passed, Trump showed why UN cooperation may be less than meets the eye, threatening to unleash \u201cfire and fury\u201d against the North if its leaders continued to threaten the U. S.
\u201cChina could easily solve this problem!\u201d Trump has tweeted in the past. How? The United States could take at least three paths to partner with China on addressing the North Korean nuclear threat. Each path is beset with obstacles.
Play by China\u2019s Rules
China has, in fact, proposed a plan for solving the North Korea problem. As part of an approach that it calls \u201c suspension for suspension, \u201d the Chinese government has offered to broker a deal in which North Korea suspends its rapidly advancing nuclear and missile programs in exchange for the United States suspending its regular military exercises with South Korea, as a prelude to negotiations to eventually rid the North of nuclear weapons.
North Korea: The Military Options
But the Trump administration has repeatedly rejected the suggestion. Indeed, it strikes at the heart of how the Chinese government views the North Korean challenge differently than the U. S. government does.
Whereas U. S. officials want North Korea to renounce nuclear weapons\u2014or at least take steps toward \u201c denuclearization \u201d\u2014as a precondition for talks, Chinese officials consider denuclearization an end goal of negotiations, not a starting point. Whereas U. S. officials see North Korean militancy as the sole threat to security on the Korean peninsula, Chinese officials perceive North Korean and American provocations as twin threats\u2014\u201ctwo accelerating trains coming toward each other\u201d and refusing \u201cto give way, \u201d in the words of China\u2019s foreign minister, Wang Yi. Whereas U. S. officials identify China as the central actor in the peninsular drama, holding the fate of North Korea in its hands, Chinese officials place their country just off-stage, merely directing feuding parties toward peace. While U. S. officials experiment with ways to exert pressure on North Korea, Chinese officials seek out pressure-relief valves. U. S. officials worry that nuclear negotiations with North Korea, which have backfired in the past, are a trap; Chinese officials claim dialogue is the only way out of the crisis. (Chinese embassy officials declined to comment on the record for this story.)
\u201cThe most urgent task at hand is to halt [North Korea\u2019s] nuclear and missile programs, \u201d Wang, the Chinese foreign minister, argued in a speech to the UN Security Council in April. \u201cTo achieve this, it is worthwhile to put aside the contention over who should take the first step and who is right, who is wrong. Rather, we should start from reaching for low-hanging fruits, defuse any flashpoint endangering peace on the peninsula, and create conditions for stability in the region.\u201d
Wang\u2019s counterpart, U. S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, disagrees. \u201cIf we freeze where [the North Koreans] are today, we freeze their activities with a very high level of capability, \u201d he explained in July, alluding to the fact that North Korea is close to having \u2014or may already have \u2014the means to hit the United States with a nuclear-tipped intercontinental ballistic missile. \u201cWe\u2019 re asking North Korea to be prepared to come to the table with an understanding that these talks are going to be about how do we help you chart a course to cease and roll back your nuclear program. That\u2019s what we want to talk about. … Because stopping where they are today is not acceptable to us.\u201d
Somewhere in between these positions may be a diplomatic solution to the current impasse. But if so, the parties haven\u2019 t found it yet.
Pressure China
China shares an 880-mile border with North Korea. It has a 56-year-old defense treaty with the North Koreans. It accounts for over 90 percent of North Korea\u2019s trade. No country has more influence on North Korea than China. But the question the Trump administration is currently probing is what the limits of that influence are\u2014and how China can be pushed to those limits.
The primary way that China can change Kim Jong Un\u2019s calculus on nuclear weapons, according to the Trump administration, is by fully enforcing existing UN Security Council sanctions and restricting trade with North Korea well beyond what\u2019s included in those sanctions. To persuade Chinese leaders to do this, U. S. officials have alternated between carrots and sticks. Trump has praised Chinese President Xi Jinping and offered him a favorable trade deal in exchange for help on North Korea, but the president and his advisers have also threatened to go to war on the Korean peninsula\u2014a terrifying prospect for the Chinese\u2014if China doesn\u2019 t rein in North Korea\u2019s nuclear program. (Trump\u2019s recent fire-and-fury warning may have been intended as much for Beijing as Pyongyang.)
The main form of pressure under discussion is economic. Trump\u2019s Treasury Department recently imposed sanctions on a Chinese bank for allegedly laundering money for North Korea, and the administration is mulling further \u201c secondary sanctions \u201d on Chinese companies that do business with the North Korean government. It has also floated a range of punitive trade policies, from a tariff on steel imports to retaliation against Chinese intellectual-property violations. U. S. officials have long avoided such actions out of concern that punishing China would make it less cooperative, not more, on North Korea. But Anthony Ruggiero, a sanctions expert and former Treasury Department official, argues that this analysis misses the way that targeted financial measures work. Beyond drying up funding for North Korea\u2019s nuclear-weapons program, he has written, economic penalties could, for instance, \u201cdrive a wedge between Chinese banks that covet their access to the U. S. financial system and Chinese leaders who indulge North Korea. If the banks fear they will be the next target of U. S. sanctions, they will pressure political leaders to change course.\u201d (There\u2019s recent precedent for this: The U. S. sanctions campaign to contain the Iranian nuclear program coerced China into reducing its trade and financial ties with Iran.)
Nevertheless, perhaps encouraged by China\u2019s assistance at the United Nations and discouraged by the thought of sparking a trade war between the world\u2019s largest economies, the Trump administration has proven reluctant to embrace this approach. Additional secondary sanctions, steel tariffs, and an investigation into China\u2019s intellectual-property policies are all on hold at the moment.
