OPINION | We must figure out how our interests and China’s interests can be realigned in regards to North Korea.
As we come barreling down to the end of the road on how we confront North Korea, there can be no denying that this situation is very different from other nuclear weapons threats. In fact, the real comparison is to what we face with Iran and the position President Obama put us in with that hostile country. But North Korea is essentially not like any other nation. There are no real economic pressure points with North Korea to use as leverage. The Soviets and the Chinese wanted some kind of integration into the global marketplace; even Iran does.
But the Kim regime has no interest or ability to benefit from global commerce. It is a hermit regime almost completely closed off from other states intentionally for the sake of the regime. It is mostly a criminal thug operation that trades in weapons of mass destruction, aids terrorists, and kidnaps people.
ADVERTISEMENT So traditional deterrence and containment have little chance to succeed. North Korea under Kim has no other reason to exist except to be an existential threat to the world with its nuclear weapons. Kim Jong-un is trapped within a system of China’s and his own making with the only real thing that he has to lose are his nuclear weapons, which is the only reason for his existence.
China nurtured the regime as it is, and China maintains it. It sold or facilitated the technology and science needed to acquire the capability, and let’s be honest: China delighted in the threat a nuclear North Korea posed to the United States, South Korea and Japan, the later two nations who China hates and fears.
And yet we cannot excuse our own role in allowing North Korea to become what it has become. The three previous administrations naively thought we could talk the North Korean regime out of its pursuit of nuclear weapons, which, to repeat, is the main reason for existence. China has also realized that it naively thought it could control its Frankenstein pit-bull, but it now is realizing it has to confront hard decisions.
Now we must figure out how our interests and China’s interests can be realigned in regards to North Korea. And lest China think that somehow there are joint interests to be accommodated, that is not the case.
The United States and its allies face an existential threat from a nuclear weapons-armed Kim regime.
