How useful are international talks on North Korea without China and Russia at the table?
In an effort to build and maintain a united front, representatives from a number of countries are arriving in Canada Monday to begin talks about the ongoing nuclear threat posed by North Korea.
But when Foreign Affairs Minister Chrystia Freeland and U. S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson welcome delegates from 20 nations to Vancouver, there will be two notable absentees: China and Russia.
In spite of their physical proximity to North Korea’s nuclear arsenal — and China’s close economic ties to the so-called Hermit Kingdom — neither of those countries has been supportive of the jointly hosted summit.
In fact, it’s been quite the opposite. China has openly expressed concerns that the meetings could prove destabilizing, criticizing the decision to invite nations that fought in support of South Korea during the Korean War.
Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov went so far as to call the event “destructive.”
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The U. S. state department, meanwhile, has maintained that neither country was invited to begin with, regardless of the fact that they are both involved in the so-called Six-Party Talks aimed at finding a peaceful resolution.
So how useful are these talks without China and Russia?
Canada’s former ambassador to the Korean peninsula, Marius Grinius, defended the decision not to include them this past weekend.
“They’ve expressed their unhappiness with that meeting,” he said. “But my suspicion is that, in actual fact, any meeting about North Korea where they do not participate, where they do not have a veto or a threat of a veto, makes them unhappy.