Even if Trump were to go all in on pressuring China, it\u2019s far from clear that doing so would achieve the desired result: the dismantling of North Korea\u2019s nuclear-weapons program. That\u2019s in part because of an additional disconnect in how China and America assess and rank the threats posed by North Korea. As Jennifer Lind of Dartmouth College has pointed out, North Korea is presently a national-security priority for U. S. officials because Kim Jong Un is building missiles that could carry a nuclear device to the United States, but Chinese officials don\u2019 t share that sense of urgency. North Korea has possessed nuclear weapons and shorter-range missiles that can hit China for years now. And while China opposes North Korea\u2019s nuclear-weapons program, its top security concern with regard to North Korea is something different: the collapse of Kim Jong Un\u2019s government creating chaos in the North, which in turn could produce a refugee crisis, loose nukes, and an opportunity for the U. S. military presence in the region to expand right up to China\u2019s borders. The Chinese government is therefore unlikely to crack down on North Korea to the extent the Trump administration wants, no matter how much pressure the United States applies, since that could lead to Kim\u2019s downfall. Why would the Chinese fulfill America\u2019s dreams only to usher in China\u2019s nightmares?
Consider what fears Cui Tiankai, the Chinese ambassador to the United States, chose to focus on in a recent op-ed on North Korea. The North\u2019s \u201c nuclear test site is just dozens of miles away from Northeast China, \u201d he wrote. \u201cAny accident, nuclear or military, will have a catastrophic spillover on us.\u2026 The pressure, economic and military, on [North Korea] continues to build up. Yet how much is sufficient without triggering a humanitarian crisis or pushing Pyongyang into desperation? Another Iraq, Libya or Syria in Northeast Asia is a nightmare for all.\u201d
China \u201cis the umbilical cord that keeps North Korea alive, \u201d Scott Snyder, a Korea expert at the Council on Foreign Relations, has observed . \u201cBut their main interest is in stability on the peninsula. So they\u2019 ve got leverage that they can\u2019 t use, essentially. Because if they use the leverage, they\u2019 re going to generate instability.\u201d
Hence the logic behind the Trump administration\u2019s warlike rhetoric: Faced with imminent instability from a U. S. attack on North Korea or potential instability from squeezing North Korea economically, perhaps China would choose the latter as the least bad option. When I spoke with Shen Dingli, a professor of international relations at Fudan University in Shanghai, in June, he credited Trump\u2019s threat of military action against North Korea\u2014rather than his threat of secondary sanctions, which would only apply to a select number of companies in China\u2019s massive economy\u2014with spurring China to get serious about halting imports of North Korean coal earlier this year.
Yet even if we assume that Trump applies maximum pressure on China, and that China fully complies with Washington\u2019s wishes, it\u2019s uncertain whether a Chinese clampdown could force the North Korean government to relinquish a nuclear arsenal that it has deemed essential for the survival of the Kim regime. North Korea has in recent years demonstrated a considerable degree of independence from China when it comes to its nuclear-weapons program. It has, for instance, persisted with missile tests despite China\u2019s ban on coal imports.
\u201cIf China were to abandon all its economic links [with North Korea] , North Korea would still not abandon nuclear weapons, \u201d Shen told me. \u201cChina does not trust that it is able to stop North Korea. Therefore, China is unwilling to do everything it can to stop North Korea.\u201d
Make a Mega-Deal With China
The drawbacks of the first two approaches have prompted some to propose a third: Zoom out from the North Korean nuclear threat and think more radically. Jay Lefkowitz, a former U. S. special envoy for human rights in North Korea, has urged the Trump administration to negotiate a pact with China in which it abandons America\u2019s post-Korean War policy of supporting unification of the Korean peninsula under South Korean leadership. Todd Rosenblum, a former Obama administration official, has gone much further, suggesting that the United States withdraw American troops from South Korea in return for China ousting the Kim regime from power.
\u201cThe U. S. would remove all 30,000 troops from South Korea and close its military bases, \u201d Rosenblum writes . \u201cWe could even consider ending its treaty with South Korea. In return, China would not only cease its support for North Korea but help end the Kim dynasty altogether, leaving behind a unified, democratic Korea that swears off nuclear weapons. The U. S. and China would jointly engage South Korea on its absorption of the North, since South Korea knows the cost of German reunification and is appropriately leery of reintegrating 25 million starved, information-deprived people into a modern state.\u201d
Lind agrees that the sheer difficulty of convincing China to \u201cact against its own interests\u201d on North Korea would require some kind of grand bargain with the United States, but she doesn\u2019 t think a deal is doable. The concessions that \u201cWashington would have to dangle at Beijing would have to be big\u2014really big, \u201d perhaps involving the U. S.-Japan mutual-defense alliance, disputed islands in the South China Sea, or the sovereignty of Taiwan, she writes . \u201cBut, with its many treaty allies and interests in East Asia, Washington would be unwilling to offer that kind of carrot .\u201d
Shen also dismissed the notion of a mega-deal between China and the United States, less because it wasn\u2019 t feasible than because the goal of such an agreement would be futile. North Korea\u2019s nuclear-weapons program is \u201cimpossible to stop, \u201d he told me, \u201cjust like it was impossible to stop American nuclear weapons, impossible to stop Chinese nuclear weapons, impossible to stop Israel\u2019s nuclear weapons, Indian nuclear weapons, and Pakistan\u2019s nuclear weapons.\u201d
In that case, I asked, what would he advise the American president to do? \u201cLive with North Korea\u2019s nuclear weapons peacefully, \u201d he said, \u201cjust like we live with American nuclear weapons peacefully, we live with Indian and Pakistani nuclear weapons peacefully.\u201d<\/p>\n

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