The Trump administration has signaled that it is time to get tough on Pyongyang. That makes Beijing nervous.
When U. S. President Donald Trump dispatched 59 Tomahawk missiles against Syria on Thursday evening — ostensibly in response to a chemical weapons attack attributed to Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, which activists say claimed 86 lives — his guest maintained remarkable composure.
Dining with Trump at the Mar-a-Lago resort at the time of the strike was Chinese President Xi Jinping. Trump has repeatedly told Xi that the Chinese leader needs to do more to rein in rogue state North Korea’s nuclear program. In a Financial Times interview published April 2, Trump claimed that “China has great influence over North Korea.” He added he was prepared to act unilaterally against the regime of Supreme Leader Kim Jong Un if Beijing refused to cooperate. »If they do [help] that will be very good for China,” said Trump, »and if they don’t it won’t be good for anyone. »
On Sunday, with the Syria strikes still ringing in Xi’s ears, Trump accented his threats by dispatching the U. S. Navy Carl Vinson Strike Group — an aircraft carrier and other warships — to the Korean peninsula. »The number one threat in the region continues to be North Korea, due to its reckless, irresponsible and destabilizing program of missile tests and pursuit of a nuclear weapons capability, » said U. S. Pacific Command spokesman Dave Benham. The message was received loud and clear: On Sunday, China’s state-backed Global Time s newspaper carried an editorial entitled, “After Syria Strikes, Will North Korea be Next?”
It wouldn’t be the first time that a Middle Eastern conflict has shaken China into action over North Korea.
In February 2003, U. S. President George W. Bush told his then Chinese counterpart, Jiang Zemin, “that if we could not solve the problem diplomatically, I would have to consider a military strike against North Korea.” Just a month later the U. S. invaded Iraq, and Jiang clearly feared a similar intervention in China’s backyard. By August, China was chairing the six-party nuclear disarmament talks — involving North and South Korea, the U. S., Russia, Japan and China — and kept them going for six years through sheer diplomatic will despite numerous occasions when principle stakeholders stormed out.
